What do we mean by healthy life extension, or engineered longevity, or the development of rejuvenation biotechnology? Put simply, these are the use of medical science and technology to both increase healthy life span and reduce the risk of suffering age-related conditions in later life. It is the use of the best and most proven of present day methods, while supporting research to develop far more effective methods for tomorrow.

Aging is an Enemy

Aging saps our strength and ability to enjoy life, cripples us, and eventually kills us. Tens of millions die from age-related conditions each and every year. Comparatively few people know that degenerative aging can be modestly slowed with diet and lifestyle choices, as is the case for many medical conditions. Comparatively few people are aware of serious scientific efforts, presently underway, aimed at understanding and intervening in the aging process - in order to one day reverse its effects.

One day, scientists will find a way to defeat aging. We would like this breakthough to happen while we are still alive and in good health to benefit from it. How will we achieve this goal?

• Step 1: Stop Damaging Your Health
• Step 2: Adopt a Better Diet and Lifestyle
• Step 3: Support and Advocate Longevity Science

Follow the links, or read on to find out.

Practitioners of healthy life extension use good diet, lifestyle choices, technology, and proven medical advances to live healthy, longer lives. There is much more to this than simply looking after your health here and now, however. The medicine of today can do little in comparison to what scientists know is possible, and thus we must ensure that the public is educated, research is funded, and the rejuvenation biotechnologies of the future are developed - as soon as possible, as the clock is ticking.

A longer life gives more time in which to lead a better life - we miss out on so much as things stand today, pressed by the lack of time and our increasing frailty with age. The option of another tomorrow and the capacity to enjoy it should be open to all of us, each and every day. Why should life be cut short when we would like it to continue in all its glory?

Yet despite amazing advances in understanding and treating age-related conditions (such as cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's, and many others), and despite the cries of the anti-aging marketplace, the only presently available method likely to even modestly extend the healthy human life span is calorie restriction. Sadly, no medical technology yet exists that can improve upon this diet and lifestyle choice: researchers are making progress, but longevity science is woefully underfunded, poorly understood by the public, and vulnerable to the arbitrary whims of politicians and conservative, hidebound funding bodies. It is up to you to join us in speaking up! Only by making our voices heard - by creating an atmosphere of widespread support and understanding - can we ensure that the longevity-enhancing medicine of the future is researched, developed, and made widely available. If we remain silent, our future health and longevity remain at risk.

The following three steps will you get started on the path of healthy life extension, and support for the future of rejuvenation biotechnology. Remember to read our disclaimer before going too much further.

Step 1: Stop Damaging Your Health

Are you damaging yourself, perhaps more than you realize? Do you smoke? Do recreational drugs occupy a central position in your life? Do you eat nothing but junk food or are overweight? Do you exercise little or not at all? Do you have a poor relationship with your physician, or haven't seen a doctor in years? If so, you have a clear starting point. Any of these things can hurt you far more than currently available healthy life extension techniques can compensate for. There is little point in insulating the windows if the door is jammed open.

Find a physician you can trust and talk to about improving your health. You might be surprised at how easy, low-cost, and downright pleasant it is to lead a healthier and thereby longer life.

Step 2: Adopt a Better Diet and Lifestyle

The body is a complex, resilient machine. Unlike our cars, however, we can't replace it when it breaks down. Given that, it's scandalous that most people know more about the long-term care of a car than they do about the long-term care of the human body. Fortunately, it's neither difficult nor expensive to use diet and lifestyle to live a longer life.

• Adopt a calorie restriction diet. Calorie restriction is currently the only scientifically proven way of extending healthy life in mammals. It has a number of other beneficial effects on health, such as increased resistance to age-related disease, and is highly praised by practitioners. You can learn out more about calorie restriction at the CR Society website, and here at Fight Aging! you'll find introduction to calorie restriction that provides helpful guidelines to getting started.

• Take a modest amount of supplements appropriate to your age and health. There is a wealth of supplement information available, but much of it is worthless, propagated by irresponsible sellers. This is perhaps the hardest topic to research, and in the end you will have to make a number of decisions yourself. A good starting point is to become a member of the Life Extension Foundation. Membership benefits include a wealth of useful and fairly independent information on supplements, physicians, and healthy life extension delivered to your door - though, as always, bear in mind that their primary goal is to sell you products. The Kurzweil and Grossman book Fantastic Voyage also provides a good starting point for understanding the justifications and level of scientific support for various supplement strategies.

• Exercise as recommended by your physician. The benefits of maintaining a modest level of exercise for most people have been well known for long, long time. As is also true of calorie restriction, these benefits include greatly reduced risk of suffering almost all of the common age-related conditions.

The articles and commentaries here at Fight Aging! exist for your benefit. Along with the daily updates on news, research, and events in the longevity science community, these resources will help you get up to speed on healthy life extension and understand the present state of progress towards true rejuvenation biotechnology.

Step 3: Support and Advocate Longevity Science

Speaking out in favor of medical research aimed at extending the healthy human life span is just as important as practicing present day healthy life extension, as even the best present day practices can only make a comparatively small difference to your life span. Most age-related conditions are still incurable, and everyone becomes frail with old age. The aging process is still imperfectly understood, and causes great suffering for hundreds of millions worldwide each and every day. Yet we live in an era of scientific progress and advancing biotechnology: aging will one day be defeated, and our job is to ensure that this day arrives soon enough that we are still alive, healthy, and active to see it.

A revolution in biotechnology is presently underway, and the medicine of the near future holds great promise - see, for example, biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey's Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence - but this promise can only be realized if research and development is fully funded and widely supported. The fields of aging research and longevity science remain poorly funded, however, and the public at large neither understands nor appreciates the possibilities offered by this research. Politicians, large funding institutions, and bioethicists still demonstrate considerable opposition to the most promising branchs of longevity-enhancing medicine.

If we do not speak out in favor of rejuvenation biotechnology - the key to our future health and extended longevity - then research and investment will decline. Without vocal public support, scientists are reluctant to go out on a limb and fight hard to gain funding. By failing to prevent legislation that slows or criminalizes vital medical research - such as happened for stem cell research over the past decade - we hurt ourselves.

Do you want to live a much longer, much healthier life? Do you want to see the development of biotechnology that can reverse the course of aging and frailty? Then you have to stand up and say so! There are many ways for you to make your voice heard on important issues relating to the future of human health and longevity - become a regular reader of Fight Aging!, explore the site, sign up for the newsletter, and you'll soon see.

There you go. In three quick steps, you now have a solid start on healthy life extension and learning more about the near future of longevity science and rejuvenation biotechnology. Not so long ago, when the community of healthy life extension advocates was smaller and less organized, it often took people years of thought and research to reach the conclusions listed above. The information was harder to find, drowned out by irresponsible voices in the anti-aging marketplace. You can return the favor by being responsible, taking care of your health, making your voice heard, and telling your friends about Fight Aging!