Raise your hand if you have never wanted at least once to stop aging and go back in time. Two desires that have accompanied humanity since ancient legends and religions, and which often go hand in hand. The collective imagination of eternal youth embodies both in the dream of one day seeing men immortal and in perfect shape.
The first phase finally seems to be well underway: thanks to the era of big data and advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, scientists have managed to better understand the mechanisms of aging and how it acts in the human body.
And the second?
A recently published study used these new technologies to investigate whether it is possible to not just stop, but reverse aging in humans. The results have been published on the BioRxiv preprint server, awaiting peer review, and I'll link them here.
When you lose the body's resilience, that is, its ability to withstand all the stresses of aging, you only have a few years of life left.
Secondo Peter Fedechev, an academic in longevity research, “the number of people showing loss of resilience increases in the population exponentially and doubles every eight years. Just like the mortality rate."
Immortals? Perhaps. Young again? Maybe never
For Fedichev, the loss of resilience is driven by an irreversible thermodynamic process. The study defines this “true age” as thermodynamic biological age (tBA) and states that it "causes the linear and irreversible movement of physiological variables, reduces resilience and accelerates the incidence of chronic diseases and the risk of death".
The good news? The study suggests that this process can theoretically be stopped: it would follow that humans could become immortal or at least much longer-lived. The bad one? For the same reason, however, reversing the age of a human being is biologically impossible.
And the mice?
Previous studies have shown reversal of aging in mice, and the hope of the researchers is that this technique can be applied to human cells. Fedichev argues that it is not, and never will be possible: humans are, literally and figuratively, a different animal.
Disappointed? Okay, we may not get to relive our twenties, but we are living in incredible times. The first in history in which we are really close to attenuate the effects of aging, and not far from stopping them by becoming virtually immortal.
Sure, one day we could “cool ourselves” by replacing our biological parts with synthetic components, but this path is currently better suited to science fiction writers and philosophers.
For now, let's be “satisfied” with slowing down aging and living a healthy, active life. Does it seem little to you?
