Forever Young

Sometimes my ankles ache. Sometimes my knees ache. Sometimes my hips ache. A little. Not enough to keep me from getting my daily walk in, mind you. But achy enough, and sometimes that walk is a little old lady slow and creaky walk.

Sometimes my hands cramp up. Sometimes my left thumb does this weird herky-jerky thing. Sometimes it’s my left pinkie doing the herky jerk.

I need a lot more light to read by. And my night vision isn’t all that great, so it’s a good thing I’m not out there driving around after dark.

I’ve always had a pretty much cast-iron stomach, and it’s still that way. Mostly. But I do find myself shaking the Tums bottle more than I used to.

Despite all these minor, small-i ills, I’m still – knock on wood, marble, and quartzite – pretty damned healthy.

I can usually ward off a cold by taking the tea with lemon and honey cure, plus – of course – taking a long hot shower after I’ve slathered my throat and the sides of my nose with Vicks VapRub.

Nonetheless, I’m guessing that, now that I’m about to round the corner on 70, there’ll be more little health glitches.

Sure, it kinda sorta sucks but, hey, as we say in geriatric circles, it beats the alternative.

But there will likely come a day – 15? 20? 25? years out – when this will no longer be the case.

At some point, even for the healthiest among us, things fall apart and our bodies, ourselves, are no longer able to hold on. And then, well, so, long it’s been good to know you.

Fingers crossed, of course, that our last days on earth aren’t miserable, that we die in our sleep or blissed out on EOL pills. Not tubed up in an ICU, or otherwise no longer able to function on our own and fully aware of it.

Meanwhile, I do plenty of small things to keep the inevitable at bay. I take those daily walks. I do regular, half-baked workouts. I stay active, mentally, physically (within reason), and socially (within reason). If you ignore the daily cookie or two, and the nightly ration of fro-yo, I’m a pretty healthy eater. 

But I’m not looking into or planning on ever taking anything that even remotely looks like an extraordinary measure.

Sure, ask me in 15, 20, 25 years. But for now, this is my story and I’m sticking to it.

But some members of my cohort are more aggressively committed to staying forever young.

Some have been taking plasma injections, which the FDA recently warned have “’no proven clinical benefit.’” In the wake of the FDA’s announcement, Ambrosia, announced that it was no longer treating patients. Prior to: that, the company had gotten more than 100 folks to pay $8K to $12K:

…to receive plasma from 16- to 25-year-old donors as part of Ambrosia’s participant-funded study. (Source: HuffPo)

But if Ambrosia hadn’t discovered a fountain of youth, there’s still a ton of money in the forever young market.

The global market for anti-aging products is expected to exceed $330 billion by 2021, according to one estimate. (Source: An opinion piece by law professor/novelist Stephen Carter that appeared on Bloomberg)

The driver for this market is, of course, the Boomers, hoping to add another couple of decades to their lives. (Warning to follow-on generations: if you think the Baby Boomers are pains in the arse in our 60s, wait until we’re in our 100’s.)

All this doesn’t have to be a vanity project, brought to you by what has been – to date – the most self-absorbed generation ever. Ambrosia may not have helped folks stay young, but Stanford University has a clinical trial going to test whether young blood plasma injections can help those with Alzheimer’s.

Other research projects are a bit more squirrely.

Nectome was an M.I.T.-linked startup that got big press early last year for its ambitious plan to pump embalming fluid into the arteries of the dying to preserve body and brain until future scientists can upload the mind. Although plenty of people joined the waiting list at $10,000 a pop, controversy followed once critics pointed out that the technology was necessarily fatal.

Well, bring me the head of Ted Williams.

Anyway, MIT started to get some bad press, so they backed off from its association with Nectome. Phew!

Carter notes that there is a:

…tendency nowadays is to mock such technologies as the silly playthings of the worried super-wealthy.

Yep!

But some of the ideas may end up panning out.

What then?

Not surprisingly, as Carter points out, the super-wealthy will be the ones who are able to afford all this. So on top of having nicer things that the rest of us, they’ll be able to enjoy them for a lot longer than us mere middle-class mortals enjoy our more modest stuff stashes.

Life is unfair. Death, too.

But those left behind, having to accept a normal lifespan, will inevitably start agitating to get in on the forever young/live forever action.

I’d like to live long enough to see AOC become president, but I don’t know if I want to live long enough to see geezers rampaging through the streets demanding the right to get their liver-spotted hands on a vial of life extender.

Ugh!