Independent Perspective News

People who is on the verge of their 50s today has significant chances of living a long life. Argentinean doctor Juan Hitzig gives some suggestions on how to live it best.

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Just by having a glimpse at world statistics one can see that longevity is turning into a less and less questionable fact. Never in the history of human kind were there so many people in their fifties; actually, calculations state that every forty seconds there someone somewhere turning fifty years old.

Most of them represent the group of the baby-boomers -born between 1946 and 1964- whose preferences, needs, tastes and worries have great influence in the world economy.

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Within the Hispanic world, their number reaches 120 million, and only within the United States they represent some 80 million souls. These numbers necessarily makes one think of the quality of that aging, especially because never before were there so many people about to grow old as there will be within the next twenty years of this new millennium.

Now, are we human beings inevitable victims of the passing of time, or can each of us do more about their aging than we think aging will do to us?

Among those who believe in the alter argument there's Juan Hitzig, a doctor specialized in Antiaging Medicine, a professor of Biogerontology at the Maimónides University and a member of the American Academy of Antiaging Medicine.

According to him, we should first of all get rid of our gerontophobia and assume this new challenge. Living longer and better is man's most ancient craving but, thanks to the latest achievements of science and technology, today it is also -says Hitzig- the most modern of human rights.

Aging is a universal, continuous and inexorable phenomenon, but its rhythm is changeable if we work on biology and especially on psycho sociology. That's why Hitzig wonders whether we will stick to our parents and grandparents' paradigm, filling the globe with old people's homes, or we will dare to believe that a new way to age is possible.

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-Is there a new way to age?

-I'd say more and more people is aging better. In our grandparents' days, life expectancy was 55 years old. At 50, a woman would wear a black veil and think as an old person, feel like an old person, act like an old person, her whole biology would adapt to that project and, within five years, she would die out of old age. Today, antiaging medicine specialists wonder whether the fact that she knew she would die at 55 made her become old at 50, or there was a social mandate that decided she was old at fifty and that she would die at fifty-five. In other words, was it grandma who made statistics, or was it statistics that conditioned grandma?

-What do you believe?

-I believe each person is as young or old as they want to imagine they are. And that biology goes with that intention, that project. The baby-boomers' generation -today in its fifties- has made great changes in society. We've been a very enthusiastic, very active generation, and we're not willing to repeat our parents and grandparents' model. We've stretched youth up to almost half our lives, keeping much more active than past generations. When I say we keep young, I don't mean one should always be young, but always keep the positive attributes of youth such as enthusiasm, flexibility and a great capacity of adaptation.

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The sooner we start having a criterion of preemptive medicine, thinking more about health than about sickness, the better the bases we set for a healthy longevity, thus making the process of aging longer and the old age shorter. Aging is a process related to autonomy and vitality. Old age is a state that conditions incapacity and dependence, with all the personal, social and economical consequences that entails.

-What are the main myths regarding aging?

-An eastern proverb says we grow old and die because we catch it from those who grow old and die. One of the main myths is the belief that aging is a biological model created to destroy people. The biological sciences themselves have been influenced by this myth. Until 20 years ago, no one made any research on aging. Although the biology of aging is an inexorable process, aging is in no way related to sickness or incapacity. 80% of the processes we attribute to the biology of aging are just being out of shape because of excessive weight or muscular weakness due to sedentary life.

-Does that mean each person ages as they've lived?

-Exactly. This applies too to the peoples and nations.

-What role does personal attitude play in this context?

-It's essential. Individually speaking, we may say there are people who live doing, while some others die living.

-They live dying?

-That's right. They live dying when they stop their personal development, when they quit their projects or kill their illusions. There is a cellular intelligence that detects that attitude and conditions the body decline. In general, healthy people who live long are those who live a full and non-temporal life. They let themselves go, they don't try to stop the flow of their existence. They accompany their biological transformations with attitudes of personal growing and development. We may conclude that our physical body is the materialization of our dreams, projects and illusions.