S. Jay Olshansky Quotes

Ageing is, simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That's all that ageing is.

Aging is basically the build-up of error: error at the genetic level, error at the cellular level. Cells normally repair themselves; that's why you heal when you get a cut. But even the mechanism of repair eventually falls apart.

I don't see any absolute biological limit on human age.

'Aging' has been bad ever since we figured out it led to dying.

Aging is mostly the failure to repair.

I have little doubt that gerontologists will eventually find a way to avoid, or more likely, delay, the unpleasantries of extended life.

For healthy adult people, the really big thing we can foresee are ways of intervening in the ageing process, either by slowing or reversing it.

You can open up a centenarian's brain, and you'll see some areas that look like that of a 50-year-old or of a 110-year-old. You can have variation in the basic process of aging, called senescence, in different parts of the same body.

One characteristic aspect of ageing is the increased susceptibility to disease, particularly age-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

I'm not getting any younger. You're not getting any younger, so yeah. You age.

It is, of course, quite natural that a biologist whose attention had been aroused by noticing in his own case the phenomena of precocious old age should turn to study the causes of it.

I think there are two aspects to ageing: there's the physical side and what's happening inside.

How young can you die of old age?

If you asked me what caused aging, I would say free radicals and molecules, which spontaneously shift and form and cause damage in all our cells and genes. The body usually repairs and replaces the damage in these genes. But as you get older, the aging clock turns down those defenses.

What makes me so certain that the natural human lifespan is far in excess of the actual one is this. Among all my autopsies (and I have performed over 1000), I have never seen a person who died of old age. In fact, I do not think that anyone has ever died of old age yet. We invariably die because one vital part has worn out too early in proportion to the rest of the body.

Most people think that aging is fatal and scientific data shows that that's not true.

Aging is not one process. It's many different things going on that cause us to age. I have a program that at least slows down each of these different processes.

I'd be happy to live till 80 as long as I was comfortable and in good health. Mind you, ask me again on the eve of my 80th birthday. Even so, I hope we don't all start living to be 120. I'm not sure I'd cope with another 60 years.

Ageing is inevitable, and the idea that we can be eternally youthful is the pitfall of our society.

Basically, the body does have a vast amount of inbuilt anti-ageing machinery; it's just not 100% comprehensive, so it allows a small number of different types of molecular and cellular damage to happen and accumulate.

Age is not our fault.

The evolutionary theory of senescence can be stated as follows: while bodies are not designed to fail, neither are they designed for extended operation.

I don't think about my physical age.

We know in the field of aging that some people tend to senesce, or grow older, more rapidly than others, and some more slowly.

You know, there's chronological age, there's biological age, and there's psychological age. Chronological age, there's nothing you can do about, which is I'm 52. You set that number aside.