What is aging? Is the deterioration we see inevitable? Are the diseases that come with age all part of the process? Is it inevitable that we get sick and decrepit as we get older?
On the surface it looks as if aging is a process that is inevitable. Most people that we know do get more and more sick and disabled as they get older.
But what Michael Rose has discovered is that this is an illusion. Before you laugh too hard think about another illusion.
The sun comes up every morning in the east – arcs across the sky all day – and sets in the west. The earth seems flat and stationary to us. But all of this is an illusion. It is real to us but none of it is true and as long as we believed that this was a true reality, we remained stuck.
The Galileo “saw” the truth – that the Earth was part of a much larger system that revolved around the sun. Then Newton was able to discover the rules that made this predictable. And then Einstein was able to understand that gravity was not a simple force like a magnet but a distortion in space time that was affected by mass. The larger the mass the greater the distortion – the greater the force of attraction.
So in Thesis 12 Michael shows us that “Aging” is a similar illusion.
That as we age, the forces of natural selection weaken and we are less protected. This is why you can party away at 20 but not when you are 50. This is why you can get away with eating crap aged 25 but not aged 50.
Illness and disability are growing risks as we age because the forces of natural selection are weaker as we age. That is why we do best to align how we live and our choices to give us the best chance of being well.
That is why it helps to know also that if we do align our life to our evolved state that we can plateau and keep fit and well until we die
Michael Rose's 55 
Greetings Rob! i’m just catching up on where you’ve been over the past little while. I can’t remember how exactly I got here, but it was round-about. I’ll have to say that this short video interview left me shaking my head. Granted, I’ll have to read on, but it seems to me on the surface of this that natural selection only has the products of genes–plus-environment to work with. Your speaker makes it sound like NS is both the creative and the subtractive force. I’m obviously missing something, and maybe it’s just because the physics and chemistry of time and my abbreviated telomeres have conspired against me. Good to hear your voice again! — Fred in Virginia
Fred! How good to hear from you. NS is a very complex idea that is just percolating into my understanding – in summary it sets us up to breed successfully and then does not care about us. So when we stop reproducing is the tipping point. If you are a salmon that is the moment you have laid your eggs! So after 25 we progressively lose the protection of NS. Age affects the power of NS to protect us. When you are ill you heal fast and are rarely ill compared to when we are old.
Think of NS as a rusting suit of armour. Whose ability to protect us weakens.
But – IF WE LIVE ACCORDING TO OUR A EVOLVED PLAN – we will “plateau” at about 40 – 50. For as you know only too well – it takes about 25 years to raise a human child. Human females are the only primates to have menopause – the kids need us to help raise the next lot!
We evolved to be a big help and not a drain.
But when we eat food and live in ways that don’t fit thern in our exposed state we are more and more vulnerable. Does this make more sense?