Anti-aging can be a difficult topic to address. A war is currently being fought over the meaning of "anti-aging" (as research, medicine, brand, or simply adjective) and thus even mentioning the term is likely to prejudice many readers. We will try to put this all into context while being as neutral as possible.
Defining Anti-AgingLike it or not, "anti-aging" now has a number of quite different common meanings and connotations. Each is championed by a particular group or loose coalition of interests, but advocates for these groups have a way of diving into the fray without defining their terms. This makes reading about anti-aging techniques, technologies, medicine, products, and debates very confusing for the newcomer.
- For the scientific community, anti-aging research refers exclusively to slowing, preventing, or reversing the aging process. There is, as of 2010, no proven medical technology that allows this goal to be accomplished in humans - although the jury is still out on the practice of calorie restriction and regular exercise. Nor is there any currently available method (short of waiting for people to die) to accurately measure the effects of an alleged anti-aging therapy.
- In the medical and more reputable business community, anti-aging medicine means early detection, prevention, and reversal of age-related diseases. This is quite different from tackling the aging process itself, and a wide array of strategies and therapies are currently available. Calorie restriction, for example, is a demonstrated way to lower risk for a wide range of age-related degenerative conditions.
- The wider business community - including a great many fraudulent and frivolous ventures - views "anti-aging" as a valuable brand and a demonstrated way to increase sales. At the worse end of the scale, this leads to snake oil salesmen, "anti-aging" cremes that may or may not make your skin look younger, and infomercials that tout the "anti-aging" benefits of various foods. Broadly, and very charitably, we can look at these varied definitions of anti-aging as meaning "to look and feel younger in some way" - which has no bearing on how long you live or how healthy you actually are.
The confusion of most interest is between the first two definitions. Many interventions lengthen life span for individuals by preventing or curing specific age-related diseases that would otherwise prove fatal. For example, ask yourself whether preventing heart disease or diabetes is anti-aging medicine. This would have no effect on the aging process, but it would help many people to live longer, healthier lives. Is this anti-aging research? Scientists say no, some medical and business groups say yes.
Scientists are appalled at what is going on in the anti-aging marketplace. The more reputable businesses in that marketplace are appalled by the hucksters and pervasive, subtle fraud. Anti-aging is both a valuable brand and important science that all these groups are attempting to control or profit from - in many cases their aims are at odds with one another.
Why Can't They All Just Get Along?The war over the meaning of "anti-aging" is being fought over money and the perception of legitimacy. It is this perception of legitimacy that determines funding for scientific research and revenues for businesses. Scientists feel, quite rightly, that the noise and nonsense coming from the anti-aging marketplace is damaging the prospects for serious, scientific anti-aging research. If everyone knows that anti-aging means high-priced cream from Revlon marketed to the gullible and brand-aware, no scientist is going to get funding for a serious proposal in aging research that uses the word "anti-aging." Worse than that, people start to assume that real efforts to reverse aging must be impossible - and large scale science requires public support and understanding.
Businesses in the "anti-aging" marketplace make money from the aura of legitimacy whether or not their products perform as advertised, and so a lot of effort is expended to create and maintain this perception of legitimacy. Those businesspeople with working, accurately marketed products carry out their own fight against opportunists, frauds, and "marketeers" - businesses that are damaging the market and diluting the brand. Ironically, this is much the same argument used against the more legitimate businesses by scientists.
A common objection to the way in which some anti-aging businesses establish legitimacy is that they cherry pick supportive studies in areas in which the facts are still unsure and scientists are still working towards a conclusion. A few positive studies are not enough to settle any question or recommend any course of action in the complex world of medicine.
The vast amount of money spent on products that claim to turn back the clock demonstrates that people want real anti-aging medicines. The trouble is that these real anti-aging therapies simply don't exist. Or do they? It all depends on how you define "anti-aging."
The concept of "optimizing natural longevity" is useful when trying to draw a distinct line between what you can do now to lead a longer, healthier life, and what will be possible in the future. We can presume that there exists, for each person, some maximum life span - an "optimized natural longevity" - that can reach using modern medicine and appropriate lifestyle and diet choices. You can adopt calorie restriction, exercise, keep up a good relationship with a physician, and spend an appropriate amount on supplements and healthcare. Each of these items will help you to optimize your natural longevity - enable you to live a few years longer and in better health than you would otherwise have done. Does this make them anti-aging, preventative medicine, good maintenance, or merely not damaging yourself quite so much?
