Eternal youth is the concept of human physical

immortality Immortality is the concept of eternal life. Some modern species may possess biological immortality. Some scientists, futurists, and philosophers have theorized about the immortality of the human body, with some suggesting that human immorta ...

free of ageing. 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), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as being a young adult. Yo ...

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.

Religion and mythology

Eternal youth is a characteristic of the inhabitants of

Paradise In religion, paradise is a place of exceptional happiness and delight. Paradisiacal notions are often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical or eschatological or both, often compared to the miseries of human civilization: in parad ...

in Abrahamic religions. 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 physical as well as spiritual ...

s in

Yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consci ...

. 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: Greece 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 ...

and

Roman mythology Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representa ...

. The mytheme 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 ; grc, Τιθωνός, Tithonos) was the lover of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn. He was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the Naiad Strymo (Στρυμώ). The mythology reflected by the fifth-century va ...

. A similar theme is found in

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

regarding the

Cumaean Sibyl The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy. The word ''sibyl'' comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word ''sibylla'', meaning prophetess. There were many sibyls ...

. In Norse mythology,

Iðunn In Norse mythology, Iðunn is a goddess associated with apples and youth. Iðunn is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the ''Prose Edda'', written in the 13th century by Snorri St ...

is described as providing the gods

apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

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

Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' ( is, Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often assumed to have been t ...

''.

Telomeres

An individual's DNA 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 long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

are repetitive sequences of DNA,

telomeres A telomere (; ) is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences associated with specialized proteins at the ends of linear chromosomes. Although there are different architectures, telomeres, in a broad sense, are a widespread genetic feature mos ...

, 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 abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

cells contain large amounts of an

enzyme Enzymes () are proteins that act as biological catalysts by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different molecules known as products ...

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 differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of ...

, hair follicles, and

germ cells Germ or germs may refer to: Science * Germ (microorganism), an informal word for a pathogen * Germ cell, cell that gives rise to the gametes of an organism that reproduces sexually * Germ layer, a primary layer of cells that forms during embryo ...

. 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 Human Longevity, Inc. is a San Diego-based venture launched by Craig Venter and Peter Diamandis in 2013. Its goal is to build the world's most comprehensive database on human genotypes and phenotypes, and then subject it to machine learning so tha ...

, Google Calico, and

Elysium Health Elysium Health is an American manufacturer of dietary supplements based in New York City. History Elysium Health was founded in 2014 by biologist and director of the Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at MIT Leonard Guarente Ph.D ...

. 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 Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

, 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. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former preside ...

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

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

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

Larry Ellison Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American business magnate and investor who is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the American computer technology ...

Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was th ...

Dmitry Itskov Dmitry Itskov (Russian: Дмитрий Ицков) is a Russian entrepreneur, billionaire and the founder of ''New Media Stars'', a web-based media company. He has made a reported £1bn from his Moscow-based news publishing company. Itskov is best ...

Paul Gallen Paul Gallen (born 14 August 1981) is an Australian professional boxer and former professional rugby league footballer who played as a and forward and captained the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the NRL to their maiden NRL Premiership in 2016. ...

, and Mark Zuckerberg.

References

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

Religion and mythology

Telomeres

Therapy

Philanthropy

See also

References