Living Much Longer

Talk about ambitious! There is a California doctor, Dr. Joon Yun, president of Palo Alto Investors who thinks the day when we stop the aging process may be on the precipice. Called the Palo Alto Longevity Prize, it offers a $1 million cash award to encourage al those researchers out there to restore the adult body's youthful state, perhaps helping to reduce diseases associated with aging and mortality, and improve longevity. Good luck to that. Or maybe Dr. Yun just likes the publicity that is coming forth with this contest.

The prize will be divided into two $500,000 awards, given to the first teams to unlock the secrets of the ability of the body's systems to stabilize in response to stressors. Stressors are supposed to make us age quickly. Aren't you glad you read the garbage I send you here. Haha Now that's stress.  Any way, when the body ages, its ability to recover from diseases, injuries and lifestyle stresses such as a late night or loss of sleep becomes more difficult.  But when we are young blood pressure and elevated blood sugar levels can return easily to normal levels. This ability erodes with age, and the body no longer is able to regulate these changes as effectively, resulting in diseases such as diabetes or hypertension. Supposedly, to control the stressors would add more than 100 more years to our lives.

One prize would be granted to the team to demonstrate it can restore the stressor activity in an aging adult mammal to the levels of a young adult and the second prize would go the first team to extend the life span of a living creature by 50 percent of acceptable published norms. Are you ready for 100 more years of me? I thought so. Let's hope they don't have a prize winner. After all, living twice as long, and in good health, is great physically. But our minds may not be suited for that long a life span. We become bored with life in our final years. Who's to say that boredom won't continue after the discovery. If so, suicide will  dramatically increase as we lose any interest in continuing our lives. After you eat apple pie a few times it becomes mundane, so may our daily lives as we wallow in boredom with it. Well, at least we wouldn't have those high health care costs anymore.

Let's see, how many people in human history sought, and believed they could find the cure to aging?  No matter. Better to ask how many succeeded.  I think we can be sure Dr.  Yun can be added to that list too.