Great discussion!

We actually get a lot of inquires from people that want to use our hyperbaric oxygen chambers (for hyperbaric oxygen therapy) to improve health, healing, and help their bodies slow down the aging process. Dr. Oz’s show brings a lot of inquirers to our website (hope-connection.com). HBOT is the safest, most effective treatment protocol – more so than drugs and is scientifically proven to heal the body against stresses we don’t even realize we have.

I work with the elderly. I question the value of increasing lifespan if we do not also enhance the quality of those final years. An extra five years of dementia added to the end of my life doesn’t seem all that appealing.

Cory,
you are so on the mark. I often wonder how many medical advances in the end might just prove to be be immoral. All too often, quality of life takes a back seat to simply prolonging life. This approach is now considered the more compelling moral/ethical one. Quality of life issues are becoming more part of the process, though. These questions in the ethics of modern medicine are tough ones.

The question I would like to know is, what ever happened to aging gracefully?

In a time where celebrities and Baby boomers are pinched,pulled, stuffed and injected with flesh eating viruses in the name of youth and beauty do you believe that this obsession with looking younger and beautiful is directly resulting in the poor self image of the generations raised by these baby boomers?

Question:
DHEA – how safe, effective, especially re: prostate health.

K –

“The question I would like to know is, what ever happened to aging gracefully?”

With that logic, why give your kids immunization shots when they are younger? What ever happened to dying gracefully like they used to do when they died in childhood or died when they were 30? It was natural.

We are the species that overcomes and controls nature and biology and is not just mastered by it.

What about Resveritrol?

I’m only in my mid-30’s, but I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to live healthier, longer. As long as the measures taken are scientifically valid and the risks and costs don’t outweigh the benefits. Aging is a disease, and it’s natural to want to mitigate its effects. For me this desire is distinct from the measures people take to “look younger” and otherwise satisfy their vanity. I’m interested in better health and a longer healthy life-span.

There are already a lot of lifestyle choices that can improve your chances of achieving this goal, but if future medical advances can enhance this even further, that’s fine with me. Of course there will be important socioeconomic issues to address if this becomes possible.

This medical treatment of aging is an example of how what was once in the domain of the Church is becoming that of medicine. In the past, eternal life was only reached through spiritual means. When did getting older a medical condition that we think needs to be cured? Technically, it isn’t something we can ‘cure’ so it isn’t a disease, it is a disorder. We have defined it as a disorder. Nothing is out of order if we are getting older (only younger).

1000 bottles of wine a day keeps the doctor away!

Does Dr. Olshansky give credence to the notion that there are some things out there that haven’t yet been confirmed by clinical science because the interest of the scientists hasn’t turned to it or funding hasn’t been made available.. For example I remember the 90’s when acedemics were claiming that proper use of food had no serious impact on major diseases like colon cancer, heart disease and so on. Fact is they’d dismissed the idea out of hand without tests. Sometimes certain people are ahead of the acedemics.
ps i agree about the hormone charlatins

I am a 5′4, 138 lb. 52 year old female practicing what appears to be calorie restriction… I consume about 1100- 1300 calories per day. Here is the crux- my basal metabolic rate ( according to online calculators) is about 1300 calories. How can this be considered calorie restriction when in fact, it is the calorie intake required to maintain my weight?

Do you know anything about the supplement maca? My boyfriend was given a bottle by a South American friend who claims that it is a “cure all”.

I believe many of these anti-aging myths come from the habits of Europeans. We look at their diets and think that is the key, when it is their lifestyle that fends off heart disease and such. Americans think of all of this stuff as a miracle cure but it means nothing if we work at high stress jobs and don’t take care of our minds and bodies.

My question is how many calories should we be getting on a calorie restricted diet? If a middle aged sedentary woman should get 1600 calories a day, then how much should she get on this restricted diet?

I’m one of the volunteers in the CALERIE Study at Tufts. I’ve been very compliant, and I’ve lost 30 pounds since starting one year ago. I’ve changed my relationship with food, and thus changed my life. I’ll be 50 in February, and, but for my skin, I’m in better shape than I ever have been in my life. I weigh what I did at 25, and I look forward to aging well. It’s not about starving yourself–it’s about feeding yourself well. VERY well.

Like your car, your body is a machine, and food is fuel. Would you put sugar in your gas tank?

Cheers!
Ken Brooks
CALERIE Volunteer

There is no Fountain of Youth. Just live your life for as long as it lasts; and, along the way, learn to accept the fact that you’re gonna die some day.

I’m curious about the implications of people living longer and general population problems of the world. If people live longer will we need to be more on top of population growth? Will it have an impact on world food availability?

My mother is 96 and still driving, her sister is 101 – yet I would certainly say neither was a health nut. My mother had high blood pressure, high blood glucose levels and certainly did not exercise. My aunt was always overweight and certainly did not follow any exercise or good eating regimens – she loves sundaes. And, their brothers all died at reasonable ages 68-80. Not sure what it all means.

The genetic comment is right on. My father-in-law is one of 5 children. As he is ‘only’ 84 at the moment, he is the only one to not reach 90+.

