The popular press, even the popular science press, generally does a terrible job of reporting on the state of longevity science. They'll pull a random set of activities, rank them all equally, whether calorie restriction, complete nonsense involving supplements, or serious efforts to achieve rejuvenation after the SENS model of damage repair, and thus fail to achieve or convey any sort of meaningful understanding of what is going on in the field. The nature of the approach taken to treating aging as a medical condition is of very great importance, and the various options currently on the table are far from equal in their potential. Most are either a waste of time and effort, or are going to produce marginal results at best. Most of the time spent on practical implementations is wasted, because it follows paths that cannot plausibly produce good results, sad to say. This article is above average, but that is a low bar to pass at the moment.

Wander down a supplement aisle at your local pharmacy or hop on the internet, and it's not hard to find products that promise to "slow the normal signs of aging" or that offer "long-term well-being at the cellular level." Humans have been trying to outsmart the inevitable for centuries. After hundreds of years of effort, there is still no miracle pill that can turn back time, despite the claims of zealous entrepreneurs. Some pseudoaging treatments over the years have been risky, capable of doing more harm than good. Others have just yielded disappointing scientific results. But there's a silver lining to the snake oil. "If there's such a big market for stuff that doesn't work, imagine how much money there would be for something that does."

Over the past few centuries, modern medicine and other innovations have doubled our life span, but these treatments have focused on curing diseases that spring up during old age, such as cancer and heart disease, rather than decoding the underlying cellular and molecular processes that make the elderly vulnerable to these afflictions in the first place. Given the financial incentive and the enormous demand, one might ponder why aging science still has not yielded clinically proven therapies to combat our decline. The short answer is that aging is mind-bogglingly complicated. Despite the challenges, there's hope for those who want to live healthier for longer. Researchers are uncovering ways to turn back time on aging cells, and several existing drugs are being reborn as antiaging candidates. And big players with deep pockets have jumped into the aging game, eager to wield genomics, big data tools, and machine-learning techniques as weapons against humanity's oldest rival.

"If you talk about increasing life span, some people say, 'Whoa, what about overpopulation? I don't want to be old for 100 years. Life span extension raises natural concerns. On the other hand, if you say, 'I don't want you to develop Alzheimer's, ever,' nobody is going to argue against that." As a result, many in the field of aging have stopped talking about extending life span, preferring to describe their goal as extending "health span," especially because age is the number one risk factor for many diseases.

One of the most promising avenues of aging research is the inroads researchers have made in understanding senescent cells. Like aging in general, senescent cells evolved to benefit young, reproductive members of the species, but they become increasingly problematic for the elderly. When you're young, senescent cells are programmed to stop dividing if they are in danger of becoming cancerous. Not only that, but senescent cells also secrete a host of molecules that, in young people, stimulate regeneration and repair. But over time, as more and more cells turn senescent, levels of these secreted molecules stop positively influencing their neighbors and begin causing inflammation. Groups of senescent cells produce such high levels of these chemicals that other, normal cells are persuaded to turn senescent. The secreted cocktail can even activate a variety of age-related pathologies, including heart disease and certain types of cancer - a disease that senescent cells evolved to thwart in the first place.

There's been a recent "gold rush" of researchers identifying therapeutic compounds that target senescent cells and can periodically deactivate them in older people. Cell-penetrating peptides, dietary flavonols, small interfering RNA, and the cancer drug dasatinib are a few of the many research routes being taken. UNITY Biotechnology aims to clear senescent cells from the kidney, eyes, arteries, and joints using a compound called navitoclax, or ABT-263, that had previously been investigated for cancer. "If chemists can come up with drugs that can kill senescent cells in humans, we think this is going to revolutionize modern medicine. No longer would you have a pill for your blood pressure and a pill for your glaucoma and a pill to stabilize your heart and a pill to improve your kidney function. You'd have a pill that would hit multiple problems that affect the elderly. It is very unlikely that these are drugs that you would have to take every day. Just when enough senescent cells had accumulated again."