Well, I for one, have never asked myself this question. I really don't remember when and how the aspect of "death" was introduced to me as a child, but until today I've accepted it blatantly and have put it inside the box of "facts", as I did with other things. Thanks to my curiosity and hunger for knowledge today I'm questioning every other thing, like "Why should energy come at an expense?", "Why do we have sections of humans performing uncomfortable jobs?", "Why isn't there any device that could prevent rape from happening?" and the best of them, "Do we really need to die someday?" Special thanks to Dr. David Sinclair and his podcast "LifeSpan", I got my answer to just that.
Take a step back, and ponder over what I'm talking about here. The aspect of "Death" is something that we all perceive to be inevitable, so much so that, even the "gods" that we look up to also "died". Quotes like, "Everyone has to go someday or another" as super common. But never did we try to question this very aspect, as Why should we die? or Why should we only live for 100 years? There are living things on this very planet earth that have been living for thousands of years, there are certain animals that live for 150+years and mammals that live for 200 years. Why not we?
Recently, I lost a grandmother, when enquired about what happened, I was told that she was "Old enough", or it was "Age" that killed her, credits to my dumb brain, I didn't even question that. Whenever we lose someone due to any medical issue, we assume that it was the disease that killed the person, but it's actually the person's inability to fight back the disease. This should make even more sense due to what happened in the past two years which made the entire health care industry pivot towards "Immunity", and all thanks to those WhatsApp Uncles' I think we now know the secret behind ultimate immunity. Jokes aside, we have always been a co-relating disease with death and not our ability to fight back. What if I tell you, that there's a way to ~cure~ reverse a disease!. What if I tell you, that there's a way you can ~be healthy~ get biologically younger.
I can't be more thrilled to introduce everyone to the breakthrough that is currently happening in the field of Science. Yes, SCIENCE!. To wit, there are experiments performed where the age is observed to be reversed and also advanced, please read that line again. What a time to be alive, right?
That being said, there's no magical drug or serum that's worth a million dollars taking which would ensure that we don't age, instead, there are a set of practices that are now being scientifically proven, doing which, we can ensure that we actually reverse age biologically. Yes, that means the answer to "How old are you?" doesn't have to be the number of times Earth revolved around the sun since you're born, but could be your actual biological age. So, when you're OLD, you don't actually have to be OLD. you might want to read that sentence a couple of times for the pun, to actually sink in. The fundamental concept is, there are living things that do live or have been living for significantly longer, and the fundamental way in which they are built and we ( Humans ) are built is the same. The components (DNA, Proteins, RNA ) are the same. Hence, there's a chance that we can genetically engineer our bodies to behave as these organisms do when it comes to aging.
If you are reading this until here, you might also be curious to know "HOW?!". Scientifically speaking, there are genes that are responsible for the long lifespan, these are popularly called longevity genes, and the organisms that are found to live longer like Whales and Bristlecone pines naturally have loads of these genes, which therefore place them under the "long-lived" category. Well, if this were the 1970s this article could've ended just by saying that "since we don't possess such genes, we age and hence we die", but thanks to science and technology we can now engineer our biology to produce more of these longevity genes. Categories of these longevity genes are mTOR ( mamalTargetOfRapamycin ), AMPK ( AMP-Activated Kinase), SIR2 ( Silent Information Regulator 2)
So, now we know what these genes are, we know that they are responsible for aging and longevity, what do we do now? I want to let you in on a little secret, but I'm afraid that might inhibit the anxiety that you have right now. The secret is, a good diet and proper exercise are the ones that stimulate these genes, and especially fasting is the one activity that causes these genes to be regulated. So, to all my fellow Indians who fast in the name of their favorite god, it's not him ( well, might be, IDK ) but these genes that are reacting to your fast which is keeping you healthy.
Good Diet and proper exercise? Really? Is that your conclusion after such a click-bait title? If it was, then all the actors would stay young forever, well they do stay young ( look good ) for quite a significant period of time, which means Good Diet and Exercise do actually slow down the aging process, but what about the death and age reversal? For that, you need to keep an eye on my blog, as I'll be revealing the suspense in the upcoming posts.
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