You may have seen Alexander Gardner’s familiar photographic portrait of 55-year old Abraham Lincoln which hangs in the Library of Congress or Dorothea Lange’s photograph of the “Migrant Mother,” age 32, taken in the depths of the Great Depression. Or you may have checked out people your age on Facebook and wondered why they look so much older than you, even though they were born in the same year.
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The idea that time wears on the body in a predictable way seems obvious. But is it true that for some people the process is accelerated or slowed. Do we have a bodily timekeeper? Can we tell whether it’s in sync with the calendar? According to Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics at UCLA, there is such a thing as ‘biological age’ and it is distinct from chronological age. Biological aging is a natural phenomenon that will affect every person at some stage in life, but this does not explain why some people age much faster than others and why some do not seem to age at all. Not all of us have been born with that mysterious “Peter Pan gene.’
What really determines our life span? Some of us may live up to 100 years or more without feeling old whereas other might die from ‘old age’ 50 years earlier. People in poor relationships or living in social isolation, those who create stress and worry in their lives, whose lifestyle (overeating, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc.) is unnatural, or who have no purpose in life, age fast. Those who put themselves first in everything are also known to be prone to accelerated aging. People who suddenly lose their purpose in life seem to age and die very quickly.
By contrast, individuals who care about their health, who often think how they can be of help to others and the world, and who are in a secure and loving relationship, are known to halt the aging process and maintain their youthfulness. According to research studies, those who meditate regularly or practice yoga or Tai Chi can add years onto their lives.
Locusts can live forever if nobody kills them. They do not suffer from stress in their lives. Neither do redwood trees which can live from 6,000 to 10,000 years. Trees have no reason to believe that aging is a necessary part of their life.
Most people who live very long lives come from the Himalayas, the state of Georgia in the former Soviet Union, Japan, the high Andes and other regions of the world where our idea of aging has not yet penetrated. One of our ‘rules’ of aging suggests that eyesight deteriorates after age 40 or 45, yet people who live in these isolated regions of the world have their senses of vision and hearing in perfect condition at almost any age. They are certainly not less human than we are so let’s continue to try to find out how our society might be able to achieve the disease-free longevity achieved by these unique groups of people.