Even though the Hayflick limit is often considered the most significant
experimental finding in resear ch on aging, its relevance to real life is
unknown. In the laboratory , every generation of cells is the offspring of a
limited number of mother cells. On the other hand, babies are not born with
a full complement of cells; new ones are produced throughout life. Your
bone marrow , for example, gene rates immature blood cells that grow up to
become mature  ones. At various stages of early development, and
sometimes throu ghout life, every organ contains a mixture of primitive,
partly mature, and mature cells. Mature ones are those that have
differentiated, choosing to become a heart cell as opposed to a stomach cell,
a brain cell as opposed to a kidney cell. The same DNA exists inside every cell, but through differentiation, it
expresses certain characteristics and represses others. Some theorists would
get past the Hayflick limit by proposing that a cell doesn’ t begin its career
of fifty divisions until it has become differentiated. At various stages of our
lives, some primitive cells divide and become mature while others remain
primitive. Thus the body is equipped with backup resourc es. Even if every
cell has to obey the Hayflick limit, they don’t have to obey  it together . Whether this escape clause will ever be accepted depends on understanding
how cells choose to differentiate in the first place, and geneticists are still
far from knowing that. One whole class of cells—cancer cells—is devoid of growth limit. Freed
from genetic restraint, cancer cells divide wildly until the host body dies; if
raised in vitro, even this limit is removed. Most malignant cells cultured inlaboratories around the world are descendants of tissue taken from a few
individuals, now long deceased. One undisputed victory for Hayflick is that he took aging to the cellular
level. His method of “aging under glass,” as he once dubbed it, is accepted
as the norm by biologists. Hayfl ick declared that “the primary cause of age
changes can no longer be thought of as resulting from events occurring at
the supercellula r level, i.e., at cell hierarchies from the tissue level and
greater . The cell is where the gerontological action lies.” Accor ding to this
logic, looking at how organisms live is much less important than looking at
how their cells live. This logic domi nates today’ s biology of aging, but it strikes me as pure
reductionism. The logic I have followed throughout this book is that the
whole is far more important than the parts; a person’ s life determines the
activity of his cells, not vice versa. And yet these aren’ t irreconcilable
approaches, for no one can outlive his cells—that much is certain. Biologists such as Hayflick tend to regard DNA as all-powerful and far
removed from daily life—a kind of biochemical Jove whose dictates cannot
be overruled. “It is as if DNA used us to keep itself  going,” Albert
Rosenfeld mourned. Yet this is only one point of view . If you look at life
through the eyes of a geneticist,  it means nothing that a very old person has
a strong will to live or enjoys the simple pleasures of life. And indeed such
facts may be insignificant in terms of DNA ’s original programming, but as
the outcome of a life well spent , it is enormously significant—indeed, it is
the most  significant thing. Outside the biologist’ s test tubes and flasks, DNA gets influenced by
your every thought, feeling, and action. The stress hormones that play such
a critical part in aging are regulated by RNA, which is a copy of DNA; even
though the DNA itself may sit quietly in its vault, its active twin is
constantly chang ing its instructions. When you make a lifestyle change that
reduces stress, the RNA in your cells responds by churning out fewer stress
hormones. The Hayflick limit renders the whole aging process meaningless; it
becomes a mechanism to be tinkered with in a laboratory dish, devoid of
breath, motion, warmth, experience, memory , love, hope, courage, sacrifice,
will, curiosity , and everythin g else that makes life worth living.Unfortunately , manipulating cells is still the dominant activity in
gerontology and attracts the most excitement. In 1990 the media  announced
that researchers from the University of Wisconsin had injected synthetic
human growth hormone into a small group of elderly men betwe en the ages
of 61 and 81. The result was sudden rejuvenation that reverse d biological
aging by as much as twenty years. Over the course of the six-month trial,
muscle mass and strength steadily returned; fat melted away without
dieting; memory and other brain functions improved; vigor and stamina
were renewed. This artificially regained youth was greeted with tremendous public
excitement. Popular accounts breathlessly compared it to the fantasy
rejuvenation in the hit movie Cocoon. The subjects themselves were deeply
affected. “I started feeling the changes after three months. I felt much
stronger—I mean, I never felt stronger in my life,” recalled one retired
Waukegan factory worker . The experiment involved only men whose
natural levels of growth hormone were extremely depleted. Most old people
have adequate, if reduced, levels of growth hormone; those who do not
have sufficient growth hormone age faster and more severely than normal. When these subjects began the experiment they were exhibiting excessive
biological aging; therefore, restoring their hormone levels made  a dramatic
difference. For the first time in years, many of them could travel, take long
walks, or work in their gardens. But the improvement was not permanent. After the extremely expensive
treatments (around $14,000 a year) were withdrawn, the ravages of age
gradually return ed. Muscles shriveled again, fat reappeared, strength
waned, and the men were left with no lasting benefits except perhaps a trace
of improved memory . “It was wonderful while it lasted. Maybe someday I
can try it again,” one man said wistfully . Told that the next experiment
would be expanded to include women, he said approvingly , “I think they
should have a chance to feel like we did.”
These words, quoted from a glowing newspaper account, trouble me. One cannot assume that injecting growth hormone does not have long-term
side effects. This may not prove  true for older people with abnormally low
levels of naturally occurring growth hormone, but for normal people, extra
growth hormone is useless for rejuvenation purposes.Interfering at a gross level with the body’ s function does not really affect
the sourc e of the problem. Givin g a drug, even one the body produces itself,
can effectively push the physiology one way or another , but the body
remembers what it wants to do, and until that memory is changed, there will
always be imbalance. Anyone who has dealt with diabetes know s the many
metabolic imbalances that insulin-dependent diabetics suffer from, and the
careful juggling of dosages necessary to avert insulin shock and coma. The
replacement hormone is the right molecule, but what is missing is the innate
intelligence to use that molecule. Diabetes, hypothyroidism, and aging itself
are due to lost intelligence, not depleted molecules. Inevitably , any “miracle” of rejuvenation achieved with chemicals will
disrupt the body’ s intelligence. When human growth hormone was given to
stunted children, the experimenters ran into serious side effects and several
fatalities. The argument that aging is caused by abnormal hormone
production is convincing to me, but hormones function to carry messages,
and messages ultimately are controlled in awareness. By increasing your
inner intelligence, by enhancin g your happiness and fulfillment, you can
defeat aging in a lasting, meaningful way, without chemical s and their
potential side effects. The responsibility for changing this awareness lies
with each individual. The “Aging Gene”
In additi on to hormone treatmen ts, much hope for defeating aging is being
pinned on genetic engineering. Forty years ago, after Watson and Crick
decoded the chemical structure of DNA, the hunt for an aging gene became
inevitable. By finding this gene, scientists could possess the control switch
for immortal cells, even if Nature had failed at the task. In several American
universities, researchers have been announcing breakthroughs in locating
genes that control aging in yeast, fruit flies, and finally humans. Michael West, a molecular biolo gist at the University of Texas in Dallas,
working with tissue-cultured human cells, isolated two “mortality genes”
whose effect is to speed the aging process in these cells. Labeled M-1 andM-2, the two genes can be chemically switched on or off, drivin g the aging
process backwa rd or forward at will. In normal aging both M-1 and M-2
appear to be switched on. By turning off the M-1 gene, West is able to
restore a cell’s youth and double its overall life span, measured by how
many times it divides. Apparently West has discovered how to override the
Hayflick limit at will. The results are even more dramatic when the second mortality gene, M-2,
is switched off. The cells continue to divide indefinitely and remain
youthful forever . Turning M-1 back on again, West found, caused the cells
to resume normal aging. This may be the one and only aging gene, although
other contenders are offered by competing researchers. By general
consensus, aging seems to be polygenic, involving the cooperation of
several or perha ps many genes at once. Also, finding these switches doesn’ t
mean that one has found out what operates them. There may be unknown
brain mechanisms that control the genetic switches, and these mechanisms
would almost certainly vary according to each individual ’s life and
experience. The fact that the body can record the passage of time is beyond  dispute. Proponents of a biological aging clock have tracked the body’s internal
biorhythms to a tiny cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus known as the
superchiasmatic nucleus. No larger than the end of a pencil, this clump of
tissue regulates the body’ s sense of time. But finding the body’ s biological
clock didn’ t solve the mystery  of aging, because the hypo thalamus is
connected to the rest of the brain, the endocrine system, and the immune
system. Any or all of these could be involved, for they all possess
formidable intelligence of their own. Our bodies are intelligent everywhere. Brain chemicals aren’ t secreted
just from our heads; our skin, stomachs, intestines, and hearts produce
them. White blood cells floating through the immune system are outfitted
with the same receptors for neurotransmitters—they form a kind of
“floating brain.” The skin secretes more endocrine hormones than does the
endocrine system  itself. M-1 and M-2 are fascinating fragments in this vast
intelligence netw ork. Michael West has formed a company to see if a drug
can be found to manipulate these genes. But just as using interferon to fight
cancer was found to cause horrendous side effects, massive expense, andpoor results, West’s efforts have far to go before achieving any benefit for
cells outside glass dishes. Genet ic engineering to date involves highly risky
procedures such as bone marrow transplants, which are drastic operations. Presently , the most advanced organisms to have their life extended by
genetic manipulation are fruit flies, yeasts, and roundworms. I think the
application of this technology to humans is unlikely . Yet optim ism pervades this branch of gerontology and trickles down into
the popular press. “If we develop ways to repair aging tissues with
embryonic cells, we could add thirty years of healthy human life in the next
decade,” said a professor of medicine in Virginia, echoed by a colleague in
Texas: “Possibly in thirty years we will have in hand the major genes that
determine longe vity, and will be in a position to double, triple, even
quadruple our maximum life span.…It’ s possible that some people alive
now will still be alive four hundred years from now .”
