I don’t think the cosmetic industry is going to spend much of any money on understanding disease, death an aging.
When science finds the right molecules, enzymes, chromosomes that are responsible than they will come up with drug or tools to manipulate it.
They not going spend trillions of dollars on quadrillions of drug combinations and needle injection and hope one of them works. Of having quadrillions clinical trials of hope one of them work.
I don’t know of any tools that can move or manipulate molecules, enzymes or chromosomes.
Gene editing is new and we don’t know the long term effect with monkeying around with genes.
nm
Actually I was being a bit glib with my language there.
But the point is, when it comes to cosmetics, we’re talking about appearances. Any means of making skin look younger would do; even things that might technically damage the skin but make it look more taut (within reason).
So that’s why it might be considered odd that with all the money we’ve poured into cosmetics, essentially all we have are concealers, botox and surgery.
And sun cream as the best / only preventative.
OTOH, if your OP had been “How come we can’t make skin immortal and/or reverse the ageing process?” there’s nothing surprising about our inability to do that. Human skin is a complex organ in a horrendously complex body undergoing countless metabolic processes and interactions with the environment. Here (warning: large image) is a crude overview of human ageing, based on our current understanding.
To solve this problem the government should pass laws and have the FDA weed out all creams, concealers and pills that do bogus claims.
And have FDA overhaul botox well thay are at it.
Because many of the public believe in the claims the cosmetic industry say thinking they are the experts and know what they are doing and is a honest business.
They do.
The fact that there are a number of creams out there making very fancy claims is a combination of:
In what way?
I agree with some of your sentiment at least.
As I said in my thread, you can go right back to the 1950s and there were anti-ageing skin creams, and they made the same kind of claims, in the same way, as the adverts we see today. It’s not in society’s best interests for that to go on decade after decade.
But I’m not sure your approach would work, as, like I say, the main brands don’t outright lie. They can point to some study, somewhere, where a statistically significant proportion of participants reported, say, their skin felt smoother.
The problem is most people aren’t aware of any cherry-picking of studies that may have happened, how small the test group may have been and whether the effect was transient etc
Aging seems to accelerate in some people.
Carrie Fisher looked at least 75. She was actually only 60.
https://goo.gl/images/IGgT5V
Her mom was 84 and looked 70.
https://goo.gl/images/TQpBB0
Attending a high school reunion can be quite a shock. Some people have changed very little and others are nearly unrecognizable.
Some good stuff in this thread.
So the proximate cause of skin aging in the cross-linking of skin polymers, with the more ultimate cause being a variety of mechanisms including epigenetic mechanisms and telomere shortening that are associated with aging overall. And there have been attempts to build alibrary of epigenetic markers that can serve as a clock to judge a biological age.
Factors that go into the rate that that clock moves? Well genetic predisposition is one. Also smoking. Smoking speeds that clock up across tissues, skin, arteries, everywhere. Regular exercise slows it down pretty much all over. And there are thoughts that some nutritional choices (the usual vegetables, fruits, high fiber) can slow down that biological clock (with others of course speeding it up).
Excessive sun exposure seems to be associated with a different epigenetic modification pattern than aging alone. Not at all clear to me how much sun exposure is a risk and how much difference moderate chronic makes as opposed to high intensity intermittent and/or a history of sunburn but it is commonly claimed that UV-A is more associated with burning and UV-B more with aging impacts.
Lack of that much vanity in the general majority population
Curing aging would be terribly expensive, and not a one shot thing but a constant ongoing treatment attacking the actual root cause of aging itself.
I don’t think most people are vain enough to dole out the cash for that, and a few nutty celebs would not generate enough cash flow for it to be profitable
Why would one want to cure looking old anyways?
Unless you are shooting for immortal, which is silly.
I live in an area with lots of aging rich folks. Lots of 75 yo women on their 3rd face-lift. Botox is sold by the gallon at the local doctor supply store.
It only fools you for the first 2 or 3 such people you see. Then you learn the subtle signs that are now obvious to me. The human brain is exceptionally good at recognizing everything about human faces.
If indeed we had an anti-aging cream that really worked and lots of people used it, very soon we’d all know, utterly subconsciously and automatically, how to recognize aged people using the cream vs. actual real younger people.
It’s an arms race only a small percentage can “win”.
I looked at some of the movie stars and pop stars who pay the cash on all the creams, concealers and pills and botox and at the most it makes them look only 10 to 15 years younger!!
Some even look worse before the treatment and some look better. But if a fountain of youth looking like young 20 year old!! :(:(
No we are not there yet with medicine not even looking like a 30 year old!!:mad::mad:
May be in 10 to 15 years from now when medicine get better and the understanding of the human body.
