golden years? slower aging could allow older people to stay healthy longer.
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humans have been looking for a way to slow the aging likely because the first person got wrinkles. A new study shows that research could be interesting. The scientists found that even a moderate decrease of aging increase our life expectancy of more than 2 years and ward off ill health in many older people. But the advance could also send the costs of social security and Medicare booming.
Slowing aging is not imaginary. Researchers can retard the speed of laboratory animals such as mice and roundworms age with a variety of measures, extremely low calorie diets genetic tinkering. So far, however, no one has shown that any medication or diet may delay human aging.
But some scientists, including demographer S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois, Chicago, argue that we now know enough about aging to begin an intensive search for ways several years of delay in people, a kind of Manhattan Project-for durability. "Aging is the underlying risk factor for most things that go wrong with us" as we age, he said. This means slowing down the process would not just add years to our life, but it would also postpone diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease that primarily strikes the elderly. In the new study, Olshansky and colleagues attempted to estimate the gains and pitfalls, including financial costs, the delayed aging.
Using a simulation model called Older future, the researchers asked what would happen if a sort of elixir were available for the entire population of the United States between 2010 and 2030 that reduced the rate causes of age-related death by 20%. In this scenario, people would still die of heart disease, cancer and other diseases, but they would be older when they became ill. "We believe this broad basis that prevention," says lead author Dana Goldman, a health economist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
The simulation results suggest that slow aging lengthen the life expectancy of 2.2 years over the status quo, the researchers report online this week in Health Affairs . According to current projections, for example, a person who is 51 years old in 2030 will probably live to about 87 years but under slowed aging model, that person would probably survive 89. In addition, delay aging has provided a great shot thumb made progress against individual diseases. Reduce the risk of developing cancer or heart disease of 25% would add only a year in the life of this 51-year-old, the researchers conclude.
An additional couple of years might not be very attractive if you're going to be sick and decrepit. But slowing the aging would also allow about 5% more seniors avoid disability between 2030 and 2060 than would the reductions in cancer or heart disease alone. "To my friends who want to live forever, I say it does to the great science fiction," says Olshansky. "Our goal is to extend healthy life, not necessarily life itself."
But as noted Olshansky, "there is a price to pay for the production of healthy elderly." The model revealed that in the context of aging delayed scenario, Medicare and Medicaid would require $ 300 billion more in 2060 than in the status quo. Overall, the increase in longevity will result in a budget deficit for benefit programs such as Medicare and Social Security of $ 420 billion in 2060.
The fiscal woes are obstacles but not insurmountable, says Goldman. "The social and fiscal challenges are manageable with rational public policy." For example, the team calculated that it could eliminate the funding gap with an increase of 3 years progressive of the age of eligibility for the Medicare and an increase of 1 year in the social age security eligibility.
Although researchers have had a general idea of the consequences of aging slows, "it is good to have numbers," said Steven Austad biogerontologist the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. " the impact on quality of life is very important, "said geriatric oncologist Harvey Cohen of the Duke Medical Center University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the research. And exploring the effects of the reduction of aging on social programs, the study reveals "a reality that must be addressed," he said.
Olshansky belongs to the Longevity Dividend Initiative, a group researchers (LOI), and organizations have been talking about the benefits of delaying human aging. "the question we have addressed here it is absolutely essential that we have an answer to this question before proceeding," said Olshansky. Now he and his colleagues are ready to take the next step, he said. in 2014, LDI plans to begin fundraising, mainly non-governmental organizations and individuals to fund research to develop anti action -age, said Olshansky. Although researchers are already considering many options, the objective of LDI is to introduce them into human studies and the possible use.
what these steps will be is a mystery although almost every researcher who works at his favorite lab animals. Regarding timing, the scientists warn that we probably have to wait decades for the fruits of that work to reach the public.
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