A more restrained researcher in Louisiana said, “We may find it possible
to extend life span considerably more, perhaps by 100 percent—which
would give us an extra 100 to 120 years.” Other gerontologis ts shy away
from specific numbers but lack nothing in enthusiasm. “I think we may well
be able to lengthen human life far beyond anything we ever dreamed
possible,” said a researcher in Colorado whose work has been successful
with a nematode, a transparent roundworm the size of a comma. Something disturbing lies bene ath the surface of the wild predictions
made by geneticists with regard to aging. Americans like to imagine that
technical ingenuity will solve any problem. Like IBM engineers tweaking
computers to make them faster  and more efficient, gerontologists aim to
improve the human machine. The theory is that given a little biochemical
retooling, our bodies can be made more efficient, less prone to breakdowns,
and slow er to wear out. If any field was dedicated to the proposi tion that the
body is mindless and inherently defective, genetics is it. Like other reduc tionist models, the genetic view of aging ignore s life as a
whole. Unlike the Pacific salmo n, humans are not the pawns of biological
destiny . Populat ions exist right now that have largely overcome high blood
pressure, artery disease, and childhood infections, with low rates of major
cancers, and so on. The problem is that no single culture combines all of
these favorable traits. As we try to reach a longevity that satisfies thedesires of the whole person, we will find that DNA can change to suit our
higher expectations. Adapting to new conditions is what the body’ s
intelligence is all about. If you were a research biologist in the Stone Age,
and you had a perfect map of human DNA, could you have used it to
predict the rise of civilization? Would you have foreseen Mozart, Einstein,
the Parthenon, the New Testame nt? Could you have known that by the year
2000, improved living conditions would add six decades to early man’ s life
expectancy? The wonder of DNA is not that it runs my life but that it can unfold
previously unknown possibilities as they arise in my heart and mind. In
other words, DNA serves my purposes, not the other way around. There are
societies where longevity is highly valued, and it is there, in real-life
settings, that we have found our best laboratory . Instead of relying on
isolated individ uals who achieve extreme longevity , we can examine a
whole population who were instilled with that ambition from childhood on. The results have been remarkable, despite the absence of scientific
involvement. OceanofPDF .comSecrets of the “Long-Living”
Abkhasia, a remote mountain region of southern Russia, is a land of almost
mythical old age. It is the only place I have ever heard of where there is a
separate word for great-great-great-grandparents, which is applied only to
the living. The legendary longevity of the region excited world attention in
the late 1960s when Western visitors were invited to meet the
“supercentenarians” of Russia. These were rural villagers, almost all of
them illiterate field workers, who were reputed to have reache d incredible
ages of 120, 130, and upward of 170. Outside the Soviet Union, such claims hardly seemed credible. It was
widely accepted  by gerontologists that the upper limit of human life span
was betw een 115 and 120. Even that was a theoretical limit, since at that
time no one with a reliable birth certificate had ever lived beyond 113. But
in Russia the oldest of the supercentenarians, a man named Shirali
Mislimov , was reputed to have been born in 1805, seven years before
Napoleon march ed on Moscow . Mislimov lived in a remote village in the
state of Azerbaijan west of the Caspian Sea, where he died in 1973 at the
incredible age of 168. Toward the end, he had been secluded from visitors
due to ill health. If they could not visit the oldest man who had ever lived,
Westerners could interview the oldest woman of all time. She was Khfaf Lazuria, a native of Abkhasia who claimed to be
approximately 140. With a mixture of fascination and skepticism, foreign
visitors, including doctors and news correspondents, began to trickle in. From the first moment, Abkhasia was an enchanting place to anyone who
came there from the crowded, polluted cities of the United  States and
Europe. The countryside was green and idyllic. Most Abkhasians lived at
altitudes between seven hundred and a thousand feet above sea level, in
neat two-story homes, often built out of walnut, with wide verandas and
airy rooms.The climate in the hills just inland from the Black Sea was temperate
year-round, somewhat on the brisk side at a mean temperature of 50 to 55
degrees. But the rugged Abkhasians relished this slightly chilled air,
claiming that it contributed to their long life. Except for the kitchen stove,
their houses generally had no heat. Although the region had suffered from malaria and typhus epidemics
until the lowland swamps were drained by Soviet engineers in the 1930s,
Abkhasia boasted five times more centenarians than any other part of the
world, and 80 percent of the “long-living”—the word old was never appli ed
to them —were active and vigorous. It was common for both men and
women to work in the local tea fields for decades past the official Soviet
retirement age of 60—champion tea pickers were given certif icates when
they reached 100. In his book The Methuselah Factors,  Dan Geor gakas describes his
meeting with Abkhasian centenarian Vanacha Temur: “Wearing a snappy
leather hat, the venerable, alway s referred to only by his first name, walked
smartly across the garden and took up the responsibilities of a host. Spotting
an infan t among  his guests, Vanacha insisted that a cow be milked so the
baby could have some wholesom e country refreshment. For the other guests
baskets of apples from his best tree and a round of drinks were brought out. Only when these essentials were accomplished was he prepared to speak…. “Unlike most of the other centenarians, [Vanacha] had a baptismal
certificate. Acco rding to the dates of this document, he was 106, but he
explained that his baptism had been delayed until he was in his fourth year
because his parents lacked funds to pay the priests. Although this was an
echo of an excuse [the visitors] had frequently encountered, Vanacha’ s
vigor , even at 106, was incredib le. A man of about five feet with twinkling
blue eyes and an elegant white mustache, he was the personification of a
kindly and playful grandfather . He credited his slim, wiry body to light
eating, horseback riding, farmi ng, and walking in the mountains. These
days he slept more than he used to, but he felt fine and was looking forward
to the sixty-first anniversary of the Revolution.”
Although Vanacha Temur was considered one of the healthiest of the
long-living (an American docto r measured his blood pressure at a youthful
120/84), he was not atypical. In Geor gakas’ s analysis of a survey of allAbkhasians over age 90, 85 percent were judged to be mentally and socially
active, only 10 percent had difficulty hearing, and only 4 percent had
eyesight found to be poor. Both men and women in the culture shared a
passion for racing horses, and it was a point of pride for centenarians to
appear on horseback in village parades. In America the concept of remaining extremely active into old age was
just beginning to gain medical credence, but for centuries in Abkhasia
sedentary retirement was unknown except in cases of disability . Typically ,
older workers shortened their hours in the fields as they approached 80 and
90; inste ad of laboring for ten to fifteen hours, they might quit after three to
five hours. Yet, this toil was not forced on them. Love of hard work was
deeply ingrained among the Abkhasians, and records showed that a woman
of 109 was paid for forty-nine full workdays in the tea fields one summer . The entire Caucasus mountain range had been famed for centuries as a
“longevity belt.”  Bordered by the Black Sea on the west and the Caspian
Sea on the east, three separate Russian states laid claim to
supercentenarians: Geor gia (which contains the state of Abkhasia),
Azerbaijan, and Armenia. A mixture of races lives throughout this whole
area, which is only sparsely industrialized; the religion shifts from Moslem
to Christian depending on where  you go, and the climate varies widely from
high alpine (the Caucasus is the tallest range in Europe, cresting at eighteen
thousand feet) to subtropical. These details were important to
gerontologists, because with such a wide diversity of culture, race, and
climate, there was no isolated gene pool to account for the longevity of the
region, nor was there one favored geographical locale—a Shangri-la in
Russia—responsible. In the late 1960 s and early 1970s, the heart-attack epidemic following
World War II reached its peak, and cancer rates had not significantly
changed since the 1930s (the same holds true today , after another three
decades of lavishly funded research). The long-living had avoided both
scour ges to a remarkable degree, and much of the credit for this, besides
frequent exercise, went to diet. Favored with rich land and a climate
suitable for corn, tomatoes, and all manner of truck produce, the population
subsisted on home-grown vegetables and dairy products, with small
amounts of nuts, grains, and meat to round out the fare. (Yogurt, a staple intheir diet, has long had a reputation as a longevity food; to capitalize on
this, one American yogurt comp any ran a series of delightful ads showing
an 89-year -old Abkhasian sampling their product while his cheek is being
pinched by his 1 17-year -old mother .) Despite the fact that most of the long-living consumed cheese, milk, and
yogurt every day, total intake of fat and calories was unusually low by
Western standar ds, between fifteen hundred and two thousand calories a
day. In order to eat that frugally , many Americans would have to cut fifteen
hundred to two thousand calories from their diets! Daily fat intake for
Abkhasians was sixty grams, exactly half of the U.S. average. Although
they liked to drink the local applejack, only a few supercentenarians
smoked, and this rarely includ ed women, who traditionally shunned this
practice as a prerogative of male life. Almost all were married and had been
since their twenties. Since the region had few paved roads, it was customary
for people to walk distances up to twenty miles a day . One of the first Americans to penetrate this amazingly healthy culture
was Dr. Alexander Leaf, an enlightened Harvard Medical School professor
who was an early champion of prevention. T o bolster his belief that exercise
and diet were the cornerstones of lifelong good health, Leaf made a
pilgrimage to all the places in the world where legendary longevity was to
be found. Abkhasia excited him enormously; there Leaf witnessed firsthand
people surviving in good health to unheard-of old age. On his visit to Abkhasia in 1972, Leaf struggled to keep up with Gabriel
Chapnian, a short, sprightly elder who easily climbed a steep hill to reach
his garden at the age of 117. At 104, Markhti Tarkhil still rose at dawn and
plunged into an icy stream for his morning bath. Leaf wrote, “Markhti
attributes his long life to God, to the mountains, and to a good diet—and he
warns against eating without pepper! His ‘best’ age was 18, but he agrees
with Vanacha that he regarded himself as a young man until the age of 60. ‘I still feel young, I sleep well, ride my horse, eat well, and swim every day,
so I still feel like a youngster , even though not so strong as I once was.’ ”
As we in the West age, our bodies lose muscle mass and replace it with
fat—at 65, almost half the body weight of both men and women is fat,
double what it was in their twenties. By comparison, nearly all the long-
living Abkhasia ns had lean physiques, with erect spines and firm muscles.Long after retirement, the oldest people thrived on outdoor life—they
tramped up to the high grazing areas in summer and dug potatoes in their
gardens. Even in cases where coronary arteries were blocked or other
damage had occurred to the heart muscle, the walking and climbing in
which everyone engaged seemed to of fset physical limitation. When Leaf brought back photographs of the long-living for National
Geographic  in 1972 , millions of readers saw a face of old age that had
never been seen before in this country and scarcely imagined. Twenty years
later, we are facing a huge increase in all age groups over 65, and the long-
living Abkhasians are more and more fascinating to us. In their culture the
“new” old age has existed for generations. They traditionally led lives in
which all the right ingredients came together for conscious, purposeful
longevity—not just a longevity of survivors but of “youth in old age,” the
title Leaf chose for his book. Abkhasians managed to redefine youth so that it was not oppose d to long
survival. Someone could be chronologically old and yet young by their
standards. Jotting down his impression of one 98-year -old named Tikhed
Gunba, Leaf wrote, “Tikhed’ s blood pressure was 104/72 and his pulse was
regular at 84 [beats per minute]. He seemed a very placid individual with
much ‘mileage’ left. In the presence of two centenarians, Tikhed was still
regarded as a youngster .”
The Supercentenarian “Hoax”
Why , given this idyllic situatio n, haven’ t we all heard of Abkhasia? The
reason is that confusion and mistrust quickly clouded the initial reports
brought back by W esterners. What made Abkhasia so interesting in the mid-
1970s was not lifestyle but the phenomenon of supercentenarianism. The
then-Soviet government wanted to reap a harvest of propaganda by
claiming that their oldest people survived beyond anything known in the
noncommunist world. Tremendous focus was placed on individuals such as
Khfaf Lazuria, the most celebrated of the long-living.Khfaf Lazuria was reported to be the oldest woman who had ever lived. She died in 1975, claiming to be 140, which meant she had been born
twenty-five years before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter that set
off the American Civil War. While alive, Khfaf Lazuria was a petite woman
of only four feet two inches tall. Although frail, she moved nimbly , was
always eager to meet visitors, could thread a needle without glasses, and
was a lively storyteller . Rare for a woman in Abkhasia, she liked to smoke cigarettes, a habit she
had picked up, she said, at age 100. (Since she was too old to be taken for a
woman, she liked to joke, she might as well act like the men.) Among her
colorful stories, Khfaf recounted her early memories of “the big war in the
North,” which Leaf guessed must refer to the Crimean War of 1853–56. That was also the period when she was abducted by Turks and not returned
home until ten years later, around the year Lincoln was assassinated. Perhaps even more remarkable than Khfaf Lazuria’ s claim to
superlongevity was that her immediate family boasted more than a dozen
members who had lived to be 100. Spellbound, Leaf accepted these tales completely; it therefore came as a
blow when large inconsistencie s began to surface. As it turned out, Khfaf
Lazuria had told every visitor a somewhat different story about herself,
freely changing her age, the number of husbands she’d had, how long her
parents had lived—in fact, few details remained constant. Leaf can be
forgiven for not knowing, as no casual visitor could, that one of the
cherished customs in Abkhasia was lying to strangers! Western visitors who
lingered long enough to acquaint themselves with the area learned that the
Abkhasian love of exaggeration was legendary , particularly if tall tales were
being spun to an outsider . When consulted about how old they thought the long-living actually
were, local gerontologists who had been sent into the region by the then-
Soviet government estimated that some of the long-living were certainly
quite old, upward of 115, but no one in the region who claimed to be 120,
much less 140 or 168, could supply reliable documents. In fact, since 90
percent of the local churches had been destroyed by the Soviets under
Stalin, almost no old records of births, communions, or marriage s existed in
Abkhasia.The final blow came when Zhores Medvedev , one of the most respected
Soviet geneticists, defected to the West in the early 1970s. Medvedev had
traveled through out the Caucasus and was intimately acquainted with the
methods of the gerontologists who worked there. In London he revealed
weaknesses in all the claims of superlongevity: Up to 98 percent of
Abkhasian old people were illiterate and many did not even know their
birthdays. For them, keeping track of time was haphazard, particularly
considering that there was an overlap of the Christian and Moslem
calendars in that region (the Moslem calendar is based on a ten-month
year). Soviet records before 1930 were nonexistent, and suspicions of a
deliberate hoax were raised when Medvedev pointed out that Stalin had
been born in Geor gia. Zealous attempts to convince him that he would live
a long life—som ething that most absolute despots are extremely eager to
believe—had added political fuel to the Abkhasians’ folkloric pride in
reaching extreme old age. The bubble quickly burst. In the cold light of day, there was really no
convincing evidence that families in the Caucasus had produced several
generations of centenarians. When the American yogurt company originally
conceived their campaign of the mother pinching her son’s cheek, they
wanted to find a mother and son who were both over 100 (this seem ed
plausible in a society where women married around 20), but this proved
impossible. Nobody could find a family in which parents and offspring
were both centenarians. Most investigators concluded that the Geor gian
supercentenarians were products of a traditional culture in which being as
old as possible had always been a cause for great social respect. Why We Need Abkhasia
Despite the inconsistencies in his findings, Dr. Leaf stood by the principles
of age preventi on he saw at work in the Caucasus. His work made a
significant difference in turning Americans toward more exercise and better
diet, particularly in terms of heart-attack prevention, but mounting
skepticism force d him to retrac t his support of superlongevity . Abkhasiashouldn’ t be dismissed, howev er; in a world where the vast majority of
societies condit ion their people to expect short lives and condemn the
elderly to a marginal existence, this one society fostered a conscious ideal
of old age as the most rewarding phase of life—and the reward was open to
all who wished to achieve it. To me, Abkhasi a was the place where the traditional concept  of “old”
never took root. The word was banished, and in its place the long-living
pursued an ageless lifestyle—they galloped their horses, worked under the
sun, and sang in choirs in which the youngest member was 70 and the
oldest was no (contrary to Soviet propaganda, which boast ed that the
minimum age was 90). Abkhasia proved that growing older can be a time of
improvement. Abkhas ians toasted one another with the words, “May you
live as long as Moses,” and they venerated the long-living as people who
were achieving an ideal. By far the greatest advantage the long-living enjoyed was this: They
trusted in their way of life. Abkhasians struck Western visitors as
remarkably attuned to the rhythms of life, precisely what we have lost in
this coun try. It’s worth quoting at length from Dan Geor gakas, an American
writer who traveled to Abkhas ia and was among the first to document
inconsistences in centenarian accounts of their age, and still found much to
admire. In his book The Methuselah Factors  Georgakas wrote, “Abkhasians
dislike being rushed, loathe deadlines, and never work to exhaustion. In the
same vein, they consider it extremely impolite to eat quickly or to eat too
much.…Their routines have a tempo more linked to biological rhythms than
the helter -skelter patterns that predominate in most developed countries.”