Not gonna happen in less than 100 years.
The diseases of aging are more than wrinkles and vanity. No curing it but slowing down the clock some? Odds are that a medication that slowed down the biological clock at a cellular level would indeed reduce wrinkles but also decrease the frequency of onset of dementia, of cancer, of heart disease, and more.
And yeah, regular exercise and lots of vegetables and fruits does it to no small degree. There are trials to see if metformin does it as well.
Fountain of youth though? No.
We can disagree about whether it’s healthy to want to look good – I would argue there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s a subjective point.
But lack of interest in anti-ageing is something demonstrably false. Cosmetics are a huge industry with anti-ageing a big part of it. Anti-ageing alone will hit $190 billion by 2019. And we all know existing products have little to no real effect, but people are willing to pay that, and hope, regardless.
So something that actually worked, and made a 45-year old look like a 25-year old…yeah name your price. If you had 100% control of the IP I’m sure you would be the richest man in the world overnight.
Well how old you appear and your biological age are two different things. So the “unless” here doesn’t logically follow. (although as I said upthread we’ve been unable to do much about the former so all we can do is try to address the latter, but they are not logically the same thing)
And the mention of “immortal” here suggests to me what this is really about.
There are many tough realities of life we all have to accept. Ageing and death are two of them. So there are various positive messages that people often repeat e.g. “Who’d want to live forever…imagine how boring it would be!?” to make them feel a bit better about it. And some people repeat these things often enough they actually believe them, even if they don’t really make sense.
Being “immortal” is not something physically possible. Living indefinitely, with negligible senescence OTOH, is. However the latter is not so obviously “silly”, so doesn’t really fit the message.
Here is thought:eek::eek::eek: I wonder if some one build a nuclear bomb shelter underground shielding UV waves, sun waves, electromagnetic radiation, space waves and earth pollution if people would live longer and look younger.
The earth magnetic field stops most space radiation but many makes its way through.
Keep in mind the longer people live the more likely they will get cancer. One and Four people will get cancer in US at some point in their life now!!! Wow!!! And this number is to go up to one and two by the year 2050!!!
Cancer is second leading cause of death now under heart disease being the first.
Also Alzheimer and chronic lower respiratory disease is getting up there too!!:(
There is already anti-aging drugs and gene modification in clinical testing coming out later this year.
Scientists have been doing testing on rodents and got them to live far longer by the use of gene modification. In fruit flies they got them to live twice as long!!
There have been number of genes already identify for aging that was not possible before .
But we have no way of knowing by living longer say to 140 or 170 if you will look younger!! Yes look younger!! You may live longer but may not look younger.
As it is people are living way too long now. And are riddled with many health problems. Just look at 80’s olds or 90’s olds in nursing homes all the medication they take and all the different health problems they have.
Living to age 150 people may have to take 50 to 100 pills in day!! And may be in wheelchair!!
I read in biology they gotten telomere lengthening now!!
Yes they gotten Telomere extension in lab now this was not possible before!!
Yes probably. Although all of those things are just factors in ageing. Another factor for example is the reactive oxygen species produced by the mitochondria of your cells.
So the anti-ageing effect of living in a hole would likely be modest. Nothing like eliminating ageing.
I like this explanation for why we age, in the abstract:
Imagine you start with a species that doesn’t age. However, this species is not immortal; individuals can still be killed by predators, disease, hunger etc.
Let’s say in its natural environment individuals live for an average of 10 years before succumbing to one of these threats.
Then, if a mutation were to occur that, say, caused a lack of hair pigmentation after 30 years, that mutation may persist in the population, or even spread via genetic drift, as few individuals live long enough to experience the negative effect.
Then imagine a mutation that has a positive effect for a few years and then a negative effect later. For example, something that makes bones harden more quickly in youth but has the effect of hardening arteries after about 40 years.
This mutation would aggressively spread through the population because it would be beneficial to the majority of individuals that have the gene and few would live to experience the downside.
Over time many such mutations happen and our previously immortal species has “evolved to age”. Drop them in a more comfortable environment and they’d still age and die. This isn’t the way it happened of course; we didn’t start out ageless. It’s just a good way to appreciate why ageing is probably caused by as many internal as external factors.
There was article I was reading was them working on a artificial face skin that you put on your face to make you look younger.
Other article talking about the use of lasers.
As for gene therapy that seems to be some thing new going on. Need to find out all the genes responsible for aging.
I don’t think anyone here at straightdope that had the cache will allow them to start any treatment on them to they no the long term health effects.