Prolongevity: Back to the future through… the past?

You have probably noticed them at your local drugstore or your favourite organic shop: Hildegard von Bingen herbs, Ayurvedic sweets, Taoist teas… You may never have bought (into) them but the fact that they have been on offer for years means that they must be selling... It may also suggest that our modern vision of health prevention may not be quite as novel as we’d like to think, and that the pursuit of healthy longevity is far from new. We already discussed the somewhat tortured cultural search for anti-aging and immortality in “Anti-Ageing and the Portrait in the Attic”, but this time, we’d like to take you on a different journey.

At epiAge, we offer cutting-edge technology to assist you in your longevity pursuits and we regularly discuss the newest research on the epigenetic effects of various interventions. But, this time, we’d like to broaden the perspective and see what the past has to offer to the present in terms of health prevention. Indeed, inhabitants of the Blue Zone regions do not seem to derive their spectacular longevity from swallowing their meals in pill form or spending their time hibernating in cybernetic machines. On the contrary, their vitality seems to stem from cultivating age-old traditions – be it in their diets, their exercise regimens or their attitudes towards life.

So, our next series will be taking you on a small historical voyage with a few ports of call to the roots of prolongevity. “Prolongevity” was a term coined by medical historian Gerald Gruman in the early 1960s, who defined it “ […] as the significant extension of the length of life by human action. The prefix 'pro-' is used here in the sense of 'forth' or 'a moving forward', while 'longevity' retains its customary meaning of 'length of life'." ‍

We like this dynamic definition at epiAge, because not only do we think that you can do a lot to increase your healthy longevity, but we actually witness the amazing effects of prolongevity endeavours on a daily basis, as our customers turn back the clock to live longer and healthier lives!

Stay tuned…

Access our first fascinating Prolongevity episode on the Mediterranean Diet here!

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Sources

Buettner, Dan. The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest. Washington: National Geographic Books, 2008

‍Gruman, Gerald Joseph, A History of Ideas about the Prolongation of Life, New York: Springer Publishing Company Inc., 2003 [originally published in Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1966], p. 3.