One gets the sense of a peopl e who have reached a natural  balance. Rather than struggling to break unhealthy habits, their culture had woven
good health into their overall view of life. Seventy percent of their food
consisted of vegetables and dairy products, and a further uniqu e aspect of
the traditional diet was the insistence on freshness. “Vegetables were picked just before cooking or serving, and if meat was
to be part of the menu, guests were shown the animal before it was
slaughtered. Whatever the food served, all leftovers were discarded,
because they were considered harmful to health. Such concern for freshnessguaranteed that a minimal loss of nutrients took place between  garden and
table. Most food was consumed raw or boiled, with nothing fried.”
Light eating and heavy exercise made it easy for Abkhasians to preserve
the lean body outlines considere d most pleasing in their culture (as in ours),
but there was a deeper significance to this than vanity . “The Abkhasians
have been among the few people in the world so appreciative of the ill
effects of fat that even their children and infants remain slim.” The
traditional love of horses added another tempo to this integrated  way of life
that already embraced work and diet. “From the earliest possible  ages, even
at 2 and 3, child ren were taught to ride. Horses provided the main sport, and
the ability to do equestrian tricks was a mark of individual worth. The
horses were never used as work animals, only for recreation and sports.”
In every  society , expectation rules outcome. In a culture where wealth is
the highest goal, the entire society will focus on making money , prestige
will accrue to those who make the most, and the poor will be regarded as
failures. In Abkhasia, a great value was placed on longevity; therefore the
entire society felt motivated to live up to that ideal. In America, the reverse
is true; old age is not valued, much less exalted. This helps account for the flagrant manner in which we waste the last
years of life in our society . An extremely pessimistic study from the
government’ s Centers for Disease Control underscores this point. To assess
the health of people at the end of their lives, researchers evaluated seventy-
five hundred individuals who had died in 1986. Their families were asked if
the deceased person could still perform five minimal daily activities in the
year before he or she passed away: dressing, walking, eating, going to the
toilet, and bathi ng. On average, only 12 percent of people who died after
age 65 could be classified as “fully functional” according to these minimal
standards. At the opposite extreme, 10 percent of the subjects needed assistance to
perform three or more of these daily activities in the last six months of life;
these people were classified as “severely restricted.” The bulk of elderly
Americans falls between these two extremes, in a shadow land between
self-suf ficiency and dependence. It is disturbing enough to realize that only
one person in seven can take care of life’s simplest needs but the figures get
worse the closer you inspect them.In the youngest age category , from 65 to 74, only one-fifth of the people
could be classed as fully functional. About 15 percent showed confusion
when asked where they were; 13 percent had trouble remembering what
year it was; 10 percent could not reliably recognize family and friends. A
higher percentage of people who died from heart attacks remained fully
functional than did those who died from cancer . Fully 49 percent of heart-
attack victims could perform all five activities the year before they died,
compared to only 4 percent of cancer sufferers. Women, besides suffering
more years of disability , were hit harder than men: They were 40 percent
less likely to be able to take care of themselves in the last year of life than
were men and 70 percent more likely to fall into the severel y restricted
category . Another factor that increased the likelihood of disability was not
being married. Researchers consider this study highly significant because few others
have looked as closely at the health status of old people in the critical last
year of life. We have to be caref ul not to extend the findings too far—since
the vast majority  of the elderly are not in their last year, they are much less
likely to be severely restricted. But the CDC figures give us a sobering look
at how far the “new” old age still has to go. Huge differences divide the American and Abkhasian cultures. One
would have to go back to 1920 to find a time when the majority of
Americans lived  in rural areas. A lifetime of light eating and considerable
physical activity  is something we have to consciously learn again, but to
fixate on those ingredients would cause one to miss the spirit of Abkhasia,
which to me is far more inspi ring as a motivation to survive to 100. I
recently received  a letter from a concerned woman named Mary  Ann Soule,
inviting me to a conference on “conscious aging.” She ended it with the
following eloquent statement:
If we continue to succumb to modern America’ s stereotypic vision
of aging, fearing the changes in our bodies, resisting the natural
transitions of life, and avoiding the unknown territory of death, we
will deny ourselves and the whole of civilization the gifts of age:
mature perspective, seasoned creativity , and spiritual vision.The truth of this comes through every day when I talk to older patients. One of them, a retired office manager , once ruefully remarke d to me, “I
always wanted to live a long time, but I never wanted to grow old.” He said
this ironically; it went without saying that he couldn’ t have one without the
other . But why not? He was quite healthy and active, yet unfortunately he
saw himself  as old, which in America means entering a no-man’ s-land of
lost dignity and uncertain self-worth. After his 1972 visits with the long-
living, Alexander Leaf came away “feeling that to live to be 100 was a most
natural and simp le thing. It took only a brief time back in Boston before the
feeling was just another exotic memory .”
This country has recently experienced an unparalleled boom in
centenarianism. The number of Americans who are 100 or over is currently
estimated at 35,800—double what it was ten years ago and expected to
double again before the year 2000. This figure comes from the Census
Bureau, which accepts people’ s reported ages without verification. (A
detailed investigation of Social Security recipients who reported their age as
100 revealed that 95 percent were exaggerating; this is easy to do, since
being 97 or 98 carries much less mystique than being 100.) Even assuming that a certain number of respondents have inflated their
ages to cross the magical centur y mark, statisticians agree that at least 1 in
10,000 Americans is 100 or older . This is a historic number , and yet it is
only an average. Some regions of the country already boast incredibly high
ratios of longev ity. In Iowa, where life expectancy is the highest in the
nation, 1 person  out of 3,961 is over 100, followed by South Dakota, with 1
out of 4,168. By contrast, some  areas are far below the national average in
centenarians: The last two states  on the Census Bureau list are Utah, which
reports only 1 centenarian per 19,358 people, and Alaska, with 1 in 36,670. By historical standards, howev er, even these low figures are astonishing. What they imply is that we have won the struggle for longevi ty and now
face the challenge of becoming a land where the long-living are still young. Senility: The Darkest FearMost of us would find it easier  to bear the physical afflictions  of old age
than the mental  ones. In India, where I grew up, age is still equated with
wisdom. Rural villages are run by the panchayat,  a counc il of five elders
who have gained respect and authority because of their venerable age. In
the West, the longer one lives, the more one is suspected of mental
incompetence. Alzheimer ’s has probably surpassed cancer for the dubious
honor of being the most feared  disease in America. I know 60-year -olds
who obsessively pore over articles about Alzheimer ’s and panic whenever
they forget a friend’ s telephone number , so convinced are they that
contracting Alzheimer ’s is only a matter of time. “Put at its crudest,” Anthony Smith wrote in The Body , “the advances of
medicine are enabling more and more of us to achieve senility .” That is too
dark a view . Only 10 percent of people over 65 exhibit any symptoms of
Alzheimer ’s, but there is no doubt that this figure escalates with increasing
age, and after 75, up to 50 percent of the elderly may show some evidence
of the disease. One dark legacy from the “old” old age was the belief that
senility is a normal, inevitable aspect of aging. Paradoxicall y, the most
important factor in bursting this myth was Alzheimer ’s itself. The disorder
was discovered  as early as 1906 by Alois Alzheimer , a prominent
investigator and physician in Munich. He dissected the body of a 55-year -
old wom an who had been ment ally deteriorating for three years before her
death. In her brain Dr. Alzheimer found visible damage that could not be
explained as normal aging: twist ed, tangled nerves and hardened deposits of
chemical plaque. No one had ever before linked senility with a specific disease, and by
discovering the one named after him, Dr. Alzheimer struck a decisive blow
to the theory of “normal” senili ty. However , social attitudes often last long
beyond their time, and it took seventy years for the importance of
Alzheimer ’s discovery to be fully grasped. In recent decades, recognition of
Alzheimer ’s disease has increas ed dramatically , as it has been realized that
the illness afflicts over 1 million Americans, or around 50 to 60 percent of
all people who exhibit senile dementia. Dementia is the medica l term for a
host of symptoms associated with the general term senility: forgetfulness,
confusion, disorientation, short attention span, irritability , and decreased
intelligence.Lewis Thomas dubbed Alzheimer ’s “the disease of the century” and
spoke eloquently of it as “the worst of all diseases, not just for what it does
to the victim, but for its deva stating effects on families and friends. It
begins with the loss of learned skills, arithmetic and typing, for instance; it
progresses inexorably to a total shutting down of the mind. It is,
unmercifully , not lethal. Patients go on and on living, essential ly brainless
but otherwise healthy , into advanced age, unless lucky enough to be saved
by pneumonia.”
