Everyone would love to live a long healthy life void of illnesses and full of enjoyable activities. A group of scientists have been working to materialize a proposal introduced in 1980 by a physician from Stanford University, that would enable people to live healthily until into old age and pass of natural causes.
These group of researchers intend on focusing on a new approach to aging by targeting the basic aging process that is the basis of most age-linked chronic diseases and finding ways to treat, alleviate or prevent these disorders instead of a single one of them. Aging is a reliable predictor of the likelihood to develop chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease. One promising drug still under testing, metformin, has been used to manage diabetes but has shown potential in delaying the onset of some age-associated diseases. The team led by Dr. Barzilai hopes to extend the human health span using the next generation of drugs. It won’t be cheap though; they need about 50 million dollars to conduct a 5-year study. Additionally, Dr. Barzilai is also working on isolating genes that are responsible for keeping men and women healthy for long.  By doing so, they will be closer to identifying more drugs that mimic the effect of the genes.
Conclusive results are yet to be achieved. The experts thereby caution anyone on the risk of using substances that have been rumored to alter the aging process such as resveratrol or growth hormones. These substances exist in an industry that has been known to market products before they are fully and adequately tested. Additionally, they warn that using drugs that fend off any diseases related to age should not be a substitute for living a healthy life (Brody, 2016).

References

Brody, J. (2016). Finding a Drug for Healthy Aging. https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/. Retrieved 19 May 2021, from https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/pursuing-the-dream-of-healthy-aging/.