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Longevity seekers may not have sufficient information to give them an understanding of what lies ahead as they enter their eighth and ninth decades of life. The problem is not cataracts, erosion of bone (osteoporosis), loss of muscle mass, heart failure or mental decline per se, that are inevitable consequences of living long. These are individual features of aging that emanate from a problem called cell senescence.

During the years of youth cells divide (mitosis), die off (called apoptosis) and renew themselves (daughter cells). But with advancing age a significant portion (5% to 20%) of cells don’t divide and renew.

Recently it has been discovered that these zombie senescent cells drive aging and increase frailty and mortality. Some 25-50% of people over the age of 85 today are frail. Frailty is 15% in the elderly population and 54% among those hospitalized. When senescent cells were injected into young mice, they become old and frail, and they also died prematurely. This is newly recognized science.

When muscles shrink (sarcopenia), something simple like lifting oneself out of a chair may become a challenge. Stuck on the toilet seat is another way of saying it. Add frequent urination and chronic constipation that are the subject of many jokes among seniors and that is what many longevity seekers have to look forward to.

How biologists see the problem

Biologists also examine and measure underlying causes of ageing: genetic instability requiring DNA repair, telomere shortening (end caps of chromosomes), stem cell exhaustion, hormone decline and weakened cellular energy (mitochondria).

But chasing down each one of these problems without eradication of senescent cells is like forcefully adjusting the fuel needle on the dashboard of your car from empty to full without actually filling the gasoline tank. Cataracts can be removed but the underlying problem of cell senescence remains.

Another seemingly idiopathic problem that appears to come out of nowhere is scarring of the lung, called pulmonary fibrosis. Even retirees who have never smoked tobacco develop this problem. This again is the result of cellular senescence. Of course, this can run a fatal course. Anti-senolytic agents have already been successfully demonstrated in humans with pulmonary fibrosis.

What the mirror says

To make things worse, what we look like in the mirror is not our old Cleopatra/Tarzan king-of-the-jungle selves. Getting old can be demoralizing.

Cell senescence can take the desire to live out of every longevity seeker. The answer is not to take more and more drugs that address each and every disease of aging but to induce these zombie senescent cells to die off. If there were only a lamp to rub for a genie to pop out and say: “Senescent cells be gone!,” and they vanished.

The fight against aging may almost seem futile, that is, till now.

Three molecules to overcome cell senescence

Biologists say senolytic medicines are at hand. They won’t take years to develop. They worked equally well in young and old in the animal lab (never too old to benefit). And in fact, while drug companies race to develop synthetic molecules, an extract from strawberries, fisetin, is feverishly being studied in the past couple of years for its remarkable ability to induce death of senescent cells. Fisetin even improved the behavior and mental function of lab animals.

On another research track, investigators have identified vitamin D as another major agent that delays or reduces frailty. A minimum 75 nanomole/liter blood level of vitamin D is proposed, or about 2000 IU per day.

A third approach is to provide supplemental spare parts (nucleotides: adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine – the letters of the DNA ladder) to facilitate DNA repair.

These three nutrients are now combined in Longevinex®.

The sooner these anti-senolytic agents are used the sooner your body starts discarding aged cells.

Is America ready for this?

Americans may be living longer than ever imagined. The boom in the number of longevinarians is being hidden by premature deaths from opioid drug overdoses, persistent tobacco smoking and unhealthy diets among pockets of poverty-stricken Americans who live no longer than people in the third world.

The challenge to maintain independent living must address the problem of frailty. This is not on the mind of most doctors who are trained to treat the symptoms of age-related disease as they occur, rather than prevent or slow aging.

The cost of anti-senolytic drugs

Virtually every retiree ought to be placed on anti-senolytic agents. Drug companies are racing to create a new class of expensive anti-senolytic drugs that will surely be beyond affordability of most Americans. Provision of a $25/month anti-senolytic nutraceutical for 41 million Americans over the age of 55 would cost $12.3 billion. That is a relatively small amount next to $702 billion Medicare spending (2017).

In the above scenario, anti-senolytic pills would add 1.74% to current Medicare spending and save hundreds of billions in healthcare costs per year. Instead, Medicare cuts are being planned. The U.S. has no choice but to trim Medicare spending or face insolvency.

For now, longevity seekers can’t wait on government to provide pills that would slow or reverse aging. If these pills work, there would be a lot less doctoring. Hospital beds would be empty. It is not a welcome scenario for the profit-making disease-care industry.

Recognize, anti-senolytic drugs would crash health care sector stocks and Big Pharma itself. But these pills would be sought after by those longevity seekers who can make up their own minds rather than wait for an aggregate (and unlikely) decision from government.

The cost of caring for our parents

After reading this, I expect some people to say they never want to live that long. But the fact is, our parents and grandparents ARE living into their ninth and tenth decades of life and costing a small fortune in out-of-pocket expenses to care for them. Forget buying Ensure® for your elderly parents.

Forget buying the portable alert systems (“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”). Forget installing guard rails in your elderly parents’ bathrooms. Forget the pressure stockings to prevent blood clots. Forget purchasing an electric chair. Sneak the anti-senolytic agents into their oatmeal in the morning.

An example

I recall a bed-ridden woman in her 80s I was introduced to. I visited her at her home. She had to put her false teeth in place before I was allowed to visit her. The reason I was invited to meet her was because her son had opened a Longevinex® capsule and placed the powder into her liquid multivitamin every morning without her knowledge.

Over time her vision appeared to worsen. Her son was a retired optometrist and searched around for an old pair of prescription glasses. He put those on her nose and she could see clearly enough to start reading books again. The local library began delivering 7 books a week for her to read. Her vision had actually improved. She just needed a milder eyeglass prescription.

Soon she began getting out of bed to wash the dishes and even took a vacation trip in a car hundreds of miles out of state. She just used her walker out of habit. The genie had done his job. Her family never told her about Longevinex®. She told me she thought it was a miracle from God. I thought best to never tell her it was anything other than that.