Alzheimer ’s patients go in and out of lucidity in the early stage s of their
ordeal. In his book The Myth of Senility , Dr. Siegfried Kra of Yale quotes a
colleague’ s wife, herself a successful physician and children’ s writer , who
was forced to retire due to Alzh eimer ’s in her midfifties. At the outset she
still had lucid periods, particular ly in the early hours between three and five
in the morning ; during that time she gave utterance to the dark
transformation that was taking place inside her. All she could manage were
halting phrases that are all the more poignant given how much she had
loved words and how well she had used them:
I have a neurological problem. Who needs it? No one. Nobody likes me. I don’ t like myself either . I used to be a physician, I used to drive a car. What do I want? I don’t
want to be here. I am afraid of everything. All I am is garbage. I belong in the garbage can. You need a new wife. This one is no good anymore. No one knows my name anymore—because I am nothing. I’ve lost everything—the health service, typing, and writing. I don’t
have any skills. All I do is eat. I have to go away . I can’t read my
own writing. I’ve lost a kingdom. I don’ t sing anymore. I probably won’ t sing again. What is the source of this terrible disease? Much speculation has been
offered: a rare “slow virus” that takes decades to mature; a defect in the
immune system that causes the victim’ s own antibodies to attac k the brain;
increased accumulation of alum inum in the neurons. None of these causeshas been  proved . Although high levels of aluminum have been found in the
brains of Alzhei mer’s patients, elevated levels of the metal are not found in
the patients’ bloodstreams. Some popular books have sounded the alert against using aluminum foil,
aluminum cookw are, and deodorants based on aluminum salts, but millions
of people use these products without acquiring Alzheimer ’s. Some
physiological abnormality is more likely to be at fault; perhap s the blood-
brain barrier that normally excludes aluminum from entering the brain has
broken down, allowing these deposits to develop. Another reason to suspect
that the brain itself has gone awry is that at least one critical
neurotransmitter , acetylcholine , is deficient in Alzheimer ’s patients,
impairing the ability of brain cells to communicate with one another . Alzheimer ’s is presently incurable. There is no viable prevention,
although investigators believe they have found indications of genetic
markers for the disease in some families. After the onset of the disease,
medical care is limited to tranquilizing or sedating the patient. These efforts
do not affect the outcome but help reduce the psychological distress that
patients and family so acutely  feel. The real hope lies with cases of
dementia that are not the result of Alzheimer ’s, for once the myth of
“normal” senility was overcom e, it became apparent that more than one
hundred differen t treatable disorders could mimic the symptoms of senile
dementia, including thyroid deficiency , strokes, and syphilis. How the Brain Resists Aging
Aging of the brain is not enough to cause Alzheimer ’s or any of these other
disorders. Over time the structure of the brain is known to change. It grows
lighter , for example, and shrinks slightly . One of the clichés of neurology is
that the human brain loses roughly a million neurons per year as it ages; this
created a convenient rationale for seeing the onset of senility as the result of
a decaying brain. However , the flaw in this expla nation is that people who don’t become
senile presumably have lost the same number of neurons (this has to be leftto conjecture, since reliable neuron counts can’t be made in living people). At present it isn’t known why one old brain stays lively and creative—one
thinks of Miche langelo designin g St. Peter ’s when he was nearly 90 or of
Picasso painting  at the same age and Arthur Rubinstein playing the piano in
Carnegie Hall—while another starts to deteriorate. One theor y, based on
animal research, is that our brains grow new connections as we age. As
more neurons die, these new connections may compensate for the loss in
some individuals. No two brain cells ever actually touch physically . They reach toward
each other acros s a gap, or synapse, using hundreds or thousand s of hairlike
filaments called dendrites. The effect is like that of two twiggy trees almost
intertwining in the wind (the word dendrite  is deriv ed from  the Greek word
for “tree ”). Just at the point where two filaments almost meet, a chemical
signal can be sent from one neuron to another . The basic  chemicals
involved are well known. One of them is acetylcholine, which is deficient
in Alzheimer ’s patients; another is dopamine, the lack of which leads to
Parkinson’ s disease. No one knows precisely why some neurons grow fifty
dendrites for sending message s while others grow ten thousand. One
encouraging finding, however , is that by remaining mentally active, older
people may actually be growing new dendrites all the time. This much-publicized news was founded on brain research by Marian
Diamond at Berkeley , who showed that the brains of rats grew or shrank
according to the kind of experiences they were exposed to. Rats confined to
small cages and deprived of social interaction with other rats began to
develop shrinkin g cortexes and a loss of dendrites. On the other hand, if an
old rat was put back into rat society and given lots of stimulati on, its brain
expanded and grew new dendrites. This helped to give a physiological
explanation for something we have all observed: Lonely , isolated old people
are much more likely to be confused, disoriented, dull, and vacant than are
their peers who remain actively involved with family and friends. Because of our materialistic bias, growing new dendrites sounds very
scientific and reassuring. In actuality , the situation turns out to be more
complex. To have more dendrites is not the same as having a more
developed brain. Babies are born with many more dendrites than adults
have; the proces s of maturation consists of pruning the excess, whittling thecortex down to its most useful connections. However , it is still encouraging
to find that old brains may be capable of replacing lost dendrites as they are
needed. It was long thought that we are born with a set number of brain cells that
never divide to form new ones, yet recently it has been found that the DNA
in neurons is active, which may lead to new conclusions. Some neurologists
also doubt that the brain is actually losing a million neurons a year. Robert
Terry, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Diego,
determined that there is no significant decline in neuron density in three
important areas of the brain. The number of large neurons does decrease,
but is offset by an increase in smaller neurons. Also, large neurons appear
not to be dying but shrinking. Two other neuroscientists, Samuel Weiss and Brent Reynolds at the
University of Calgary in Alberta, found that they could stimulate dormant
brain cells to active life. They cultured mouse neurons in the laboratory and
gave them a chemical called epidermal growth factor , causing some
immature, inactive brain cells to divide and form mature ones. The human
brain is almost certainly storing such dormant cells perhaps as a
replacement reserve. It is also encour aging that the brain has its own natural mecha nisms for
activating itself  in old age. New dendrites grow longer and sprout new
branches past age 80. As neurons shrink, they create new synapses, which
in turn stimulate more electr ochemical activity in the brain. Natural
substances stimulate this growth and repair—in particular nerve growth
factor (NGF), one of a class of proteins known as trophic factors. NGF
seems to have important functions. At Johns Hopkins, NGF prevented the
degeneration of old neurons in rats and monkeys; when injected into the
brains of old rats, it significantly improved their spatial memory . One hope
is that Alzheimer ’s patients can regain function using chemicals that induce
neuron activity (nerve growth factors have already been tried in Sweden
with some success). All this good news about the aging brain lifts our expectations that to
keep one’s faculties intact is completely normal. “Older people may not be
as quick in timed tests,” neuroscientist Robert Terry remarked , “but they
don’t lose judgment, orientation, or vocabulary . There is no way that peoplelike Picasso, the cellist Pablo  Casals, or Martha Graham could have
continued to be so successful on half a brain.”
Preserving intelligence in old age. To document whether declin e in
intelligence is a natural part of aging, researcher Lissy Jarvik at Columbia
conducted studies on twins beginning in 1947. The subjects showed no
significant drop in I.Q. from ages 65 to 75. Often there is a sharp drop in
intelligence in the year preceding one’s death, but there are many
inconsistencies from individual to individual, and also from one intelligence
test to another . Old people cannot simply be lumped togethe r; it is the
individual, not old age alone, that makes the dif ference. As corro borating evidence, we can turn to a long-term study at Duke
University that found no general decline in intelligence among older
subjects (ages 65 to 75) unless they were suffering from high blood
pressure. It is well known that small, often barely detectable strokes are
associated with hypertension, which may be at work here. Whatever the
specific cause, sickness, not the aging process itself, seems to create the
decline in mental functioning so long associated with senescence. Although
the neurological  picture is not yet clear , it is completely realistic to expect
to survive with your memory and intelligence intact. The topic of aging and I.Q. provides a perfect example of how linear
thinking misinterprets the complex changes that time brings. It isn’t enough
just to say that growing older is better or worse than being young. The
human mind develops with experience along various lines. Brain studies
help to indicate that organic changes keep up with the mind in its journey of
expansion, but it is also important to trust the process itself, to realize that
the mind wants  to expand. Psychologists are beginning to verify that human development extends
into old age through higher states of awareness such as wisdom. One
prominent German researcher , Paul Baltes, is committed to the idea that any
decline in the brain’s physical structure with age is offset by new mental
accomplishments. As a person ages, certain types of memory tasks take
more time to perform: For example, when Baltes asked people to pair words
and places (such as car and Eiffel Tower , table and Berlin Wall, keys andGolden Gate Bridge), he found  that older people could not duplicate the
speed of recall displayed by younger ones. “The situation is entirely different, however , when we look at the kind of
knowledge that is transmitted from generation to generation through
culture,” Baltes wrote. In one test, Baltes presented his subjects with a
hypothetical situation such as the following: What would you do if a friend
called on the phone and announced that he was going to commit suicide? Or
if a 15-year -old girl told you that she was thinking of getting married right
away? Baltes says, “The response we get to these and other dilemmas varies
widely , and over the years, we have developed a ‘wisdom scale’ on which
we place the answers. Take the problem of the 15-year -old girl. A
participant might respond: ‘A 15-year -old girl wants to get marr ied? No, no
way, marrying at that age would  be utterly wrong.’ Even after further cuing
about possible extenuating circumstances, this person continues to insist
that the problem is a simple one with one answer: ‘Marriage is not
possible.’
“Another answer might reflect a deeper knowledge of the human
condition: ‘Well, on the surface this seems like an easy problem. On
average, marriag e for 15-year -old girls is not a good thing. Thinking about
getting married, on the other hand, is not the same as actually doing it. I
guess many girls might think about it without getting married in the end. And then there are situations where the average case doesn’ t fit. Perhaps in
this instance the girl has a terminal illness or is all alone in the world. Or as
I think more about it, this girl may not be from this country  in the first
place; perhaps she lives in another culture or historical period where girls
marry early .’ ”
On the “wisdom  scale” Baltes found that older people did very well—
more than half of the wisest responses came from subjects over age 60. Not
all older  people are wise, but they generally outperform youn ger people,
reversing the results of the memory tests. Baltes feels that wisdom is a
“software” achievement that culture uses to outwit biological limits. In his
nineties the great pianist Arthur  Rubinstein was still playing concerts, and
when asked how he kept up such demanding activity , he cited three wise
strategies: perform fewer pieces, practice each piece more frequently , and—to compensate for loss of speed and manual dexterity—slow down for a few
seconds just before the music enters a particularly fast passage (your
playing will then sound faster than it really is!). These findings by Baltes point  to mysteries that cannot be tested, for
wisdom is more than experience. Socrates held that wisdom could not be
taught but only known directly . Although we can sense it in the atmosphere
around a wise person, their sagacity cannot be weighed, measured, or
readily defined. Jonas Salk said of wisdom, “It’s something that you know
when you see it. You can recognize it, you can experience it. I have defined
wisdom as the capacity to make judgments that when looked back upon will
seem to have been wise.”
