Wow! What a book “Man’s Quest for Immortality” by Mark A. McGee is. Truly an absorbing read. Here’s what the author has to say in the preamble: “Permit me to begin with the ending and end with the beginning. Immortality – the dream. Mortality – the reality. People were born to live, not die. Death is unnatural. It stings. It grieves us to see someone die. It frightens us that we too will die someday. Human beings want to live – not die. They want their lives and the lives of people they care about to continue forever. Anything less than continual, unbroken life brings grief, mourning, and deep pain.
The desire to live forever is the desire to be immortal. We are programmed for life. So, what happened? If we are born to live, why do we die?” As the author delves further into the subject, I couldn’t resist becoming engrossed in this paperback till the very last page. Indeed the quest for immortality seems to exist powerfully in every cell of our body.
And here’s the inevitable corollary…Just as humans long to be immortal they also likewise want to stop the process of ageing. But, isn’t ageing inevitable? Law Wing Sze, a third-year medical student and the grand winner of the FameLab Hong Kong final, explains the latest research into why we grow old. “Each of us is born with an internal biological clock, figuratively speaking, that determines our life span. If we knew how the clock worked, we could understand more about how we age, and eventually, we might find the secret to the mythical fountain of youth”.
Why do we age? “The human body is made up of cells. Each cell is like a Lego block, and builds various organs for different functions. Cells divide to produce new cells for the growth and repair of body tissues. But cell division is not limitless: on an average, human cells can divide only about 50 to 70 times. Afterwards, cells will enter a senescence phase when they no longer divide. At this point, the cells may die, or stay in the body as malfunctioning cells. This causes our bodies to deteriorate and age.”
What accelerates ageing? “As our ‘telomeres’ get shorter, our ‘internal biological clock’ ticks. The shortening process is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. We inherit the DNA that determines the initial length of our ‘telomeres’ from our parents. But there are also various environmental factors at play. The most prominent of these is psychological stress.” What is a ‘telomere’? It is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromosome. The more stressed you are, the faster you age. It’s no surprise that people under immense stress age faster than their more relaxed counterparts. If you compare photos of presidents and prime ministers before and after their tenures you will see some clues. PM Modi is no exception. Ageing is a natural process that we all go through. But we may slow it down a bit. All we need to do is just improve the health of our ‘telomeres’.
A small pilot study by the University of California, San Francisco, showed for the first time that lifestyle changes lead to longer telomeres. Individuals on a vegetarian diet, who took moderate exercise and reduced stress by meeting regularly with a social support group, were found to have longer ‘telomeres’. This shows that we can actually do something to lengthen our ‘telomeres’ and slow down ageing leading healthy lifestyles and worrying less.
I wish to tell my readers here also about another interesting study, recently published in the June online issue of Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. Dr. Chey and her colleagues came to the conclusion that “for seniors who feel years younger than they really are, this might not be just a fruit of their imagination. People who feel younger do have the structural characteristics of a younger brain. The brain scans revealed that seniors who reported feeling younger than their chronological age had more gray matter in key parts of their brain. It’s said that age is a state of mind, but this study suggests that age is really a state of one’s brain.”
Though we all know we must die one day we still crave for terrestrial immortality. That may be the reason why many religions have found “life everlasting” such a powerful recruiting tool. This irreconcilable conflict – experiencing the sadness, frustration and discomfort of the ageing process, yet knowing the folly of wishing it away indefinitely – is precisely why we need myths and see “merchants of life” who trade their “groceries” for more years on earth.
As for me here’s my take. At 74, there is the innate urge to live longer. Yet from within me often comes the cry, “O wretched man I am! Who will deliver me out of this body of death?” I also love the following words of St. Paul, the best reminder that there’s a life beyond the grave, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet… what is perishable will put on the imperishable, and the mortal in us will put on immortality.” Amen!
(Dr. Francisco Colaço is a seniormost consulting physician, pioneer of Echocardiography in Goa.)
