39. Is aging a disease?

Hi friends,

Welcome to the thirty-ninth dispatch of How Humans Flourish, a research-informed newsletter on how humans thrive.

New month, new read!

For the month of October, we’re diving into a book that left me pacing the living room floor while I read it. We’re reading Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To by Dr. David Sinclair, scientist and tenured professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Sinclair lays out his thesis by completely overturning what most of us deem immutable.

He writes, “According to The Merck Manual of Geriatrics, a malady that impacts less than half the population is a disease. But aging, of course, impacts everyone. The manual therefore calls aging an ‘inevitable, irreversible decline in organ function that occurs over time even in the absence of injury, illness, environmental risks, or poor lifestyle choices.’ 

Can you imagine saying that cancer is inevitable and irreversible? Or diabetes? Or gangrene? I can. Because we used to say that. All of these may be natural problems, but that doesn’t make them inevitable and irreversible—and it sure doesn’t make them acceptable. The manual is wrong about aging…

I believe that aging is a disease. I believe it is treatable. I believe we can treat it within our lifetimes. And in doing so, I believe, everything we know about human health will be fundamentally changed.” (Sinclair, pg. 113-114 - Kindle)

…Let’s unpack this.

Dr. Sinclair is the originator of the "information theory of aging," which posits that our bodies are constantly experiencing wear and tear, resulting in a gradual loss of cellular information. Over time, this cellular disarray manifests in the form of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, heart disease, and cancer. In other words, what we refer to as "aging" is simply the visible symptom of our bodies' declining ability to maintain cellular integrity.

But here’s where the paradigm shift occurs—according to Dr. Sinclair, we don’t have to accept this decline. 

He writes, “One study found that 85-year-old men are diagnosed with an average of four different diseases, with women of that age suffering from five. Heart disease and cancer. Arthritis and Alzheimer’s. Kidney disease and diabetes. Most patients have several additional undiagnosed diseases, including hypertension, ischemic heart disease, atrial fibrillation, and dementia. Yes, these are different ailments with different pathologies, studied in different buildings at the National Institutes of Health and in different departments within universities. But aging is a risk factor for all of them. In fact, it’s the risk factor. Truly, by comparison, little else matters. 

Consider this: though smoking increases the risk of getting cancer fivefold, being 50 years old increases your cancer risk a hundredfold. By the age of 70, it is a thousandfold.” (Sinclair, pg. 113 - Kindle)

For millennia, we have looked at aging as the inevitable, uncontrollable force of life. But he argues that we’ve been asking the wrong questions. It’s not, "How do we treat aging once it happens?" but rather, "How do we prevent aging from happening in the first place?"

Now personally, I’m not as invested in living forever as some tech founders seem to be, but I am interested in the expansion and extension of quality of life. It’s about sustaining our physical, emotional, and cognitive faculties that allow us to pursue our highest selves. 

It’s about flourishing.

At the heart of this exploration is the concept of agency—agency over our health, our bodies, and our futures. Aging has long been the ultimate limiting factor, a finish line we cannot escape. But what if we could move that line?

Of course with this possibility comes a myriad of questions, both ethical and practical. If we can extend life, who gets access to this technology? How do we redefine our social structures, economies, and relationships with time? What does this mean for how we understand the human condition? 

Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore the cutting-edge research and innovations that allow this conversation to even have some form of merit. We’ll also explore the practical steps you can take to integrate habits that extend quality of life into your daily routine. After all, the future begins today.

To flourishing… and beyond?

With gratitude,