But what confers wisdom? Being unteachable, it is only conferred by
growing into it. An Indian adage holds, “This is not the kind of knowledge
you acquire but the kind you must become.” Having spent hours with
Maharishi, who seems to me a profound sage, I don’t feel that I have
absorbed his wisdom, but I do know that to be genuine, wisdom  must be as
intimate to a person as breathing. Wisdom is in what you are, not in what
you do. As the new old age obliterates the prejudice against old people, I believe
we will witness a flowering of the visionary qualities that age can bring at
its best. Vision is the hidden bond that unites youth and old age. In middle
age we compro mise our ideals in order to achieve success and security;
wisdom isn’t something we have much time for. The young are still
impetuously idealistic, but the old can balance and enhance that through
wisdom, perhaps the greatest gift of the human life cycle in its mature
years. The Limits of Medicine
Medical finding s on the aging brain allow us to close the gap between our
low expectations of growing old and the rich possibilities that actually exist. They are also misleading, however . Most people assume that medicine has
been chiefly responsible for improving the health of old people andextending their life span; therefore, they look to doctors for cures for
cancer , heart disease, Alzhei mer’s, and other degenerativ e disorders
common to the elderly . This ignores the fact that successful aging is far
more than the avoidance of disease, although that is important. It involves a
lifelong commitment to oneself every day; a doctor can assist in making
this commitment, but medicine is not a surrogate for it. Modern medicine’ s role in helping us live longer is growing weaker by
the decade. In the great era of the microbe hunters that began in the 1870s
and lasted almost a century , medicine made undeniable advances, wiping
out infec tious diseases of all sorts. This past success is one of the reasons
why Americans are willing to bear the crushing cost of health care in this
country , which has already passed $700 billion and is heading toward $1
trillion in the coming decade. We take it on faith that this enorm ous outlay
will buy extra life, just as investment in penicillin research and the Salk
vaccine did, but the overall contribution of medicine—past, present, and
future—may be greatly exaggerated. Since 1900, the average American life span has increased by 50 percent,
yet much of that increase does not affect anyone who has already survived
infancy and early childhood. If you examine the chart on this page , it
reveals how little extra life recent generations have gained in adulthood. Two graphs have been overlaid here. The lower one indicates life
expectancy as measured from birth; this is relevant when we speak of the
tremendous increase of twenty-six years in life expectancy between 1900
and 1990. The upper graph, however , indicates life expectancy measured
from age 50, and although it also rises steadily , the increase between 1900
and 1990 is modest. A 50-year -old man today can expect to live only eight
years longer than did his counterpart in 1900. The fact is that medicine in this century has made remarkable strides in
eliminating infant and childhood mortality , chiefly by reducing childbirth
deaths and communicable disease such as polio, smallpox, measles,
pneumonia, and influenza. By contrast, the impact on adult mortality has
been much less dramatic, and there are persuasive facts to show that
medical researc h is still not returning the benefits society once hoped to
achieve:• Cancer . The age-adjust ed death rate from cancer has not changed in
fifty years. Earlier detection gives us the illusion that cancer patients are
living longer than they did in the past, but modern treatments apparently do
not prolong life overall. If they did, people would be dying of cancer at
older ages than in the past; but this is not the case. Cancer deaths occur at
about the same age as they did in our grandparents’ day, and the overall
mortality rate— about 20 percent of deaths are due to cancer—h as remained
constant since at least the late 1940s. In fact, the recent rise of lung cancer
among blacks and women, which is linked to more cigarette smoking in
these groups, has slightly increased the cancer death rate. • Heart disease. I have already discussed the ambiguous state of affairs
regarding heart attacks. Mortality rates are falling—at the slow pace of 1 or
2 percen t a year—but the underlying cause, coronary artery disease, is far
from being eradicated. Despite  massive prevention campaign s, damaged
arteries are showing up in children as early as age 10, with widespread
artery disease being common in half the population by age 20. The two
leading surgeries for heart patients, the bypass graft and balloon
angioplasty , are often effective in alleviating the pain of angina. However ,
repeated studies have failed to prove that either of these expensive,
traumatic operations actually increases the patient’ s life expectancy . • Degenerative disor ders. We still lack effective treatm ents for many
chronic diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and
osteoporosis. Modern medicine can sometimes assist through the use of
drugs to ease the pain or slow the progression of these disea ses, but we
cannot cure the patients or even explain why they got sick in the first place.• Medications. Dependency on drugs, particularly sleeping pills and
tranquilizers, continues to rise. It has been estimated that the average
American over 70 who is healthy  takes 3.5 kinds of drugs, both over-the-
counter and prescription. Someone who is sick may take 10 drugs or more. A 1988 study in California concluded that overmedication is the leading
health hazard among the elderly . Some of these drugs exist for no better
reason than to relieve the side ef fects of earlier drugs. There is also a huge problem with compliance, since many patients either
don’t take the proper medication or misuse it. At least half of older patients
fail to comply with instructions  for medication for glaucoma, the leading
cause of blindness in this country; millions more fail to use antihypertensive
drugs correctly . They recklessly mix them with tranquilizers, alcohol,
cigarettes, and sleeping pills, and untold cases of needless illness and death
are the result. • Addictions. After focusing public attention on addictions for twenty
years, America is becoming more addicted every year rather than less. No
effective treatme nt has been found for alcoholism (“effective” means curing
at least 50 percent of patients). Drug taking has reached down to the grade-
school level; smoking is on the rise among blue-collar workers, young
women, and minorities. Twenty-five years after the Surgeon General’ s
report on the dangers of tobacco, 58 million adults—almost a third of us—
still smoke; 75 percent of them say they are trying to quit but can’ t.
• Medical costs. The cost of health care continues to reach all-time highs,
making a long stay in the hospital catastrophically expensive for most
people. Hospital  beds range from  $500 to over $2,000 a day, depending on
whether intensi ve care is need ed, and bills in excess of $100,000 for
treating a single life-threatening  illness are common. About one-fourth of
all healt h care costs occur in the last year of life, when expensive efforts to
stave off life-threatening illness  are common. (Inevitably , the last illness—
the one the doctor can’t cure—is the most expensive.) Unless  there is an
unforeseen turnabout, the spiral ing cost of health insurance may wipe out
the profits of many Fortune 500 companies before the year 2000. • Social awar eness. Medical research has raced ahead of the average
person’ s comprehension. Most Americans cannot accurately describe the
role of cholesterol in the body , the function of genes, or the nature of theimmune system. Few people can list the major carcinogens in order of
danger (many think that any chemical can cause cancer). Given these dismal trends, it is highly unlikely that we are entering a
golden age of longevity spurred by medicine. It has been estimated that
curing heart disease and cancer would net an increase in life expectancy of
fewer than ten years (the logic here is that since both disorders strike
primarily after age 65, people who die from heart attacks and cancer are
already near the end of their life expectancy; they are being deprived of
relatively few years of life). However , there is a positive side to medicine’ s current crisis: It throws
into high relief the need for personal initiative.
_OceanofPDF.com_Ageless_Body_Timeless_Mind_-_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Even though the Hayflick limit is often considered the most significant
experimental finding in resear ch on aging, its relevance to real life is
unknown. In the laboratory, every generation of cells is the offspring of a
limited number of mother cells. On the other hand, babies are not born with
a full complement of cells; new ones are produced throughout life. Your
bone marrow, for example, gene rates immature blood cells that grow up to
become mature  ones. At various stages of early development, and
sometimes throu ghout life, every organ contains a mixture of primitive,
partly mature, and mature cells. Mature ones are those that have
differentiated, choosing to become a heart cell as opposed to a stomach cell,
a brain cell as opposed to a kidney cell. The same DNA exists inside every cell, but through differentiation, it
expresses certain characteristics and represses others. Some theorists would
get past the Hayflick limit by proposing that a cell doesn’ t begin its career
of fifty divisions until it has become differentiated. At various stages of our
lives, some primitive cells divide and become mature while others remain
primitive. Thus the body is equipped with backup resourc es. Even if every
cell has to obey the Hayflick limit, they don’t have to obey  it together. Whether this escape clause will ever be accepted depends on understanding
how cells choose to differentiate in the first place, and geneticists are still
far from knowing that. One whole class of cells—cancer cells—is devoid of growth limit. Freed
from genetic restraint, cancer cells divide wildly until the host body dies; if
raised in vitro, even this limit is removed. Most malignant cells cultured inlaboratories around the world are descendants of tissue taken from a few
individuals, now long deceased. One undisputed victory for Hayflick is that he took aging to the cellular
level. His method of “aging under glass,” as he once dubbed it, is accepted
as the norm by biologists. Hayfl ick declared that “the primary cause of age
changes can no longer be thought of as resulting from events occurring at
the supercellula r level, i. e. , at cell hierarchies from the tissue level and
greater. The cell is where the gerontological action lies. ” Accor ding to this
logic, looking at how organisms live is much less important than looking at
how their cells live. This logic domi nates today’ s biology of aging, but it strikes me as pure
reductionism. The logic I have followed throughout this book is that the
whole is far more important than the parts; a person’ s life determines the
activity of his cells, not vice versa. And yet these aren’ t irreconcilable
approaches, for no one can outlive his cells—that much is certain. Biologists such as Hayflick tend to regard DNA as all-powerful and far
removed from daily life—a kind of biochemical Jove whose dictates cannot
be overruled. “It is as if DNA used us to keep itself  going,” Albert
Rosenfeld mourned. Yet this is only one point of view. If you look at life
through the eyes of a geneticist,  it means nothing that a very old person has
a strong will to live or enjoys the simple pleasures of life. And indeed such
facts may be insignificant in terms of DNA ’s original programming, but as
the outcome of a life well spent, it is enormously significant—indeed, it is
the most  significant thing. Outside the biologist’ s test tubes and flasks, DNA gets influenced by
your every thought, feeling, and action. The stress hormones that play such
a critical part in aging are regulated by RNA, which is a copy of DNA; even
though the DNA itself may sit quietly in its vault, its active twin is
constantly chang ing its instructions. When you make a lifestyle change that
reduces stress, the RNA in your cells responds by churning out fewer stress
hormones. The Hayflick limit renders the whole aging process meaningless; it
becomes a mechanism to be tinkered with in a laboratory dish, devoid of
breath, motion, warmth, experience, memory, love, hope, courage, sacrifice,
will, curiosity, and everythin g else that makes life worth living. Unfortunately, manipulating cells is still the dominant activity in
gerontology and attracts the most excitement. In 1990 the media  announced
that researchers from the University of Wisconsin had injected synthetic
human growth hormone into a small group of elderly men betwe en the ages
of 61 and 81. The result was sudden rejuvenation that reverse d biological
aging by as much as twenty years. Over the course of the six-month trial,
muscle mass and strength steadily returned; fat melted away without
dieting; memory and other brain functions improved; vigor and stamina
were renewed. This artificially regained youth was greeted with tremendous public
excitement. Popular accounts breathlessly compared it to the fantasy
rejuvenation in the hit movie Cocoon. The subjects themselves were deeply
affected. “I started feeling the changes after three months. I felt much
stronger—I mean, I never felt stronger in my life,” recalled one retired
Waukegan factory worker. The experiment involved only men whose
natural levels of growth hormone were extremely depleted. Most old people
have adequate, if reduced, levels of growth hormone; those who do not
have sufficient growth hormone age faster and more severely than normal. When these subjects began the experiment they were exhibiting excessive
biological aging; therefore, restoring their hormone levels made  a dramatic
difference. For the first time in years, many of them could travel, take long
walks, or work in their gardens. But the improvement was not permanent. After the extremely expensive
treatments (around $14,000 a year) were withdrawn, the ravages of age
gradually return ed. Muscles shriveled again, fat reappeared, strength
waned, and the men were left with no lasting benefits except perhaps a trace
of improved memory. “It was wonderful while it lasted. Maybe someday I
can try it again,” one man said wistfully. Told that the next experiment
would be expanded to include women, he said approvingly, “I think they
should have a chance to feel like we did. ”
These words, quoted from a glowing newspaper account, trouble me. One cannot assume that injecting growth hormone does not have long-term
side effects. This may not prove  true for older people with abnormally low
levels of naturally occurring growth hormone, but for normal people, extra
growth hormone is useless for rejuvenation purposes. Interfering at a gross level with the body’ s function does not really affect
the sourc e of the problem. Givin g a drug, even one the body produces itself,
can effectively push the physiology one way or another, but the body
remembers what it wants to do, and until that memory is changed, there will
always be imbalance. Anyone who has dealt with diabetes know s the many
metabolic imbalances that insulin-dependent diabetics suffer from, and the
careful juggling of dosages necessary to avert insulin shock and coma. The
replacement hormone is the right molecule, but what is missing is the innate
