AGEING Live long or die young?

Ageing is difficult to define, but arguably the most widely accepted notion is that ageing is just a natural part of life: a person is born, develops throughout infancy, adolescence, and adulthood, and then begins to age at some point. We must keep in mind that not all of us really experience the onset of the ageing cycle at the same time, nor do all of our organs necessarily age at the same rate.

Hence, "Ageing" is a dynamic concept. However, it is not necessarily a pleasant subject to discuss from a biological perspective. The process of structural and functional damage building up over time causes a gradual reduction in the organism's ideal biology, resulting in biological ageing. And about ageing, all we have been told is that "it is inevitable."

The question that arises is, would you rather live healthy and longer or would you live a sickly and short life? The choice is obvious to most of us. The appeal of the phrase “burn bright and die young” is understandable, who would want to be sick and old, right?

Wrong though. To understand why you need to know that living long and living with a longer life expectancy(disorder-free) are 2 different things.

Yes, individuals are surviving up to 60 to 70 years on an average but live with age-related chronic illnesses. Which means rather than gaining decades of energy and excellent health, we are gaining additional decades of illnesses.

Which raises another question, can we grow old and reduce the onslaught of age related chronic diseases? The answer will therein pretty much define “healthy” ageing rather than just ageing or adopting methods to “anti” age.

Here is the fundamental difference between the approaches of healthy ageing and anti-ageing.

Healthy ageing is more about the controllable factors of ageing such as lifestyle modification and habit management that include physical activity, a balanced diet, routine medical check-ups, and attention to our mental health - which are within our grasp. Healthy ageing is about being fully aware, that yes the process of ageing and growing is inevitable, but, we have the choice to preserve our body’s age(inside and out) and wellbeing, by focusing majorly on controllable factors.

Health is of utmost value to us, and to preserve it holistically individuals must adopt habits and rituals that harness healthy ageing. Everyone has the potential to age healthily. We just refrain from tapping into it. It may be impossible to be old and not have a single disease, but it is definitely achievable, to delay the onslaught and reduce the number of diseases, to a bare minimum when we grow old.

The anti-ageing trend is a global phenomenon dedicated to “preventing” or “slowing” the consequences of ageing. A large chunk of anti-ageing efforts is on the possibility of life expansion, but with favoured enthusiasm in procedures like plastic procedures that alleviate instead of postponing or eliminating the consequences of ageing.

Although more folks are gaining serious interest in anti-ageing and healthy lifespans, the basics are still lacking. There are a variety of researchers involved in this trend, each with their own perspective. Like, Ray Kurzweil, who believes that mankind can fight ageing by technological advancements, and Aubrey de Grey, who believes that perhaps the human system is an extremely intricate mechanism that can be mended perpetually.

Hence, healthy ageing promotes healthspan dependent on controllable factors, whereas anti-ageing is majorly to tackle ageing at a cosmetic level to stop ageing, which is not entirely possible.

To learn more about how healthy ageing follow Decode Age.