Biologically speaking, humans are not meant to live forever. People age for a variety of reasons; but a few of the main issues are the amount of free radicals produced by your body as you age from natural biological processes and your organs simply aging and not working well enough to complete their jobs. With old age also comes increased risk of disease. Modern medicine has done a wonderful job in treating and preventing many life threatening diseases, and overall increasing the life expectancy of the average human.
I think with increased life expectancy people have become lazier, more conservative, and less adventurous. Often subconsciously, people feel that one of the goals in life is to live as long as possible. This makes sense from a evolutionary standpoint; you want to pass on your genes to your offspring and make sure they successfully mate and pass on your genes again. Staying alive longer can help ensure the continuation of your genes. This is important in keeping the human race alive, but do you really need to live to 90 or 100 to complete that goal? Back to the original point; people in today’s society want to save all their money so they can someday do all these bucket list activities when they retire someday. The problem? Retirement age is increasing at a scary rate. Today the average American plans to retire at 66 years of age, as compared to 57 two decades ago (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100744474). By the time you reach retirement age, you won’t be able to do most of the activities you put off when you were younger.
Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating neurodegenerative disease commonly associated with old age. It has been a popular disease for research because of its prevalence and paradoxical nature. Previous research has found that insulin signaling in aging brain decreases to help prevent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. However, more recently it has been found that decreased insulin signaling in the brain due to insulin resistance can actually lead to the common causes of Alzheimer’s, neurofibrillary tangles (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1552526013029221). So the question is: do you give more insulin to Alzheimer’s patients to combat insulin resistance? Or not interfere with the biological processes meant to protect the brain?
The Takeaway Message
There is no cure for Alzheimer’s, and medications do little to slow the progress of the disease. The prevalence of Alzheimer’s in the elderly nowadays is staggering. 1 in 9 adults over 65 years old (about the average age of retirement) have the disease. 1 in 3 adults over 85 years old are affected by the disease. What does this say? Maybe Alzheimer’s is just your bodies way of telling you its not meant to live this long.
Everyone has to die of something, and the longer you live, the greater chance you have of getting Alzheimer’s. My advice; save less and live more, because humans are not meant to live forever.