intelligence to use that molecule. Diabetes, hypothyroidism, and aging itself
are due to lost intelligence, not depleted molecules. Inevitably, any “miracle” of rejuvenation achieved with chemicals will
disrupt the body’ s intelligence. When human growth hormone was given to
stunted children, the experimenters ran into serious side effects and several
fatalities. The argument that aging is caused by abnormal hormone
production is convincing to me, but hormones function to carry messages,
and messages ultimately are controlled in awareness. By increasing your
inner intelligence, by enhancin g your happiness and fulfillment, you can
defeat aging in a lasting, meaningful way, without chemical s and their
potential side effects. The responsibility for changing this awareness lies
with each individual. The “Aging Gene”
In additi on to hormone treatmen ts, much hope for defeating aging is being
pinned on genetic engineering. Forty years ago, after Watson and Crick
decoded the chemical structure of DNA, the hunt for an aging gene became
inevitable. By finding this gene, scientists could possess the control switch
for immortal cells, even if Nature had failed at the task. In several American
universities, researchers have been announcing breakthroughs in locating
genes that control aging in yeast, fruit flies, and finally humans. Michael West, a molecular biolo gist at the University of Texas in Dallas,
working with tissue-cultured human cells, isolated two “mortality genes”
whose effect is to speed the aging process in these cells. Labeled M-1 andM-2, the two genes can be chemically switched on or off, drivin g the aging
process backwa rd or forward at will. In normal aging both M-1 and M-2
appear to be switched on. By turning off the M-1 gene, West is able to
restore a cell’s youth and double its overall life span, measured by how
many times it divides. Apparently West has discovered how to override the
Hayflick limit at will. The results are even more dramatic when the second mortality gene, M-2,
is switched off. The cells continue to divide indefinitely and remain
youthful forever. Turning M-1 back on again, West found, caused the cells
to resume normal aging. This may be the one and only aging gene, although
other contenders are offered by competing researchers. By general
consensus, aging seems to be polygenic, involving the cooperation of
several or perha ps many genes at once. Also, finding these switches doesn’ t
mean that one has found out what operates them. There may be unknown
brain mechanisms that control the genetic switches, and these mechanisms
would almost certainly vary according to each individual ’s life and
experience. The fact that the body can record the passage of time is beyond  dispute. Proponents of a biological aging clock have tracked the body’s internal
biorhythms to a tiny cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus known as the
superchiasmatic nucleus. No larger than the end of a pencil, this clump of
tissue regulates the body’ s sense of time. But finding the body’ s biological
clock didn’ t solve the mystery  of aging, because the hypo thalamus is
connected to the rest of the brain, the endocrine system, and the immune
system. Any or all of these could be involved, for they all possess
formidable intelligence of their own. Our bodies are intelligent everywhere. Brain chemicals aren’ t secreted
just from our heads; our skin, stomachs, intestines, and hearts produce
them. White blood cells floating through the immune system are outfitted
with the same receptors for neurotransmitters—they form a kind of
“floating brain. ” The skin secretes more endocrine hormones than does the
endocrine system  itself. M-1 and M-2 are fascinating fragments in this vast
intelligence netw ork. Michael West has formed a company to see if a drug
can be found to manipulate these genes. But just as using interferon to fight
cancer was found to cause horrendous side effects, massive expense, andpoor results, West’s efforts have far to go before achieving any benefit for
cells outside glass dishes. Genet ic engineering to date involves highly risky
procedures such as bone marrow transplants, which are drastic operations. Presently, the most advanced organisms to have their life extended by
genetic manipulation are fruit flies, yeasts, and roundworms. I think the
application of this technology to humans is unlikely. Yet optim ism pervades this branch of gerontology and trickles down into
the popular press. “If we develop ways to repair aging tissues with
embryonic cells, we could add thirty years of healthy human life in the next
decade,” said a professor of medicine in Virginia, echoed by a colleague in
Texas: “Possibly in thirty years we will have in hand the major genes that
determine longe vity, and will be in a position to double, triple, even
quadruple our maximum life span. …It’ s possible that some people alive
now will still be alive four hundred years from now. ”
A more restrained researcher in Louisiana said, “We may find it possible
to extend life span considerably more, perhaps by 100 percent—which
would give us an extra 100 to 120 years. ” Other gerontologis ts shy away
from specific numbers but lack nothing in enthusiasm. “I think we may well
be able to lengthen human life far beyond anything we ever dreamed
possible,” said a researcher in Colorado whose work has been successful
with a nematode, a transparent roundworm the size of a comma. Something disturbing lies bene ath the surface of the wild predictions
made by geneticists with regard to aging. Americans like to imagine that
technical ingenuity will solve any problem. Like IBM engineers tweaking
computers to make them faster  and more efficient, gerontologists aim to
improve the human machine. The theory is that given a little biochemical
retooling, our bodies can be made more efficient, less prone to breakdowns,
and slow er to wear out. If any field was dedicated to the proposi tion that the
body is mindless and inherently defective, genetics is it. Like other reduc tionist models, the genetic view of aging ignore s life as a
whole. Unlike the Pacific salmo n, humans are not the pawns of biological
destiny. Populat ions exist right now that have largely overcome high blood
pressure, artery disease, and childhood infections, with low rates of major
cancers, and so on. The problem is that no single culture combines all of
these favorable traits. As we try to reach a longevity that satisfies thedesires of the whole person, we will find that DNA can change to suit our
higher expectations. Adapting to new conditions is what the body’ s
intelligence is all about. If you were a research biologist in the Stone Age,
and you had a perfect map of human DNA, could you have used it to
predict the rise of civilization. Would you have foreseen Mozart, Einstein,
the Parthenon, the New Testame nt. Could you have known that by the year
2000, improved living conditions would add six decades to early man’ s life
expectancy. The wonder of DNA is not that it runs my life but that it can unfold
previously unknown possibilities as they arise in my heart and mind. In
other words, DNA serves my purposes, not the other way around. There are
societies where longevity is highly valued, and it is there, in real-life
settings, that we have found our best laboratory. Instead of relying on
isolated individ uals who achieve extreme longevity, we can examine a
whole population who were instilled with that ambition from childhood on. The results have been remarkable, despite the absence of scientific
involvement. OceanofPDF. comSecrets of the “Long-Living”
Abkhasia, a remote mountain region of southern Russia, is a land of almost
mythical old age. It is the only place I have ever heard of where there is a
separate word for great-great-great-grandparents, which is applied only to
the living. The legendary longevity of the region excited world attention in
the late 1960s when Western visitors were invited to meet the
“supercentenarians” of Russia. These were rural villagers, almost all of
them illiterate field workers, who were reputed to have reache d incredible
ages of 120, 130, and upward of 170. Outside the Soviet Union, such claims hardly seemed credible. It was
widely accepted  by gerontologists that the upper limit of human life span
was betw een 115 and 120. Even that was a theoretical limit, since at that
time no one with a reliable birth certificate had ever lived beyond 113. But
in Russia the oldest of the supercentenarians, a man named Shirali
Mislimov, was reputed to have been born in 1805, seven years before
Napoleon march ed on Moscow. Mislimov lived in a remote village in the
state of Azerbaijan west of the Caspian Sea, where he died in 1973 at the
incredible age of 168. Toward the end, he had been secluded from visitors
due to ill health. If they could not visit the oldest man who had ever lived,
Westerners could interview the oldest woman of all time. She was Khfaf Lazuria, a native of Abkhasia who claimed to be
approximately 140. With a mixture of fascination and skepticism, foreign
visitors, including doctors and news correspondents, began to trickle in. From the first moment, Abkhasia was an enchanting place to anyone who
came there from the crowded, polluted cities of the United  States and
Europe. The countryside was green and idyllic. Most Abkhasians lived at
altitudes between seven hundred and a thousand feet above sea level, in
neat two-story homes, often built out of walnut, with wide verandas and
airy rooms. The climate in the hills just inland from the Black Sea was temperate
year-round, somewhat on the brisk side at a mean temperature of 50 to 55
degrees. But the rugged Abkhasians relished this slightly chilled air,
claiming that it contributed to their long life. Except for the kitchen stove,
their houses generally had no heat. Although the region had suffered from malaria and typhus epidemics
until the lowland swamps were drained by Soviet engineers in the 1930s,
Abkhasia boasted five times more centenarians than any other part of the
world, and 80 percent of the “long-living”—the word old was never appli ed
to them —were active and vigorous. It was common for both men and
women to work in the local tea fields for decades past the official Soviet
retirement age of 60—champion tea pickers were given certif icates when
they reached 100. In his book The Methuselah Factors,  Dan Geor gakas describes his
meeting with Abkhasian centenarian Vanacha Temur: “Wearing a snappy
leather hat, the venerable, alway s referred to only by his first name, walked
smartly across the garden and took up the responsibilities of a host. Spotting
an infan t among  his guests, Vanacha insisted that a cow be milked so the
baby could have some wholesom e country refreshment. For the other guests
baskets of apples from his best tree and a round of drinks were brought out. Only when these essentials were accomplished was he prepared to speak…. “Unlike most of the other centenarians, [Vanacha] had a baptismal
certificate. Acco rding to the dates of this document, he was 106, but he
explained that his baptism had been delayed until he was in his fourth year
because his parents lacked funds to pay the priests. Although this was an
echo of an excuse [the visitors] had frequently encountered, Vanacha’ s
vigor, even at 106, was incredib le. A man of about five feet with twinkling
blue eyes and an elegant white mustache, he was the personification of a
kindly and playful grandfather. He credited his slim, wiry body to light
eating, horseback riding, farmi ng, and walking in the mountains. These
days he slept more than he used to, but he felt fine and was looking forward
to the sixty-first anniversary of the Revolution. ”
Although Vanacha Temur was considered one of the healthiest of the
long-living (an American docto r measured his blood pressure at a youthful
120/84), he was not atypical. In Geor gakas’ s analysis of a survey of allAbkhasians over age 90, 85 percent were judged to be mentally and socially
active, only 10 percent had difficulty hearing, and only 4 percent had
eyesight found to be poor. Both men and women in the culture shared a
passion for racing horses, and it was a point of pride for centenarians to
appear on horseback in village parades. In America the concept of remaining extremely active into old age was
just beginning to gain medical credence, but for centuries in Abkhasia
sedentary retirement was unknown except in cases of disability. Typically,
older workers shortened their hours in the fields as they approached 80 and
90; inste ad of laboring for ten to fifteen hours, they might quit after three to
five hours. Yet, this toil was not forced on them. Love of hard work was
deeply ingrained among the Abkhasians, and records showed that a woman
of 109 was paid for forty-nine full workdays in the tea fields one summer. The entire Caucasus mountain range had been famed for centuries as a
“longevity belt. ”  Bordered by the Black Sea on the west and the Caspian
Sea on the east, three separate Russian states laid claim to
supercentenarians: Geor gia (which contains the state of Abkhasia),
Azerbaijan, and Armenia. A mixture of races lives throughout this whole
area, which is only sparsely industrialized; the religion shifts from Moslem
to Christian depending on where  you go, and the climate varies widely from
high alpine (the Caucasus is the tallest range in Europe, cresting at eighteen
thousand feet) to subtropical. These details were important to
gerontologists, because with such a wide diversity of culture, race, and
climate, there was no isolated gene pool to account for the longevity of the
region, nor was there one favored geographical locale—a Shangri-la in
Russia—responsible. In the late 1960 s and early 1970s, the heart-attack epidemic following
World War II reached its peak, and cancer rates had not significantly
changed since the 1930s (the same holds true today, after another three
decades of lavishly funded research). The long-living had avoided both
scour ges to a remarkable degree, and much of the credit for this, besides
frequent exercise, went to diet. Favored with rich land and a climate
suitable for corn, tomatoes, and all manner of truck produce, the population
subsisted on home-grown vegetables and dairy products, with small
amounts of nuts, grains, and meat to round out the fare. (Yogurt, a staple intheir diet, has long had a reputation as a longevity food; to capitalize on
this, one American yogurt comp any ran a series of delightful ads showing
an 89-year -old Abkhasian sampling their product while his cheek is being
pinched by his 1 17-year -old mother. ) Despite the fact that most of the long-living consumed cheese, milk, and
yogurt every day, total intake of fat and calories was unusually low by
Western standar ds, between fifteen hundred and two thousand calories a
day. In order to eat that frugally, many Americans would have to cut fifteen
hundred to two thousand calories from their diets. Daily fat intake for
Abkhasians was sixty grams, exactly half of the U. S. average. Although
they liked to drink the local applejack, only a few supercentenarians
smoked, and this rarely includ ed women, who traditionally shunned this
practice as a prerogative of male life. Almost all were married and had been
since their twenties. Since the region had few paved roads, it was customary
for people to walk distances up to twenty miles a day. One of the first Americans to penetrate this amazingly healthy culture
was Dr. Alexander Leaf, an enlightened Harvard Medical School professor
who was an early champion of prevention. T o bolster his belief that exercise
and diet were the cornerstones of lifelong good health, Leaf made a
