Ever since the fountain of youth people have been looking for a medication or treatment that would significantly prolong their life. Now, with the relatively recent technological advances of the 20th Century, such as genetic engineering, and breakthroughs in learning how organisms age, there may one day be a treatment that extends human life to perhaps as long as 200 years, maybe even longer.

A recent study looking at a 30 percent calorie reduction in monkeys, humans close genetic cousins, showed that the reduce calorie diet was able to significantly extended the lifespan of the dieting monkeys, and they had less cancer and heart disease. Many are skeptical that this research could be applied to humans, but it is clear that more and more research on aging is being done and scientists are learning more about how humans age that ever before.

However, it is entirely possible that the damage that you do to your body by gaining weight and not exercising enough will not be corrected by any anti-aging formula. This is because the best treatment options simply slow down the aging process. Many scientists believe that it is impossible for you to repair many of the damages done to your body by high fat and sugary foods.
A generation of children are becoming more obese than their parents ever were.

This is no evidence that children believe that anti-aging therapies could save them from health consequences in the future, but rather many people have thrown away commons sense ideas regarding healthy eating. A recent study showed that neighborhoods with proportionately higher densities of fast food chains, also had higher incidences of heart disease and cancer. In fact, today’s children may grow up to be the first generation to live fewer years than their parents in the United States.

Therefore, while the promise of extending human lives a modest amount, such as 20 to 30 percent is one the horizon, we may have young adults developing diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure at ages much younger than seen by physicians in the past. While we all hoped that a magic pill could help us to live longer, there isn’t any magic pill that undo the damage caused by years of obesity and health neglect.