We May Have Discovered the Fountain of Youth

But it’s not a place, it’s a pill. Researcher Linda Partridge claims that by taking a single pill every day from middle-age on, we will grow old free from illnesses of the body and mind such as Alzheimer’s and heart disease. We may even be able to avoid gray hair! In the Daily Mail, Fiona Macrae quotes Partridge as saying, "I would be surprised if there weren’t things within ten years. If told you could take a drug that has minimal side-effects and that’s going to keep you healthy for another five or ten years and then you’ll drop off your perch without disability, most people would want it." What a change that would be!

That pill isn’t on the horizon yet, but we may be able to reverse gray hair soon. Researcher Mayumi Ito says, "The human body has many types of stem cells that have the potential to regenerate other organs. The methods behind communication between stem cells of hair and color during hair replacement may give us important clues to regenerate complex organs containing many different types of cells."

But all this effort to stay young may be futile, since geneticists now can use your saliva to reveal how old you are. This could offer crime-scene investigators a new forensic tool for pinpointing a suspect’s age. Geneticist Eric Vilain says, "With just a saliva sample, we can accurately predict a person’s age without knowing anything else about them."

One of the keys to staying young is eating right and exercise, which can be as pleasant as a brisk daily walk. In Anne Strieber’s diet book, she has a special chapter on exercise titled "The Tyranny of the Body," in which she states unequivocally that walking is the very best exercise there is.