Flourish As You Age

Aging: Experts Can't Agree on What it Is.

• Michael C. Patterson • Season 4 • Episode 4

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When do we start aging?

What is aging? 

What causes aging?

These were some of the questions posed to aging experts (professionals, professors, graduate students) who were attending a conference on aging called “Systems Aging.” 

The big takeaway from the survey was that there is no consensus about what aging is. The experts disagree about the definition of aging, its causes, when it starts and what it would mean to be rejuvenated. 

The experts DO agree that aging is process of decline.  They also agree that this process of decline can be modulated; it can be accelerated or slowed down.  I believe the aging process can be slowed using the same levers used to promote brain health.

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AGING: EXPERTS CAN'T AGREE ON WHAT IT IS?


Hi there. Welcome to the Flourish as You Age podcast where we explore how to live long and live well, where we explore useful information and  practical strategies you can use to expand and enrich your quality of life as you age.

In this episode I want to focus on what it means to be aging.

If we are going to flourish as we age, we need to understand what we mean by flourishing certainly, but we also should be clear about what we mean by aging. 

What does aging really mean? What do you think aging is? Is aging a natural process or a disease? When do you begin to age?  Is age an asset or a deficit? 

I bet we all have our own individual ideas about aging, so perhaps we should get some definitive answers from experts in the field. 

This was the goal of a recent survey  that was conducted with participants at a conference on aging put together by Gordon Research Conferences. The conference was called “Systems Aging” and brought together a broad range professors, post docs, graduate students and aging professionals. 

The big takeaway from the survey is - there is no consensus among experts who study aging about what aging is. They disagree about its definition, its causes, when it starts and what it would mean to be rejuvenated (an interesting term that we will get back to in a bit.)

The experts can’t agree. This is a problem. How are researchers going to come up with strategies to effectively deal with the negative aspects of aging if they can’t even agree on what it is they are researching? 

Let’s take a deeper look at the nature of their disagreement.  

Take the question, when do we start aging? I thought this was a fairly simple question. Aging starts from the moment we are born. We are always aging, always getting older.  Right? 

Well, the experts disagree.

Some experts think that aging begins BEFORE BIRTH. That possibility had never even occurred to me. Before birth? Yup. Some experts believe aging starts at the point of Gastrulation. I had to look it up. Gastrulation is the point at which the embryo, still inside the womb, reorganizes itself from a single plate of cells (a blastula) into a multilayered and multidimensional structure (a gastrula). Okay. 

Some experts go even father back to the point of “gametogenesis.” I looked this up to be sure it was what it sounded like. Yup, gametogenesis refers to the genesis, the birth of gametes -  the point at which our sex cells are formed. Going this far back seems a little crazy to me, but some experts think we start aging as soon as the potential for making another life becomes possible. 

Some experts thought that the potential for life was not enough and said that we start aging at conception, when the egg becomes fertilized. 

Others agreed with me that we start aging at birth, when we are actually born. But, others, didn’t think we started aging until later in our development. Four % of those surveyed said aging started at age 9. Five % said at age 13 and 11% said we start aging when we are 25 years old. Interestingly the oldest option on the survey was age 30. No one picked that age, or, I assume, thought that aging started any later than age 30. 

My second choice for when we start aging, after the guess of at birth, would have been something like age 50, when we are invited to join AARP, or maybe age 65 or 75. None of the experts though aging started when we are old. 

DEFINING AGING

All right. No consensus on when aging begins. The problem may be that there is no consensus on just what aging is. How did the experts define aging?  Again, no real consensus. 

It seems that every expert had their own definition but the folks who ran the survey were able to cluster the answers around nine definitions of aging. I’ll condense this list even further. It seems to me that the experts define aging in the following ways: 

1) A PROCESS - Aging, for some, is a process that happens over time - a natural process, which is free from judgments about whether it is good or bad.  So aging is a “program” or a “developmental stage.” Some said aging is a multi-factorial process of changes over time.

2) LOSS & DECLINE- For some, aging is defined as a loss of good stuff. The survey folks summarized these definitions of aging as: a loss of function over time, Physical decline, a decline in health, a loss of homeostasis and a shift from an ideal state. (That last one is pretty vague, but it implies movement from and ideal state to one that is less than idea. 

3) DAMAGE - Some defined aging as accumulation of bad stuff. So for these folks, aging is not defined as loss of good stuff, but as an increase of bad stuff. Aging is defined as the accumulation of damage and other detrimental changes over time. 

It seems to me that aging is all of those things. Aging is clearly a complex process of change that occurs over time and probably involves the accumulation of damage and other detrimental changes that lead to loss of function and decline in general well-being.  

These differing definitions probably reflect the different areas of focus taken by each expert. If your focus is on exploring damage, for example, you are likely to define aging in terms of accumulated damage.  And, the experts’ definition of aging probably reflects their sense of what actually causes aging.  So what does cause aging.