If an improved supplement comes onto the market that adds a few years of life for some people through a poorly understood biochemical mechanism, is that "anti-aging?" How about improvements in general healthcare for the elderly that have the same effect? Or a way to cure heart disease? All of these things are clearly going to extend healthy life span by some modest amount for at least some people - but they are not affecting the aging process. We could spend a lot of time arguing one way or another (and proposing further, more ambiguous examples).
We Are Not There YetHere is a final thought to mull over: if we possessed medical technologies that could extend the healthy human life span to 150 years (or more) - such as those proposed by biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey in his Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence - it's a fair bet that no-one would be arguing about the semantics of anti-aging research and medicine. In large part, these battles over meaning and legitimacy stem from the absence of anti-aging medicine that can greatly extend healthy life span. A year here and a year there are better than nothing, but far more effective medical technologies are possible.
This is why a focus on medical research and funding is vital to healthy life extension. We are simply not there yet. If a tenth of the effort spent on redefining anti-aging, selling junk, or trying to optimize natural longevity was spent on the medicine of the future - like regenerative medicine, repairing mitochondria, gene therapies or nanomedicine - just imagine where we could be by now! The medicine (and lifestyle choices like calorie restriction) that we have access to in the here and now are largely ineffective in the grand scheme of what is possible. Science can do far, far better in the long run, but getting there is going to take work, activism and support. What are you waiting for?
Last updated: December 7th 2010.
Hi there -
I'd be curious to hear where you come-in on the research and development of the ageLOC approach to anti-aging science?
It appears to me that Dr. Richard Weindruch (LifeGen Technologies) and the collaborative scientists from Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. (Pharmanex), Stanford University, Purdue University, and other top anti-aging research scientists, are making advances in identifying the sources of aging and influencing "gene-expression".
@Marc Yagoda: LifeGen are in much the same area of research as Sirtris is, BioMarker Inc used to be, and Genescient is pushing. Essentially working on different areas of the idea that drugs can induce shifts in metabolism - that normally only occur in response to circumstances like calorie restriction - into modes that lead to better health and longer life.
My opinion on this is that it's all valid research in the sense that things are being learned and reputable researchers are involved. It is not, however, a path to engineered longevity within our lifetimes. For an explanation as to why it's a dead end for us, see:
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/09/the-scientific-debate-that-will-determine-how-long-we-all-live.php
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/06/debating-the-merits-of-various-slow-boats-to-china.php
Mr Yagoda,
First, unless there has been some manner of hack on Facebook, Xing, Linkedin, and other sources, you are an employee of NuSkin. At minimum, a disclosure of this fact should have accompanied your post; absent such disclosure, your "question" would seem to qualify as spam.
I agree with Reason's comments, as far as they go; more importantly, while I have the utmost respect for Dr. Weindruch as a biogerontologist of great accomplishment, the fact that a substance alters age-related gene expression doesn't actually tell you much about its effect on health or longevity. This has been demonstrated most glaringly by Weindruch's group's own results with resveratrol, which they showed opposes age-related gene expression changes in the heart -- and yet, lifespan studies in normal, healthy, nonobese mice carried out at four different labs and at five different doses have shown that it has no effect.
Pharmanex Beijing Pharmacology's own, in-house lifespan study is a distraction, since the control animals were so miserably short-lived, and the ageLoc'treated animals still didn't live as long as normal, healthy, nonobese mice given no special treatment in the hands of competent aging researchers such as Drs. Weindruch, Spindler, or Miller.
Thank you Michael for pointing this blatant "ad" out. What I would like to see is what are the elements for combating aging. Diet, specific nutritional supplements and why (i.e. resveratrol because it mimics calorie restriction), exercise, etc.
So much of what we see today is about how we look and certainly we want to prevent our skin from aging as part of our whole bodies. But what are the scientifically based ways to accomplish the slowing or even reversing of the aging process?
I have read Du Grey's seven aspects, but what do we have that address those or other elements? Thank you.
Aubrey De Grey says that within 20 - 30 years people will visit their doctors for "maintenance" procedures that involve stem cell therapies, gene therapies, immune system rebuilds, and a variety of other advanced medical techniques that slow down the aging process dramatically. According to him: "The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage associated with aging before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic."
I would say that it sounds too good, but until they invent this stuff -- and get it down to a level we can afford -- we'll continue popping our anti-oxidant supplements, drinking (large amounts of) red wine, eating our broccoli, and downing pints of green tea every day!