Harvard genetists says that aging is a disease that can be curable, and you can start right now

Aging is the law of nature. It waits for all of us, like a destiny we are all obligued to meet at some point, but for Davin Sinclair, a genetist from Harvard, it doesn’t have to be like that.  Based on his studies of more than two decades, he says it is possible to slow aging with a few simple habits so that we live longer, healthier lives.

He believes that we must drastically change the way we think about aging: instead of considering it a common and natural process, we must see it as an illness, as something that can be treated and even cured.

The scientinst says that humanity will be able to increase life expectancy with a drastic change in the perspective of aging. Otherwise,  medical advances will give us only a couple more years.

The investigator believes that it will soon be possible to do this also with drugs, which are still being tested for this purpose, and says that we will probably be able to reverse aging.

In his words, "there is no law in biology that says we must grow old. We don't know how to stop it, but we are getting better at slowing it down. And, in the lab, we were able to reverse it (the process). My point is that the epigenome is changeable.

The way we live our lives has a big impact on these scratches on the CD. Doing things right can dramatically slow down the aging clock, and today we can measure that clock, we have blood and saliva tests for that.

We're finding in animals like rats and mice and even whales and elephants and people who have different lifestyles that aging can occur at a very different rate. And that more than 80% of your future health depends on how you live, not DNA."

There are things scientists have discovered by observing people who live a long time. These include eating the right kinds of foods (a good place to start would be the Mediterranean diet), eating fewer calories and less often. Physical exercise also helps. And some people think that changing body temperature with ice and cold water is helpful in this regard.

How does this help slow aging?

The reason scientists believe these habits and lifestyle interventions work is that they stimulate the body's natural defenses against disease and aging. Sinclair believes so too.

At the root of these defenses are a handful of genes, and many have studied a set of them that control the epigenome and are activated by exercise, by hunger. That's why it is believed that eating the right things and fasting can slow down the aging clock.

The ability to enhance the body's natural defenses against disease would revolutionize the world and save billions of dollars in the global economy over the next few decades.

He proposes a different approach to aging: treating this process as a disease.

A disease is a process that occurs over time and results in disability and/or death. This is the same as getting older. The only difference is that this, by definition, happens to less than half of the population. This classification has to change.

Aging is a disease. It happens to be common, but the fact that something is common and natural does not make it acceptable. There are molecules, both natural and synthetic, that show promise for slowing aging and prolonging life in animals and even in human studies. And at least two of them are drugs that are on the market, such as metformin.

The difference is that now, he and other scientists are getting to the root causes of diseases, rather than putting a “bandage” once they occur.