Photo by Quinn Dombroski.
Because I am a gerontologist, people often talk to me about their desire for longevity.But is this wise?
I spent three years volunteering in a multi-level care center, observing the difference between lifespan (how long a person lives) and health span (how long a person lives without disability).
The all-too-human desire for longevity reminds me of the Greek myth of Tithonus.
He was a mortal who was the beloved of Eos, the Titan goddess of the dawn. She asked Zeus to bestow eternal life upon Tithonus. Zeus did so.
But Tithonus did not receive eternal youth. Instead, age transformed him from a mortal into a grasshopper.
And that problem--immortality vs eternal youth--has been exaggerated in the 21st Century as people in industrialized nations are living several years longer than their great grandparents.
Advances in sanitation, health education, preventative medicine and curative medicine has allowed more and more people to live into late adulthood, more into their 80s, 90s, and 100s than ever before.
See the post Life Expectancy vs Life Span for definitions and statistics.
However, not all people of advanced age live without disability and disease.
The National Institutes on Aging explains the difference between lifespan and health span in the online publication Biology of Aging. The chapter, "Living Long and Well" they note the important differences and hope that continued research can help close the gap so that people have very few years of disability in advanced age.
A lot of research about the aging process is conducted with insects and animals. However, there is an increase in the number of studies of the oldest old: centenarians and supercentenarians.
It is exciting to read this research and to adopt healthy lifestyle choices advocated by a variety of medical experts. However, I still have that image of Tithonus in mind: Is it wise to petition Zeus, God, or the medical community for immortality?