The longevity industry is going through its best historical moment. Life expectancy increased about three decades since 1900 until it is around 78 years in 2023, according to United States statistics. But for many people, 78 are not enough.
The Matusalén Foundation, a beneficial biomedical organization, for example, wants to “make the 90s the new 50”, and the scientists of a biotechnology company argued that, disease -free, the body could reach 150 years.
Even more optimistic estimates place the figure around 1,000 years. Whatever the maximum duration of human life, people seem increasingly determined to find it.
Last year, almost 6,000 longevity studies appeared in Pubmed, a database of biomedical articles and life sciences; That is, almost five times more than two decades ago.
Together with the creation of dozens of popular podcasts and a considerable supplement industry, that zeal gave rise to efforts to preserve organslook for diets that extend life and even try to reverse one’s aging.
It is the same mixture of solid science, quixotic experimentation and questionable advice that defined this search for much of the story.
The oldest epic of humanity is a search condemned to immortality: about four thousand years ago, the Sumerians talked about a Mesopotamian king named Gilgamesh who set out to find eternal life and found A plant that returned the youthbut he lost his way home.
Two millennia later, a Chinese wizard named Xu fu convinced the emperor that there was an elixir that guaranteed eternal life on the other side of the yellow sea. The emperor provided Xu Fu ships and the 3,000 virgins that, according to the magician, were essential for the search.
When the emperor realized that he had made few progress, Xu Fu said he also needed an army, that the emperor facilitated him. Xu Fu sailed and the emperor did not see him again.
The desire to live forever also encouraged the stories of the Macedonian King Alexander the Great and the Spanish conqueror Juan Ponce de León. They also failed. Is A lesson that escaped alchemiststhat for centuries tried to create a drink that granted immortality.
Among them was Isaac Newton, who went to the grave in the early 18th century believing that his alchemical investigations would be one day more important than his laws of movement.
But even before Newton’s death, the thinkers of the Enlightenment changed The dream of immortality for the least ambitious goal of living a little more. According to him Oxford English Dictionarythe word longevity first appeared in the 16th century.
As is The first diets for longevityafter an Italian nobleman named Luigi Cornaro began to suspect that his fondness for alcohol, opiparous banquets and outdated affected their health.
From now on, it underwent scarce daily rations, which included many eggs, milk, broth and vegetables. Lived up to 80 years and wrote about his eating habits in Speeches about a sober life. His advice turned out to be better than those of his successors Meat for every occasion y Calories do not count.
Cornaro had encountered the modern notion of caloric restriction, a practice that researchers since then demonstrated that Increase life expectancy of dogs, mice, monkeys, worms and, according to a large -scale study, perhaps even humans.
Cornaro was also a supporter of other less scientific restrictions, such as sexual abstinence, who believed that he would preserve his vitality.
I was wrong, but it wasn’t the only one. This line of thought He remained fashionable for centuries after his death. In Chicago, a urologist began to replace men’s testicles, including their own, for younger individuals. Nine years later, in 1923, he died at 65.
That same year, Austrian physiologist Eugen Steinach proclaimed a new genital surgery to treat Aging diseases. Among the first beneficiaries of the operation was Sigmund Freud, who died of cancer at age 83. But the operation, called vasectomy, continues to exist, although with a very different purpose.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, gurus anti -aging and charlatans regularly promoted changes in lifestyle: Avoid “excessive dream”, give up water, marry and even move to Nantucket (“where no one dies young”). It was also intended to prohibit novels that “poison the mind.”
On many occasions, his goal was to make money. But Many of the worst strategies came from older peoplethat told journalists who drank a daily bottle of “old and good wine”, avoided medications, ate sweets, hunted whales and smoked “at least one pure every day” even if it was taking a walk.
Associations with names such as Jolly Young Men’s Club y The Hundred Years Clubthe latter an entity whose members gathered at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to “maintain a library” of the “theories of India, Egypt and the ancient Hebrews.” Among the guest speakers was Cyrus Edson, a doctor who told attendees that “men of good genius” Notably long lives live (He died three years later, at 40 and peak).
However, the popularity of the “art of longevity”, as the club called it, was increasing. Although, as the president of the Centenarian Club from London in the late 1920, “Mainly men and not women are more interested in living a lot.”
In the mid -twentieth century, according to a tracker, the mentions of the “longevity” had surpassed “immortality” in the published books.
Life expectancy increased thanks, in large part, to the filtration and chlorination of water, The discovery of antibiotics such as penicillin and the arrival of vaccines against mortal diseases such as polyomyelitis.
What was previously the kingdom of the magicians had become -with the help of advances such as DNA identification– In a more legitimate activity. However, even among some of the most estimated scientists of the time, eccentric proposals continued. Alexander Bogomolets, former director of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, developed an body -based whey and corpse marrow that, according to him, would allow “living until 150 years”.
And Alexis Carrel, a biologist winner of the Nobel, said he had kept alive the fabric of a chicken heart for years.
There was also Linus Pauling, one of the founders of molecular biology and Nobel Prize in Chemistry, who during much of his career promoted vitamin C megadosis as a way to prevent 75% of cancers and extend life until 150. When Pauling died of cancer in 1994, at 93, his investigations on longevity were, in the eyes of many, discredited.
Immortality, as the old stories warned, can be a commitment to fail. But it is unlikely that The search for a longer life stop soon. As a Catholic priest in New York pointed out in 1927, when observing the intractable desire of his followers to avoid death:
“The men were always interested in prolonging their lives, however unfortunate and unfortunate it has been.” Researchers from Harvard and Oxford universities recently tried to calibrate that interest in the current market. They calculated that The total value of any scientific advance That he added a decade more to world life expectancy would amount to 367 billion dollars.
But also here the ancients advised caution. Roman writer Plinio the Elder talked about An era with men had survived 800 years. He said they were so tired of life that they threw themselves into the sea.
