“In Time” is a movie starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried which is a sci-fi futuristic adventure where everyone is 25 years old physically on the outside. Interestingly, Justin Timberlake is older in real life than the actress Olivia Wilde who portrayed his mother. While this idea may seem far fetched, researchers are still looking at why we age and how to delay it.
The various theories on why we age classified as follows:
- Programmed – our cells are programmed to age
- Endocrine – hormones control how we age
- Error theories – we age as errors build up in our body
- Genes – Telomeres, longevity genes play a role in how we age
Just as we have preventive medicine to treat heart issues and other systemic disorders, in the future, we may have a way of treating our aging. For now, a common sense approach of diet, exercise and lifestyle can help us age gracefully….. along with a little tweak from Dr. Shah.