pilgrimage to all the places in the world where legendary longevity was to
be found. Abkhasia excited him enormously; there Leaf witnessed firsthand
people surviving in good health to unheard-of old age. On his visit to Abkhasia in 1972, Leaf struggled to keep up with Gabriel
Chapnian, a short, sprightly elder who easily climbed a steep hill to reach
his garden at the age of 117. At 104, Markhti Tarkhil still rose at dawn and
plunged into an icy stream for his morning bath. Leaf wrote, “Markhti
attributes his long life to God, to the mountains, and to a good diet—and he
warns against eating without pepper. His ‘best’ age was 18, but he agrees
with Vanacha that he regarded himself as a young man until the age of 60. ‘I still feel young, I sleep well, ride my horse, eat well, and swim every day,
so I still feel like a youngster, even though not so strong as I once was. ’ ”
As we in the West age, our bodies lose muscle mass and replace it with
fat—at 65, almost half the body weight of both men and women is fat,
double what it was in their twenties. By comparison, nearly all the long-
living Abkhasia ns had lean physiques, with erect spines and firm muscles. Long after retirement, the oldest people thrived on outdoor life—they
tramped up to the high grazing areas in summer and dug potatoes in their
gardens. Even in cases where coronary arteries were blocked or other
damage had occurred to the heart muscle, the walking and climbing in
which everyone engaged seemed to of fset physical limitation. When Leaf brought back photographs of the long-living for National
Geographic  in 1972, millions of readers saw a face of old age that had
never been seen before in this country and scarcely imagined. Twenty years
later, we are facing a huge increase in all age groups over 65, and the long-
living Abkhasians are more and more fascinating to us. In their culture the
“new” old age has existed for generations. They traditionally led lives in
which all the right ingredients came together for conscious, purposeful
longevity—not just a longevity of survivors but of “youth in old age,” the
title Leaf chose for his book. Abkhasians managed to redefine youth so that it was not oppose d to long
survival. Someone could be chronologically old and yet young by their
standards. Jotting down his impression of one 98-year -old named Tikhed
Gunba, Leaf wrote, “Tikhed’ s blood pressure was 104/72 and his pulse was
regular at 84 [beats per minute]. He seemed a very placid individual with
much ‘mileage’ left. In the presence of two centenarians, Tikhed was still
regarded as a youngster. ”
The Supercentenarian “Hoax”
Why, given this idyllic situatio n, haven’ t we all heard of Abkhasia. The
reason is that confusion and mistrust quickly clouded the initial reports
brought back by W esterners. What made Abkhasia so interesting in the mid-
1970s was not lifestyle but the phenomenon of supercentenarianism. The
then-Soviet government wanted to reap a harvest of propaganda by
claiming that their oldest people survived beyond anything known in the
noncommunist world. Tremendous focus was placed on individuals such as
Khfaf Lazuria, the most celebrated of the long-living. Khfaf Lazuria was reported to be the oldest woman who had ever lived. She died in 1975, claiming to be 140, which meant she had been born
twenty-five years before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter that set
off the American Civil War. While alive, Khfaf Lazuria was a petite woman
of only four feet two inches tall. Although frail, she moved nimbly, was
always eager to meet visitors, could thread a needle without glasses, and
was a lively storyteller. Rare for a woman in Abkhasia, she liked to smoke cigarettes, a habit she
had picked up, she said, at age 100. (Since she was too old to be taken for a
woman, she liked to joke, she might as well act like the men. ) Among her
colorful stories, Khfaf recounted her early memories of “the big war in the
North,” which Leaf guessed must refer to the Crimean War of 1853–56. That was also the period when she was abducted by Turks and not returned
home until ten years later, around the year Lincoln was assassinated. Perhaps even more remarkable than Khfaf Lazuria’ s claim to
superlongevity was that her immediate family boasted more than a dozen
members who had lived to be 100. Spellbound, Leaf accepted these tales completely; it therefore came as a
blow when large inconsistencie s began to surface. As it turned out, Khfaf
Lazuria had told every visitor a somewhat different story about herself,
freely changing her age, the number of husbands she’d had, how long her
parents had lived—in fact, few details remained constant. Leaf can be
forgiven for not knowing, as no casual visitor could, that one of the
cherished customs in Abkhasia was lying to strangers. Western visitors who
lingered long enough to acquaint themselves with the area learned that the
Abkhasian love of exaggeration was legendary, particularly if tall tales were
being spun to an outsider. When consulted about how old they thought the long-living actually
were, local gerontologists who had been sent into the region by the then-
Soviet government estimated that some of the long-living were certainly
quite old, upward of 115, but no one in the region who claimed to be 120,
much less 140 or 168, could supply reliable documents. In fact, since 90
percent of the local churches had been destroyed by the Soviets under
Stalin, almost no old records of births, communions, or marriage s existed in
Abkhasia. The final blow came when Zhores Medvedev, one of the most respected
Soviet geneticists, defected to the West in the early 1970s. Medvedev had
traveled through out the Caucasus and was intimately acquainted with the
methods of the gerontologists who worked there. In London he revealed
weaknesses in all the claims of superlongevity: Up to 98 percent of
Abkhasian old people were illiterate and many did not even know their
birthdays. For them, keeping track of time was haphazard, particularly
considering that there was an overlap of the Christian and Moslem
calendars in that region (the Moslem calendar is based on a ten-month
year). Soviet records before 1930 were nonexistent, and suspicions of a
deliberate hoax were raised when Medvedev pointed out that Stalin had
been born in Geor gia. Zealous attempts to convince him that he would live
a long life—som ething that most absolute despots are extremely eager to
believe—had added political fuel to the Abkhasians’ folkloric pride in
reaching extreme old age. The bubble quickly burst. In the cold light of day, there was really no
convincing evidence that families in the Caucasus had produced several
generations of centenarians. When the American yogurt company originally
conceived their campaign of the mother pinching her son’s cheek, they
wanted to find a mother and son who were both over 100 (this seem ed
plausible in a society where women married around 20), but this proved
impossible. Nobody could find a family in which parents and offspring
were both centenarians. Most investigators concluded that the Geor gian
supercentenarians were products of a traditional culture in which being as
old as possible had always been a cause for great social respect. Why We Need Abkhasia
Despite the inconsistencies in his findings, Dr. Leaf stood by the principles
of age preventi on he saw at work in the Caucasus. His work made a
significant difference in turning Americans toward more exercise and better
diet, particularly in terms of heart-attack prevention, but mounting
skepticism force d him to retrac t his support of superlongevity. Abkhasiashouldn’ t be dismissed, howev er; in a world where the vast majority of
societies condit ion their people to expect short lives and condemn the
elderly to a marginal existence, this one society fostered a conscious ideal
of old age as the most rewarding phase of life—and the reward was open to
all who wished to achieve it. To me, Abkhasi a was the place where the traditional concept  of “old”
never took root. The word was banished, and in its place the long-living
pursued an ageless lifestyle—they galloped their horses, worked under the
sun, and sang in choirs in which the youngest member was 70 and the
oldest was no (contrary to Soviet propaganda, which boast ed that the
minimum age was 90). Abkhasia proved that growing older can be a time of
improvement. Abkhas ians toasted one another with the words, “May you
live as long as Moses,” and they venerated the long-living as people who
were achieving an ideal. By far the greatest advantage the long-living enjoyed was this: They
trusted in their way of life. Abkhasians struck Western visitors as
remarkably attuned to the rhythms of life, precisely what we have lost in
this coun try. It’s worth quoting at length from Dan Geor gakas, an American
writer who traveled to Abkhas ia and was among the first to document
inconsistences in centenarian accounts of their age, and still found much to
admire. In his book The Methuselah Factors  Georgakas wrote, “Abkhasians
dislike being rushed, loathe deadlines, and never work to exhaustion. In the
same vein, they consider it extremely impolite to eat quickly or to eat too
much. …Their routines have a tempo more linked to biological rhythms than
the helter -skelter patterns that predominate in most developed countries. ”
One gets the sense of a peopl e who have reached a natural  balance. Rather than struggling to break unhealthy habits, their culture had woven
good health into their overall view of life. Seventy percent of their food
consisted of vegetables and dairy products, and a further uniqu e aspect of
the traditional diet was the insistence on freshness. “Vegetables were picked just before cooking or serving, and if meat was
to be part of the menu, guests were shown the animal before it was
slaughtered. Whatever the food served, all leftovers were discarded,
because they were considered harmful to health. Such concern for freshnessguaranteed that a minimal loss of nutrients took place between  garden and
table. Most food was consumed raw or boiled, with nothing fried. ”
Light eating and heavy exercise made it easy for Abkhasians to preserve
the lean body outlines considere d most pleasing in their culture (as in ours),
but there was a deeper significance to this than vanity. “The Abkhasians
have been among the few people in the world so appreciative of the ill
effects of fat that even their children and infants remain slim. ” The
traditional love of horses added another tempo to this integrated  way of life
that already embraced work and diet. “From the earliest possible  ages, even
at 2 and 3, child ren were taught to ride. Horses provided the main sport, and
the ability to do equestrian tricks was a mark of individual worth. The
horses were never used as work animals, only for recreation and sports. ”
In every  society, expectation rules outcome. In a culture where wealth is
the highest goal, the entire society will focus on making money, prestige
will accrue to those who make the most, and the poor will be regarded as
failures. In Abkhasia, a great value was placed on longevity; therefore the
entire society felt motivated to live up to that ideal. In America, the reverse
is true; old age is not valued, much less exalted. This helps account for the flagrant manner in which we waste the last
years of life in our society. An extremely pessimistic study from the
government’ s Centers for Disease Control underscores this point. To assess
the health of people at the end of their lives, researchers evaluated seventy-
five hundred individuals who had died in 1986. Their families were asked if
the deceased person could still perform five minimal daily activities in the
year before he or she passed away: dressing, walking, eating, going to the
toilet, and bathi ng. On average, only 12 percent of people who died after
age 65 could be classified as “fully functional” according to these minimal
standards. At the opposite extreme, 10 percent of the subjects needed assistance to
perform three or more of these daily activities in the last six months of life;
these people were classified as “severely restricted. ” The bulk of elderly
Americans falls between these two extremes, in a shadow land between
self-suf ficiency and dependence. It is disturbing enough to realize that only
one person in seven can take care of life’s simplest needs but the figures get
worse the closer you inspect them. In the youngest age category, from 65 to 74, only one-fifth of the people
could be classed as fully functional. About 15 percent showed confusion
when asked where they were; 13 percent had trouble remembering what
year it was; 10 percent could not reliably recognize family and friends. A
higher percentage of people who died from heart attacks remained fully
functional than did those who died from cancer. Fully 49 percent of heart-
attack victims could perform all five activities the year before they died,
compared to only 4 percent of cancer sufferers. Women, besides suffering
more years of disability, were hit harder than men: They were 40 percent
less likely to be able to take care of themselves in the last year of life than
were men and 70 percent more likely to fall into the severel y restricted
category. Another factor that increased the likelihood of disability was not
being married. Researchers consider this study highly significant because few others
have looked as closely at the health status of old people in the critical last
year of life. We have to be caref ul not to extend the findings too far—since
the vast majority  of the elderly are not in their last year, they are much less
likely to be severely restricted. But the CDC figures give us a sobering look
at how far the “new” old age still has to go. Huge differences divide the American and Abkhasian cultures. One
would have to go back to 1920 to find a time when the majority of
Americans lived  in rural areas. A lifetime of light eating and considerable
physical activity  is something we have to consciously learn again, but to
fixate on those ingredients would cause one to miss the spirit of Abkhasia,
which to me is far more inspi ring as a motivation to survive to 100. I
recently received  a letter from a concerned woman named Mary  Ann Soule,
inviting me to a conference on “conscious aging. ” She ended it with the
following eloquent statement:
If we continue to succumb to modern America’ s stereotypic vision
of aging, fearing the changes in our bodies, resisting the natural
transitions of life, and avoiding the unknown territory of death, we
will deny ourselves and the whole of civilization the gifts of age:
mature perspective, seasoned creativity, and spiritual vision. The truth of this comes through every day when I talk to older patients. One of them, a retired office manager, once ruefully remarke d to me, “I
always wanted to live a long time, but I never wanted to grow old. ” He said
this ironically; it went without saying that he couldn’ t have one without the
other. But why not. He was quite healthy and active, yet unfortunately he
saw himself  as old, which in America means entering a no-man’ s-land of
lost dignity and uncertain self-worth. After his 1972 visits with the long-
living, Alexander Leaf came away “feeling that to live to be 100 was a most
natural and simp le thing. It took only a brief time back in Boston before the
feeling was just another exotic memory. ”
This country has recently experienced an unparalleled boom in
centenarianism. The number of Americans who are 100 or over is currently
estimated at 35,800—double what it was ten years ago and expected to
double again before the year 2000. This figure comes from the Census
