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" The field of ageing research is full of characters. We have hucksters claiming that cures for ageing can be bought and sold; prophetic seers, their hands extended for money, warning that immortality is nigh; and would-be Nobelists working methodically in laboratories in search of a pill to slow ageing. "

S. Jay Olshansky

Research

Slow

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" Humans will die like all living things do, but we have the added burden of knowing that we will. "

" Do we really want to continue to push out the envelope of survival only to see other things crop up that we may not like? "

" Exercise is roughly equivalent to an oil lube and a filter for a car. You don't have to do it, but when you do, it makes the car run a lot better. "

" If you can slow the biological process of aging, even a minor slowdown in the rate at which we age yields improvements in virtually every condition of frailty and disability and mortality that we see at later ages. "

" What we know for sure from our work and from others' is that mice have a life span of 1,000 days, dogs have 5,000 days, and we humans have 29,000 days. Recognizing that the duration is limited, and aging is inevitable, focus the attention on enhancing the quality of the days you have. "

" The modern rise of Alzheimer's Disease in the twentieth century is not a sign of failure. It's a sign of success. Success in living long enough to see that disease expressed. "

" The only control we have over the duration of our life is to shorten it, and we do that all the time. "

" The bodies we have are not made for extended use. We must cope with accumulated DNA damage, cell damage, muscle atrophy, bone loss, decreased muscle mass, and joints worn out from overuse during a lifetime of bipedal locomotion. It might have worked great for prehistoric humans, but it wreaks havoc on our knees and hips. "

" I don't have a fear of aging or a fear of death. "

" In Hollywood they're getting younger, but believe me, it's not the food. It's the plastic surgery. "

S. Jay Olshansky

Believe

Food

" A lifetime of low calories has come naturally to the longest-lived people in the world... in the Japanese archipelago of Okinawa. "

" Once DNA acquires the ability to persist forever, the carriers become disposable. Essentially, our bodies are designed to last long enough to reproduce. "

" I have little doubt that gerontologists will eventually find a way to avoid, or more likely, delay, the unpleasantries of extended life. "

" There is a possibility that there is somebody out there alive today over 122, but we'll probably never know it, because in all likelihood they come from either China or India, and they don't have reliable birth records. "

" We're not trying to make us live forever; we're not trying to even make us live significantly longer. What we're trying to do is extend the period of healthy life. "

S. Jay Olshansky

Live

Life

" If you do an autopsy on an 85-year-old who died of a stroke, you will find five other things that person was about to die from. "

" Lifespan extension has never really been a goal of aging science, nor should it. "

" The Faustian trade of the 20th century was, we got 30 years of additional life, but in return we got heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's and sensory impairments. The question is: What Faustian trade are we making now, as we go after heart disease, cancer, stroke and Alzheimer's? "

S. Jay Olshansky

Now

Question

" As soon as a handful of scientists come up with an intervention shown to influence aging in other species, they begin selling it as an intervention for humans, even though there may not be evidence it works. "

" Find a way to get a full-body massage every day. "

" Just because someone looks old doesn't mean he or she is. The skin of some people who spend a lot of time outdoors seems to age very rapidly. Someone can look 80 or 90 and only be 40 to 50. "

" In the developed world, we live 30 years longer, on average, than our ancestors born a century ago, but the price we pay for those added years is the rise of chronic diseases. "

" In Genesis 6:3, it says man can live to be 120, but there is no scientific basis for it. "

" If we do everything right, the best we can do is live out our potential with as little age-related disease and disability as possible. "

" I'm not sure the least educated members of the population are missing out on the advances in medical technology as much as they are adopting harmful behavioral habits that shorten their life. "

" You can open up a centenarian's brain, and you'll see some areas that look like that of a 50-year-old or of a 110-year-old. You can have variation in the basic process of aging, called senescence, in different parts of the same body. "

" Fixing obesity is going to require a change in our modern relationship with food. I'm hopeful that we begin to see a turnaround in this childhood obesity epidemic. "

" While eliminating smallpox and curtailing cholera added decades of life to vast populations, cures for the chronic diseases of old age cannot have the same effect on life expectancy. A cure for cancer would be miraculous and welcome, but it would lead to only a three-year increase in life expectancy at birth. "

" We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease. "

" The last thing you ever want to do is extend the period of frailty and disability and make people unhealthy for a longer time period. So lifespan extension in and of itself should not be the goal of medicine, nor should it be the goal of public health, nor should it be the goal of aging science. "