actual few of us would want to live...

actual few of us would want to live 969 years like Methuselah did. However, greatest in quantity of us do want to live longer and in robust health. Fortunately, that's a desire that's within reach of us all, no matter what our age.

An anti-aging industry? This desire is a muscular one. So strong, in fact, that the interest in anti-aging is driving a veritable "Anti-Aging Industry." There's: anti-aging medical associations, institutes, cryogenic freezing (see forest-covered Allen's movie, Sleeper), [advocates of] human cloning, medical studies, scientific research, and a treasure-trove of main division s (see the SAMPLING of anti-aging books) either dedicated to anti-aging, or powerfully connected to this "quest."

Anti-aging strategies: words to guide us

a certain quantity of of these books are real narrowly focused on one individual cause of premature aging (such as Fluoride: The Aging Factor, 1983 at John Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D.).

Others are focused onward a specific people, or way of life, which is a living embodiment of anti-aging strategies that have worked (such as Hunza: concealeds of the World's Healthiest persons 1997, by Jay Milton Hoffman, PhD)

Still others are a great deal more encompassing (such as Prescription for in extent Life, 1998, by Mitchell Kurk MD and Morton Walker, DPM)

All of them, however, integrate our desire to conquer, or delay, the chronic, degenerative processe that exemplify what we hate principally about aging:

* memory-loss and senility;

* vision los cataracts, macular degeneration, and glaucoma;

* osteoporosis and osteopenia;

* arthritis;

* heart disease; and

* cancer.

Living longer living better: to what end `anti-aging'?

"As longer life becomes a reality, there is a modern emphasis on research and applications that not solely prolong life, but also increase the quality and productivity of our senior population, factors that will have a touching impact on the economics of health care. [] Virtually each medical discipline is vitally interested in anti-aging medicine and its implications," says the online Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine.

"Anti-aging []" the Journal continues, "has circuited beyond advocating simple lifestyle changes, and is devot to a science that optimizes the metabolic processe of life itself."

The tragically incomplete equation of protracted yet not improved life, is apparent in one of the bedridden, mind-long-gone/body-still-operating patients whose numbers have, sadly, been swelling around the land over the last 25 years. Living better is certainly the best approach.

Aging: one theories

for what purpose do we age? How do we age? There are several main theories onward aging, each briefly discussed here.

The "wear and tear" theory. First introduced according to August Weismann, Ph.D., a German biologist, this theory focuses in succession the belief that the dead body and its cells, are damaged by the agency of overuse and abuse.

In Stopping the Clock (1996) Ronald Klatz, carry on and Robert Goldman, M.D., explain that this theory hem ins that: "the organs -- liver, stomach, kidneys, skin, and in such a manner on, are worn down by dint of toxins in our diet and in the environment; by the agency of the excess consumption of fat, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine; by way of the ultraviolet rays of the sun; and at the many other physical and emotional stresse to which we enslave our bodies" and cells.

While this hypothesis says that excessive wear and tear upon our systems is less, and les forgiven on our bodies as we acquire older, nutritional supplementation can move round back the clock by stimulating our hypothesiss to make use of built-in repair and restorative abilities.

The neuroendocrine theory. lay opened by Vladimir Dilman, Ph.D., this approach to understanding aging begins where the wear-and-tear theory leaves not on This hypothesis centers on the importance of the neuroendocrine plan the complex matrix of biochemicals which command the release of hormones. The interplay, and feedback, between hormones is what typifies the neuroendocrine theory.

The genetic-control theory. This approach views each of us with built-in in "planned obsolescence" based forward what is encoded in our DNA.

We can delay the inevitable "self-destruct" time-bomb at boosting the basic building stiffens of DNA within each of our cells

Telomerase/Telomeres. Competing teams of researchers -- common from the University of Colorado (Boulder) and another from the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) -- originate that the enzyme telomerase "has the ability to restore nucleotides that consume from chromosome tips, called telomere when enclosed spaces divide" (Journal of NIH Research, November 1997)

MORF4 (MORtality Factor from chromosome 4) In December 1997 at the annual meeting of the American Society for confined apartment Biology, Michael Bertram reported that his clump at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston) has clon a gene that, when mutated, helps make about types of cells immortal.

The finding "is going to give us insights into the whole proces of [cellular] immortality," predicted Harvey Ozer PhD a molecular and confined apartment biologist at the N.J. Medical School