How to Halt the Train of Aging (Part 1)
Tonya Zavasta
Aging would not be so bad if it did not tell on us at every encounter. As we hug one another, we register the love handles on the other’s waist, the flab on their arms and the sag on their cheeks. We stare into each other’s faces. After all, only saints find no pleasure in the wrinkles of their peers. We are not inexcusable sinners; we are checking to see how well we are holding up. Estimating someone’s age and deciding how well that person has aged tells us a lot. Looking and feeling younger than chronological age has increasingly becomes a yardstick of success. Preoccupation with age is a reality for our rapidly aging society. It is part of our resume and every bit as important as our employment records.
We may be justified in our dismay at aging, even scientists are puzzled by the purposelessness of the process. Every biological event in the human body, from conception to puberty to maturity, has a purpose except aging. Aging makes no sense. Scientists are baffled as to why mammals have much shorter life spans than more primitive species. We don’t live nearly as long as the Galapagos turtle but we usually wind up looking like one.
Nowadays, researchers hunt for the gene that causes aging. If they find it, they will look for a pill to disable it, as though it were a virus. They face an appalling task. A cell, the simplest form of life, is more complex than Mexico City, the largest city in the world. No one gene or any one hormone is responsible for health and youth. It is the ideal work of all the cells and organs functioning together in complete harmony to prevent the breakdown of the body. What makes us think we can think stop aging just by turning a switch in the body?
