'Fountain Of Youth' Drug May Let You Live to 150!

Posted by Brittany Stepniak - Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

The average life expectancy for an individual living in the United States is 77.9 years old. But that could all change in the next 5-10 years...

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The basic stepping stones for formulating drugs that can actually slow the aging process have debuted in the medical research world. According to various researchers, these drugs could easily permit human beings to extend their lives to age 150 or more.

Peter Smith, dean of medicine at the University of North South Wales said a girl born in Australia today could potentially live to 100 years old already (without the new drugs) due to modern medicine, public sanitation improvements, and healthy lifestyle.

However, if a girl born today were to take some of these experimental drugs, her body would likely be able to repair itself much better, and therefore, delaying the aging process and avoiding some major health issues. Additionally, these medical researchers are working on more advanced stem cell therapies that could ease the abrasiveness of aging.

It sounds all good and well, but what would that extra lifetime be like? Would you feel happy and healthy? And perhaps most importantly, would you be able to afford a healthy life for decades after retirement? Especially after the ongoing financial blunders of present time...

Professor Smith addresses these issues:

Living to 150 may sound unnerving, but it would be ''great'' if you were well until near the end, he said. ''The aim is not just to eke out extra existence, but to facilitate a longer healthy life,'' he said.

''People aren't going to want to retire at 65 and spend many, many decades sitting at home.''

Baroness Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, also foresees people starting second careers at 65, in knowledge-based jobs rather than physical ones.

But she said tackling dementia, which includes Alzheimer's disease, needed to be a priority. ''Otherwise the social and economic implications could potentially be catastrophic.''

Another expert, Australian expert in aging at Harvard University David Sinclair, co-founded a company – which was bought by GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million in 2008 – that performs clinical trials to come to make major headway in understanding what, specifically, can prolong the aging process.

Afting many trials, David Sinclair has singled at a successful variable. Sinclair has been able to demonstrate proof that a plant compound in red wine, resveratrol, has an amazing ability to extend the life of worms, yeast, fruit flies and some mice by stimulating proteins called sirtuins.

Clinical trials of synthetic molecules 1000 times more potent than resveratrol were under way in people with diseases of ageing, such as diabetes 2, he said. ''And [they] are showing early signs of efficacy.''

As the company continues to move forward to find drugs to treat the older, sicker members of the population, they will then use those findings in attempts to delay the onset of many debilitating diseases as well as some of the basic (unpleasant) symptoms associated with aging.

Of course critics argue that drugs aren't the only aging delayers we should focus on. Natural, plant based diets with an overall active lifestyle are also key contributors for avoiding a lot of diseases (like Diabetes and heart disease) as well as looking and feeling younger for longer.

But the pharmaceutical companies know it's just easier for a lot of people to take a drug rather than change their entire lifestyles, so this company is taking advantage of that, doing their homework, and making some monumental discoveries and scientific breakthroughs along the way.

*Indented excerpts from TheAge.