All have/had different lifestyles and levels of exercise, the older 4 were ALL very healthy to at least 89, including mentally. The oldest brother got bone cancer at 89 and died before his 91st birthday but he was dancing, and I don’t mean swaying back and forth, with my young daughters at 89. The oldest sister (breast cancer survivor) lived to 96, though dementia started around 93. The other brother is on the decline, he is 93. The other sister is 91 and you would guess her to be a decade or more younger and quite healthy for that age. You would think the same of my father-in-law.

would have been nice if you had these guest on your show about fat people a few weeks ago.

Your guest have been very informative and i hope others notice exercising is better than taking a pill in it’s place.

“I work with the elderly. I question the value of increasing lifespan if we do not also enhance the quality of those final years. An extra five years of dementia added to the end of my life doesn’t seem all that appealing.”

==

Or figuring out a way to increase the resources they’ll consume.

This _should_ strike a chord of disagreement: many believe that we were made by a superior intelligence with an indwelling purpose (telos), which includes growing older and dying.

As I believe that we are made exclusively of matter, which can be rearranged as we will, limited “only” by physical law and our cleverness, I don’t see any interesting reason why mine can’t be rearranged such that my body works as well as it did when I was twenty-one. (‘Not smart enough yet,’ is the opposite of ‘interesting’.) Similarly, exercise does not do anything to your body other than the actual wear-and-tear induced thereby—it is the body’s reaction to exercise that builds muscle, improves memory, u.s.w., and there’s no reason an enormous number of nano-tweezers couldn’t do the same tweaks on command.

Matter, folks, matter: it is our limitation and our liberation. You are absolutely free.

I have been taking “Protandim” for 2 weeks only and have help me and my friends enormounsly, and it doesn’t need a prescription I order via internet. As you might now Oxidative Stress provides a foothold for more than 100 disieases. Now, direct Antioxidants theories have benn disproven. In my personal research, Ifound that PROTANDIM has have more than 20 University and Hospital – Independent research Studies. And it is not an Antioxidant supplement. The unique Phytonutrients in Protandim in Protandim signal the genes in your cells to produce special antioxidant enzymes which provide thousands of times more antioxidant power then any food or conventional supplements. Really, is the only therapy in the world clinically proven to reduce oxidative stress by an average of 40%. It has been featured in ABC Prime time Live, NBC TOday Show, PBS, 60 Minutes, 20/20 and many others. I love it. Soon, I’ll have more information to share. WE could live pass 130 yrs. without pain or illnesses.

millard-fillmore,
you raise another important point about extending life: the environmental impact!

Gravity will one day take its toll!

Hormone therapy works, but the mechanism is so complex that enhancing a few hormones to be (short-term) physical/mental effective should be secondary to overall balance suitable for individual. I’m in a business to promote peptide hormones for research purpose, it’s still early for simple, direct human usage. My hormone profile may be 10-20 years younger than average, a consequence of my life style and diet.

I was listening to the show today and had a few other thoughts to add to the conversation. . .Having lived through my share of pain & pleasure in life when it came to relationships (marriages & divorces), I have discovered in the many years of dating in between that people have four kinds of ages. One being their chronological age (25-95), another being their emotional age (such as how difficult or easily they handle problems), another being their physical age (how many miles can I run or not run, or can I play a full court game of ball), and the last being their mental age (i.e. do they go through life with their thinking geared towards life as if they were a young person or a crotchety old man).

So beyond all of the interesting science discussion that was going on today, I thought it’d be helpful to add another side to the discussion.

Where I am at 62, sometimes I feel my mind and body bowing out, sort of refusing to gear up, which currently might be swine flu teasing my accumulated immunities but who knows. I can tell when the curtain is coming down, or I will be able to tell.
In terms of supplements, etc., there are super-green powders you can buy at health food stores, containing desiccated kale and about 40 other dried powdered fruits and vegetables. In winter, or when I’m too busy to shop appropriately, or when I need a boost, I put a few scoops on my cereal (yuck).
I am building a sort of alliance with a woman a decade older than I am, who now has stable (subsidized) housing and (welfare?) income and free time for the first time in her life and is, at long last, trying to find out who she really is and what she could become. I keep in the back of my mind that there are individuals who “make” themselves by the time they are about 26, 27, 28, and that “too late” really doesn’t apply.

Look at Jack Lalanne, he has had an amazing and healthy life. My Bro-n-Law is 79 and owns a construction co. he works 7 days a week, is up at 5 and in bed by 10. He like Jack, eats healthy, no coffee,no alcohol,no fast food, no smoking, and most people think he’s in his late 50’s early 60’s. The answer to a long healthy life has always been in front of us we just have to accept it. In many parts of Asia many people live long and healthy and look and act much younger than they are, because of good choices in food, nutrition and activities over their life. It’s great that science is helping to improve life and health, but all we need we already have.

Interesting show. It would be interesting to do a followup with Cambridge researcher Aubrey De Grey. He believes that the first humans to live 1000 years may already have been born (he says roughly a 50% chance).

De Grey is quite compellingly reasonable and a good speaker, but also the subject of much controversy. See for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Grey_Technology_Review_controversy

A debate show would be interesting.

HBOT is definatley a revolutionary new way to slow the aging process. I know of a place in Larkspur CA right next to San Francisco and they are called Advanced Hyperbaric Recovery. Its an amazing center in a beautiful location. Definatley worth checking out.