WHAT CAUSES AGING?

The overall impression from the survey result is that we still don’t know with any certainty what causes aging. We are still trying to figure it out.   

This is really the crux of the matter because if we understood what causes aging we might be able control some of those factors. But, for now, the experts don’t really knows what causes aging. Nevertheless, they have their favorite theories. 

What did the survey reveal? 

Well, A full 30% of the experts said that aging was caused by damage and other deleterious effects. This is a bit of circular reasoning, isn’t it? Aging is define as accumulation of damage and aging is caused by the accumulation of damage. Not very helpful - and vague. What kind of damage? 

Another category  of causes offered by the survey folks was “dysregulation.”  Same sort of thing. Aging is damage caused by dysregulation. 

Another cluster category was “decline in repair, drift and program.”  And then some experts simply resorted to single word answers liker “Time,” “Age,” and “Living.” 

I think we do have a better idea of what causes aging than was revealed through this survey. I’ll come back to that. 

REJUVENATION

The survey also asked experts to define what they meant by rejuvenation. 

Legend has it that Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon sailed to the coast of Florida in 1513 in search of The Fountain of  Youth. The myth of the fountain supposedly originated with the Taino Indians who told of a spring and river that restored youth to those who bathed in their waters. The dream of an escape from the deficits of age and a rejuvenation the restores us to a more youthful condition has been with us for a long time. 

So, the Survey asked the aging experts to chime in on what they meant by “rejuvenation.” 

 There was no overall consensus, but the answers echo the themes that we see emerging from the other answers. Rejuvenation for some experts meant a return to a healthy younger state, a decrease in biological age, which essentially means a decrease in cumulative damage. Rejuvenation for some mean a decrease in morbidity and mortality - living longer in good health. 

SHARED THEMES

The researchers summarized the findings by saying that although there is broad disagreement about what age is, when it starts and what causes it, there were some shared themes that are important. 

First, to quote the report, “there is a general consensus that aging - however it is defined - exists, has identifiable causes and effects, and can be studied experimentally.

Second, there was general agreement that aging is deleterious. It involves the accumulation of harmful changes, damage, degeneration and loss of function. 

Third, the experts see aging as a process that has specific characteristics and manifestations. There is a predictable progression that ultimately leads to death. 

And now we get to some of the more encouraging themes.  The experts agreed that rejuvenation is possible, meaning that the aging process can be slowed or - some believe - even reversed. The aging process can be targeted, modulated, and regulated in ways that can slow the process. But, at the same time, the aging process can be modulated in ways that accelerate the process of decline. 

Here we get back to that point about the causes of aging, and my contention that we understand them well enough to know how to slow down the process.  It’s agreed that aging is some mixture of loss of natural function coupled with accumulation of damage. Well, we have a pretty good idea of what kind of risk factors cause damage to our bodies and brains. We know, for example, that smoking is really bad for us. It damages our lungs, makes it harder to breath, harder to get oxygen into our brains and so on. We know that repeated blows to the head are bad for our brains. Injuries are bad for our bodies. Toxins screw up our normal bodily functions. 

We know that there are things that put our bodies at risk, and these risk factors are quite likely to accelerate the aging process. We know that there are protective factors that make our bodies stronger and more resilient and we can be confident that these healthy behaviors will slow our progress towards death and can also make the journey more pleasant and fulfilling. 

The behavior and lifestyle changes I have long recommended for improving brain health also work as levers to regulate our rate of aging.  

These behavioral roots of health and well-being are clustered under 8 major headings.

  1. Physical Exercise
  2. Mental Exercise and Management
  3. Positive social engagement
  4. Effective stress management
  5. Healthy eating habits
  6. Healthy sleeping habits
  7. Good medical care
  8. A healthy environment. 

We need to work on all eight of these areas because failure in any one of them can cause the damage and loss of function we are trying to avoid. 

SUMMARY 

The experts seem to agree that aging can be modulated, it can be slowed down, but they can’t agree, or still don’t seem to know how to go about effecting that modulation. The problem may be that researchers are still, at base, searching for the Fountain of Youth. They are looking for a miracle cure, a single factor a single intervention that will solve all the problems. Most research and most funding is associated with the search for pharmacological solutions. We are looking for the wonder drug that can cure aging. 

I hope we find that miracle drug that helps us to flourish. But while we are looking we should not ignore the behavior and lifestyle changes that already do work. If we want to slow our rate of decline, if we want to live longer and have quality-of-life up until the point we die, we need to take personal responsibility for our own choices and we have to do all we can to create a society that promotes our health and well-being. 

So that a more positive and optimistic take on the challenge of aging - aging defined as inevitable decline. Decline may be inevitable, but we can modulate the speed and the severity of that decline through simple behavior and lifestyle changes. 

Here’s hoping you can flourish, no matter your age.