Bureau, which accepts people’ s reported ages without verification. (A
detailed investigation of Social Security recipients who reported their age as
100 revealed that 95 percent were exaggerating; this is easy to do, since
being 97 or 98 carries much less mystique than being 100. ) Even assuming that a certain number of respondents have inflated their
ages to cross the magical centur y mark, statisticians agree that at least 1 in
10,000 Americans is 100 or older. This is a historic number, and yet it is
only an average. Some regions of the country already boast incredibly high
ratios of longev ity. In Iowa, where life expectancy is the highest in the
nation, 1 person  out of 3,961 is over 100, followed by South Dakota, with 1
out of 4,168. By contrast, some  areas are far below the national average in
centenarians: The last two states  on the Census Bureau list are Utah, which
reports only 1 centenarian per 19,358 people, and Alaska, with 1 in 36,670. By historical standards, howev er, even these low figures are astonishing. What they imply is that we have won the struggle for longevi ty and now
face the challenge of becoming a land where the long-living are still young. Senility: The Darkest FearMost of us would find it easier  to bear the physical afflictions  of old age
than the mental  ones. In India, where I grew up, age is still equated with
wisdom. Rural villages are run by the panchayat,  a counc il of five elders
who have gained respect and authority because of their venerable age. In
the West, the longer one lives, the more one is suspected of mental
incompetence. Alzheimer ’s has probably surpassed cancer for the dubious
honor of being the most feared  disease in America. I know 60-year -olds
who obsessively pore over articles about Alzheimer ’s and panic whenever
they forget a friend’ s telephone number, so convinced are they that
contracting Alzheimer ’s is only a matter of time. “Put at its crudest,” Anthony Smith wrote in The Body, “the advances of
medicine are enabling more and more of us to achieve senility. ” That is too
dark a view. Only 10 percent of people over 65 exhibit any symptoms of
Alzheimer ’s, but there is no doubt that this figure escalates with increasing
age, and after 75, up to 50 percent of the elderly may show some evidence
of the disease. One dark legacy from the “old” old age was the belief that
senility is a normal, inevitable aspect of aging. Paradoxicall y, the most
important factor in bursting this myth was Alzheimer ’s itself. The disorder
was discovered  as early as 1906 by Alois Alzheimer, a prominent
investigator and physician in Munich. He dissected the body of a 55-year -
old wom an who had been ment ally deteriorating for three years before her
death. In her brain Dr. Alzheimer found visible damage that could not be
explained as normal aging: twist ed, tangled nerves and hardened deposits of
chemical plaque. No one had ever before linked senility with a specific disease, and by
discovering the one named after him, Dr. Alzheimer struck a decisive blow
to the theory of “normal” senili ty. However, social attitudes often last long
beyond their time, and it took seventy years for the importance of
Alzheimer ’s discovery to be fully grasped. In recent decades, recognition of
Alzheimer ’s disease has increas ed dramatically, as it has been realized that
the illness afflicts over 1 million Americans, or around 50 to 60 percent of
all people who exhibit senile dementia. Dementia is the medica l term for a
host of symptoms associated with the general term senility: forgetfulness,
confusion, disorientation, short attention span, irritability, and decreased
intelligence. Lewis Thomas dubbed Alzheimer ’s “the disease of the century” and
spoke eloquently of it as “the worst of all diseases, not just for what it does
to the victim, but for its deva stating effects on families and friends. It
begins with the loss of learned skills, arithmetic and typing, for instance; it
progresses inexorably to a total shutting down of the mind. It is,
unmercifully, not lethal. Patients go on and on living, essential ly brainless
but otherwise healthy, into advanced age, unless lucky enough to be saved
by pneumonia. ”
Alzheimer ’s patients go in and out of lucidity in the early stage s of their
ordeal. In his book The Myth of Senility, Dr. Siegfried Kra of Yale quotes a
colleague’ s wife, herself a successful physician and children’ s writer, who
was forced to retire due to Alzh eimer ’s in her midfifties. At the outset she
still had lucid periods, particular ly in the early hours between three and five
in the morning ; during that time she gave utterance to the dark
transformation that was taking place inside her. All she could manage were
halting phrases that are all the more poignant given how much she had
loved words and how well she had used them:
I have a neurological problem. Who needs it. No one. Nobody likes me. I don’ t like myself either. I used to be a physician, I used to drive a car. What do I want. I don’t
want to be here. I am afraid of everything. All I am is garbage. I belong in the garbage can. You need a new wife. This one is no good anymore. No one knows my name anymore—because I am nothing. I’ve lost everything—the health service, typing, and writing. I don’t
have any skills. All I do is eat. I have to go away. I can’t read my
own writing. I’ve lost a kingdom. I don’ t sing anymore. I probably won’ t sing again. What is the source of this terrible disease. Much speculation has been
offered: a rare “slow virus” that takes decades to mature; a defect in the
immune system that causes the victim’ s own antibodies to attac k the brain;
increased accumulation of alum inum in the neurons. None of these causeshas been  proved. Although high levels of aluminum have been found in the
brains of Alzhei mer’s patients, elevated levels of the metal are not found in
the patients’ bloodstreams. Some popular books have sounded the alert against using aluminum foil,
aluminum cookw are, and deodorants based on aluminum salts, but millions
of people use these products without acquiring Alzheimer ’s. Some
physiological abnormality is more likely to be at fault; perhap s the blood-
brain barrier that normally excludes aluminum from entering the brain has
broken down, allowing these deposits to develop. Another reason to suspect
that the brain itself has gone awry is that at least one critical
neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, is deficient in Alzheimer ’s patients,
impairing the ability of brain cells to communicate with one another. Alzheimer ’s is presently incurable. There is no viable prevention,
although investigators believe they have found indications of genetic
markers for the disease in some families. After the onset of the disease,
medical care is limited to tranquilizing or sedating the patient. These efforts
do not affect the outcome but help reduce the psychological distress that
patients and family so acutely  feel. The real hope lies with cases of
dementia that are not the result of Alzheimer ’s, for once the myth of
“normal” senility was overcom e, it became apparent that more than one
hundred differen t treatable disorders could mimic the symptoms of senile
dementia, including thyroid deficiency, strokes, and syphilis. How the Brain Resists Aging
Aging of the brain is not enough to cause Alzheimer ’s or any of these other
disorders. Over time the structure of the brain is known to change. It grows
lighter, for example, and shrinks slightly. One of the clichés of neurology is
that the human brain loses roughly a million neurons per year as it ages; this
created a convenient rationale for seeing the onset of senility as the result of
a decaying brain. However, the flaw in this expla nation is that people who don’t become
senile presumably have lost the same number of neurons (this has to be leftto conjecture, since reliable neuron counts can’t be made in living people). At present it isn’t known why one old brain stays lively and creative—one
thinks of Miche langelo designin g St. Peter ’s when he was nearly 90 or of
Picasso painting  at the same age and Arthur Rubinstein playing the piano in
Carnegie Hall—while another starts to deteriorate. One theor y, based on
animal research, is that our brains grow new connections as we age. As
more neurons die, these new connections may compensate for the loss in
some individuals. No two brain cells ever actually touch physically. They reach toward
each other acros s a gap, or synapse, using hundreds or thousand s of hairlike
filaments called dendrites. The effect is like that of two twiggy trees almost
intertwining in the wind (the word dendrite  is deriv ed from  the Greek word
for “tree ”). Just at the point where two filaments almost meet, a chemical
signal can be sent from one neuron to another. The basic  chemicals
involved are well known. One of them is acetylcholine, which is deficient
in Alzheimer ’s patients; another is dopamine, the lack of which leads to
Parkinson’ s disease. No one knows precisely why some neurons grow fifty
dendrites for sending message s while others grow ten thousand. One
encouraging finding, however, is that by remaining mentally active, older
people may actually be growing new dendrites all the time. This much-publicized news was founded on brain research by Marian
Diamond at Berkeley, who showed that the brains of rats grew or shrank
according to the kind of experiences they were exposed to. Rats confined to
small cages and deprived of social interaction with other rats began to
develop shrinkin g cortexes and a loss of dendrites. On the other hand, if an
old rat was put back into rat society and given lots of stimulati on, its brain
expanded and grew new dendrites. This helped to give a physiological
explanation for something we have all observed: Lonely, isolated old people
are much more likely to be confused, disoriented, dull, and vacant than are
their peers who remain actively involved with family and friends. Because of our materialistic bias, growing new dendrites sounds very
scientific and reassuring. In actuality, the situation turns out to be more
complex. To have more dendrites is not the same as having a more
developed brain. Babies are born with many more dendrites than adults
have; the proces s of maturation consists of pruning the excess, whittling thecortex down to its most useful connections. However, it is still encouraging
to find that old brains may be capable of replacing lost dendrites as they are
needed. It was long thought that we are born with a set number of brain cells that
never divide to form new ones, yet recently it has been found that the DNA
in neurons is active, which may lead to new conclusions. Some neurologists
also doubt that the brain is actually losing a million neurons a year. Robert
Terry, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Diego,
determined that there is no significant decline in neuron density in three
important areas of the brain. The number of large neurons does decrease,
but is offset by an increase in smaller neurons. Also, large neurons appear
not to be dying but shrinking. Two other neuroscientists, Samuel Weiss and Brent Reynolds at the
University of Calgary in Alberta, found that they could stimulate dormant
brain cells to active life. They cultured mouse neurons in the laboratory and
gave them a chemical called epidermal growth factor, causing some
immature, inactive brain cells to divide and form mature ones. The human
brain is almost certainly storing such dormant cells perhaps as a
replacement reserve. It is also encour aging that the brain has its own natural mecha nisms for
activating itself  in old age. New dendrites grow longer and sprout new
branches past age 80. As neurons shrink, they create new synapses, which
in turn stimulate more electr ochemical activity in the brain. Natural
substances stimulate this growth and repair—in particular nerve growth
factor (NGF), one of a class of proteins known as trophic factors. NGF
seems to have important functions. At Johns Hopkins, NGF prevented the
degeneration of old neurons in rats and monkeys; when injected into the
brains of old rats, it significantly improved their spatial memory. One hope
is that Alzheimer ’s patients can regain function using chemicals that induce
neuron activity (nerve growth factors have already been tried in Sweden
with some success). All this good news about the aging brain lifts our expectations that to
keep one’s faculties intact is completely normal. “Older people may not be
as quick in timed tests,” neuroscientist Robert Terry remarked, “but they
don’t lose judgment, orientation, or vocabulary. There is no way that peoplelike Picasso, the cellist Pablo  Casals, or Martha Graham could have
continued to be so successful on half a brain. ”
Preserving intelligence in old age. To document whether declin e in
intelligence is a natural part of aging, researcher Lissy Jarvik at Columbia
conducted studies on twins beginning in 1947. The subjects showed no
significant drop in I. Q. from ages 65 to 75. Often there is a sharp drop in
intelligence in the year preceding one’s death, but there are many
inconsistencies from individual to individual, and also from one intelligence
test to another. Old people cannot simply be lumped togethe r; it is the
individual, not old age alone, that makes the dif ference. As corro borating evidence, we can turn to a long-term study at Duke
University that found no general decline in intelligence among older
subjects (ages 65 to 75) unless they were suffering from high blood
pressure. It is well known that small, often barely detectable strokes are
associated with hypertension, which may be at work here. Whatever the
specific cause, sickness, not the aging process itself, seems to create the
decline in mental functioning so long associated with senescence. Although
the neurological  picture is not yet clear, it is completely realistic to expect
to survive with your memory and intelligence intact. The topic of aging and I.
The Hayflick limit is a concept that suggests that every generation of cells is the offspring of a limited number of mother cells. However, the author argues that this is not directly applicable to real-life aging, as humans produce new cells throughout their lives, and cells can adapt to their environment.
What is the Hayflick limit, and how does it relate to real-life aging?
The text does not explicitly discuss the risks and limitations of hormone replacement therapy, but it does mention the potential side effects of giving human growth hormone to elderly individuals, which led to a temporary rejuvenation, but the benefits were not sustained after the treatment was stopped.
What are some of the potential risks and limitations of hormone replacement therapy?
The region of Abkhasia is significant because it is a place where the traditional concept of aging is reversed, and people are expected to be active and engaged in their communities until the end of their lives. The author argues that this culture's emphasis on lifelong learning and mental and physical activity is the key to their remarkable longevity.
What is the significance of Abkhasia in the context of aging research?
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What are some of the limitations of genetic engineering in the context of aging research?
The text highlights the limitations of medical research in combating aging, citing the example of the failed attempt to rejuvenate elderly individuals with human growth hormone. It also emphasizes the importance of personal initiative and lifestyle choices in determining one's health and longevity.
What are some of the potential limitations and challenges of relying solely on medical research to combat aging?