Can You Slow Down Your Biological Clock?
Death is inevitable. But the journey getting there is far from universal.
The average life expectancy at birth worldwide is now around 73 years but varies widely between countries and even between individual states in America. I, and presumably many readers, know some people who have barely lost a step as they’ve gotten older, as well as people who sharply declined as they entered their golden years. These realities invite the question: How can we significantly slow down our biological clock? And will we get any closer to a fountain of youth in the near future?
The not-so-centennial man: There’s some good and bad news. First, the bad news. There’s probably a hard limit to our longevity. A study last year found that, while life expectancy has continued to grow pretty much everywhere since the start of the 20th century, the rate of increase has substantially sunk in the U.S. and other high-income countries over the past 30 years. Only around 3% of women and 1% of men in the U.S. today are even expected to reach 100. This and other research suggests that radical life extension is off the table, at least for the foreseeable future.
Excerpted from Gizmodo
