I have little doubt that gerontologists will eventually find a way to avoid, or more likely, delay, the unpleasantries of extended life. – S. Jay Olshansky
A lifetime of low calories has come naturally to the longest-lived people in the world… in the Japanese archipelago of Okinawa. – S. Jay Olshansky
Someone will eventually succeed in this hunt for a longevity pill, and when they do, one of the greatest advances in the history of medicine will have been achieved. – S. Jay Olshansky
What we know for sure from our work and from others’ is that mice have a life span of 1,000 days, dogs have 5,000 days, and we humans have 29,000 days. Recognizing that the duration is limited, and aging is inevitable, focus the attention on enhancing the quality of the days you have. – S. Jay Olshansky
Do we really want to continue to push out the envelope of survival only to see other things crop up that we may not like? – S. Jay Olshansky
Exercise is roughly the only equivalent of a fountain of youth that exists today, and it’s free to everyone. – S. Jay Olshansky
While eliminating smallpox and curtailing cholera added decades of life to vast populations, cures for the chronic diseases of old age cannot have the same effect on life expectancy. A cure for cancer would be miraculous and welcome, but it would lead to only a three-year increase in life expectancy at birth. – S. Jay Olshansky
We’re not trying to make us live forever; we’re not trying to even make us live significantly longer. What we’re trying to do is extend the period of healthy life. – S. Jay Olshansky
The modern rise of Alzheimer’s Disease in the twentieth century is not a sign of failure. It’s a sign of success. Success in living long enough to see that disease expressed. – S. Jay Olshansky
Once you avoid the things that accelerate aging like smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, and excessive sun exposure, you’ve done about as much as you can to influence your aging process. – S. Jay Olshansky
The evolutionary theory of senescence can be stated as follows: while bodies are not designed to fail, neither are they designed for extended operation. – S. Jay Olshansky
Growing new limbs, copying internal organs like a Xerox machine, exponential increases in computing power, better eyes and ears – I could read stories like this endlessly. – S. Jay Olshansky
If you do an autopsy on an 85-year-old who died of a stroke, you will find five other things that person was about to die from. – S. Jay Olshansky
In Genesis 6:3, it says man can live to be 120, but there is no scientific basis for it. – S. Jay Olshansky
Exercise is roughly equivalent to an oil lube and a filter for a car. You don’t have to do it, but when you do, it makes the car run a lot better. – S. Jay Olshansky
We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease. – S. Jay Olshansky
Just because someone looks old doesn’t mean he or she is. The skin of some people who spend a lot of time outdoors seems to age very rapidly. Someone can look 80 or 90 and only be 40 to 50. – S. Jay Olshansky
When you hit your 40s, you begin to take notice of the effects of aging because people that you know begin to die of heart attacks and tumors, so we take notice of the effects of aging. – S. Jay Olshansky
People pushing the idea that everyone can live to be 100 are perpetuating a myth that goes all the way back to the Bible. – S. Jay Olshansky
Fixing obesity is going to require a change in our modern relationship with food. I’m hopeful that we begin to see a turnaround in this childhood obesity epidemic. – S. Jay Olshansky
Researchers have been looking for biomarkers of age for a long time and have failed. People sell tests out there to measure your biological age, and none of them work. There’s no evidence that you can measure biological age with any reliability. – S. Jay Olshansky
Once DNA acquires the ability to persist forever, the carriers become disposable. Essentially, our bodies are designed to last long enough to reproduce. – S. Jay Olshansky
Our concepts of aging really should be blurring because there are plenty of people who make it to older ages who aren’t really any different in many ways than people who are decades younger. – S. Jay Olshansky
The only control we have over the duration of our life is to shorten it, and we do that all the time. – S. Jay Olshansky
In the developed world, we live 30 years longer, on average, than our ancestors born a century ago, but the price we pay for those added years is the rise of chronic diseases. – S. Jay Olshansky
The Faustian trade of the 20th century was, we got 30 years of additional life, but in return we got heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s and sensory impairments. The question is: What Faustian trade are we making now, as we go after heart disease, cancer, stroke and Alzheimer’s? – S. Jay Olshansky
