Eternal youth is the concept of human physical

immortality Immortality is the concept of eternal life. Some species possess "biological immortality" due to an apparent lack of the Hayflick limit. From at least the time of the Ancient Mesopotamian religion, ancient Mesopotamians, there has been a con ...

free of

ageing Ageing (or aging in American English) is the process of becoming older until death. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi; whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentially biol ...

. The

youth Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood (Maturity (psychological), maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as bei ...

referred to is usually meant to be in contrast to the depredations of aging, rather than a specific age of the human lifespan. Eternal youth is common in mythology, and is a popular theme in

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying character (arts), individuals, events, or setting (narrative), places that are imagination, imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent ...

Religion and mythology

Eternal youth is a characteristic of the inhabitants of

Paradise In religion and folklore, paradise is a place of everlasting happiness, delight, and bliss. Paradisiacal notions are often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical, eschatological, or both, often contrasted with the miseries of human ...

Abrahamic religion The term Abrahamic religions is used to group together monotheistic religions revering the Biblical figure Abraham, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The religions share doctrinal, historical, and geographic overlap that contrasts them wit ...

s. The Hindus believe that the Vedic and the post-Vedic rishis have attained immortality, which implies the ability to change one's body's age or even shape at will. These are some of the

siddha ''Siddha'' (Sanskrit: '; "perfected one") is a term that is used widely in Indian religions and culture. It means "one who is accomplished." It refers to perfected masters who have achieved a high degree of perfection of the intellect as we ...

s in

Yoga Yoga (UK: , US: ; 'yoga' ; ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated with its own philosophy in ancient India, aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as pra ...

. Markandeya is said to always stay at the age of 16. The difference between eternal life and the more specific eternal youth is a recurrent theme in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and

Roman mythology Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans, and is a form of Roman folklore. "Roman mythology" may also refer to the modern study of these representations, and to th ...

. The

mytheme In structuralism-influenced studies of mythology, a mytheme is a fundamental generic unit of narrative structure (typically involving a relationship between a character, an event, and a theme) from which myths are thought to be constructed—a m ...

of requesting the boon of immortality from a god, but forgetting to ask for eternal youth appears in the story of

Tithonus In Greek mythology, Tithonus ( or ; ) was the lover of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn. He was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the Naiad Strymo (). The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus a ...

. A similar theme is found in

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

regarding the Cumaean Sibyl. In

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

, Iðunn is described as providing the gods

apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

s that grant them eternal youthfulness in the 13th-century ''

Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' () or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often considered to have been to some exten ...

''.

Telomeres

An individual's

DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...

plays a role in the aging process. Aging begins even before birth, as soon as cells start to die and need to be replaced. On the ends of each

chromosome A chromosome is a package of DNA containing part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes, the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with nucleosome-forming packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells, the most import ...

are repetitive sequences of DNA, telomeres, that protect the chromosome from joining with other chromosomes, and have several key roles. One of these roles is to regulate cell division by allowing each cell division to remove a small amount of genetic code. The amount removed varies by the cell type being replicated. The gradual degradation of the telomeres restricts cell division to 40–60 times, also known as the Hayflick limit. Once this limit has been reached, more cells die than can be replaced in the same time span. Thus, soon after this limit is reached the organism dies. The importance of telomeres is now clearly evident: lengthen the telomeres, lengthen the life. However, a study of the comparative biology of mammalian telomeres indicated that telomere length correlates inversely, rather than directly, with lifespan, and concluded that the contribution of telomere length to lifespan remains controversial. Also, telomere shortening does not occur with age in some postmitotic tissues, such as in the rat brain. In humans, skeletal muscle telomere lengths remain stable from ages 23–74. In baboon skeletal muscle, that consists of fully differentiated post-mitotic cells, less than 3% of myonuclei contain damaged telomeres and this percentage does not increase with age. Thus telomere shortening does not appear to be a major factor in the aging of the differentiated cells of brain or skeletal muscle. Studies have shown that 90 percent of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

cells contain large amounts of an

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

called

telomerase Telomerase, also called terminal transferase, is a ribonucleoprotein that adds a species-dependent telomere repeat sequence to the 3' end of telomeres. A telomere is a region of repetitive sequences at each end of the chromosomes of most euka ...

. Telomerase is an enzyme that replenishes the worn away telomeres by adding bases to the ends and thus renewing the telomere. A cancer cell has in essence turned on the telomerase gene, and this allows them to have an unlimited amount of divisions without the telomeres wearing away. Other kinds of cells that can surpass the Hayflick limit are

stem cells In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can change into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of cell ...

, hair follicles, and germ cells. This is because they contain raised amounts of telomerase.

Therapy

The idea that the human body can be repaired in old age to a more youthful state has gathered significant commercial interest over the past few years, including by companies such as Human Longevity Inc, Google Calico, and Elysium Health. In addition to these larger companies, many startups are currently developing therapeutics to tackle the 'ageing problem' using therapy. In 2015 a new class of drugs senolytics was announced (currently in pre-clinical development) designed specifically to combat the underlying biological causes of frailty.

Philanthropy

The "loss of youth" or ageing process is responsible for increasing the risk of individuals to many diseases including

, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and others. As a result, in recent years, many high net worth individuals have donated large amounts of their money towards initiatives towards scientific research into the ageing process itself or therapies to slow or reverse the ageing process. These people include

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist, and inventor. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), speech synthesis, text-to-speech synthesis, spee ...

Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. According ...

Aubrey de Grey Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey (; born 20 April 1963) is an English biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of ''The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging'' (1999) and co-author of '' Ending Aging'' (2007). De Grey is known for ...

, Larry Ellison,

Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (; born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and businessman who co-founded Google with Larry Page. He was the president of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on D ...

, Dmitry Itskov,

Paul Gallen Paul Gallen (born 14 August 1981) is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer and occassional professional boxer. He played as a and forward and captained the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the NRL to their maiden NRL Premiers ...

, and

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eternal Youth Fictional superhuman abilities Life extension Mythological powers Youth Immortality

Religion and mythology

Telomeres

Therapy

Philanthropy

See also

References