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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Imagine that: If you could change one of the genes in an experiment, an aging gene, maybe you could slow down aging and extend lifespan.
If the aging process is controlled in a similar way in worms and humans, then we can use what we learn about worms to speed our study of higher organisms.
For healthy adult people, the really big thing we can foresee are ways of intervening in the ageing process, either by slowing or reversing it.
We know that so many of the conditions and diseases that we associate with ageing can often be prevented or in fact their onset delayed if we just took preventative steps earlier in our lives.
Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases. So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease.
No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else.
We know in the field of aging that some people tend to senesce, or grow older, more rapidly than others, and some more slowly.
'Aging' has been bad ever since we figured out it led to dying.
The hope is that if we can increase youthfulness, we can postpone age-related diseases.
Aging gracefully is one thing, but trying to slow it down is another.