​It is a misconception that medical technology is increasing the potential life span of humans. In fact, it has done nothing to alter our genetic limits. No, medicine will not save us from ourselves by giving us immortality with an injection or pill.
 
This misplaced hope derives from the insidious and erroneous philosophy of materialism. The body is seen as a mere machine, and as such, perpetually salvageable. Although it may be true that parts may be repaired and replaced, life is not reducible to matter (see the companion volume), nor can the decline of any organism be circumvented. The Second Law of Thermodynamics demands that all physical things move toward ever increasing entropy, that is, toward ever increasing decay and disorganization. Like a home will become disorganized if unattended to, so too will the universe one day be cold, dark, still, and random. Every living organism's low entropy and highly ordered state is only temporary and must comply with this law and thus experience an inevitable decline. To achieve physical immortality would mean to defeat this absolute universal law. That is not going to happen.
 
Science has also discovered that our organs and systems have a finite reserve capacity. For example, the heart can increase its output by a
 
factor of 6, the kidney can function with about 80 percent of its filtering nephrons lost, and a person can survive with one lung and one quarter of the liver. We live because we are in homeostasis with our environment and can endure its threats—to a degree. As we lose organ reserve, including immune capacity—over 50 percent is lost by age 85—every stressor becomes more life threatening. When organ function declines below the level necessary to withstand even minor stress, death will result. 
 
In 1961, research demonstrated that the life span of fibroblast cells in tissue culture reached a limit of 60 divisions and no more. This is known as the Hayflick Limit. The cells did not stop dividing as a result of toxins, infectious agents, or problems within the growth media. Instead, there was found to be an inherent limit to cell division. If the cultures are frozen and then thawed several years later, the cells continue where they left off and complete their normal number of doublings up to the limit of 60. The maximum cell doubling number is proportional to the maximum life span of the species. For example, the Galapagos turtle has a maximum life span of 175 years and a maximum cell doubling of 125. Human maximum life span is about 120 years with a maximum cell doubling of approximately 60. The mouse has a life span of about 4 years and a maximum doubling of about 28.
 
The mechanism of aging has long been studied but was dramatically invigorated with hope when DNA was discovered and then sequenced. After all, if life is nothing more than an arrangement of chemicals along a nucleic acid strand then chemists should be able to figure that all out and shut down the aging process. That's the theory, but that is not the way things have worked out. Life is far more than DNA and, in fact, is not reducible to matter at all. That is why life has never been created in a laboratory starting with lifeless inorganic chemicals.
 
Health is not solved by blind faith in science's promises of immortality. While we are alive and healthy we must address the loss of life by such things as chronic degenerative diseases, infirmity, and senescence. Getting dead is the problem, not being dead.
 
We need to square the curve on a graph that plots vitality on a vertical axis and aging on the horizontal. For those experiencing degenerative or debilitating disease beginning as early as their twenties, the curve begins a downward slope in proportion to the frequency of trips to the doctor, hospital stays, and growth of the pharmacy in the bathroom cabinet. In effect, the death process begins with the first trip to the doctor.
 
Our goal should be to be active, alive, and vital until the very end of our genetic life limit and then to die rapidly, much as a leaf falls from a tree. Health is not the slowest possible rate at which one can die. It is thoughtless to cash out vitality and health during youth and then surrender to a disease-ridden decline. A life that is only made tolerable by pharmaceuticals that temporarily relieve symptoms is not how life should be.

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​Hope does not lie in technologies such as gene splicing to create perpetual cells. The idea is to add life to years and not just years to life. To do that, we must overcome the debilitating killers that slope the vitality curve prematurely. These include such conditions as atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, emphysema, and cirrhosis that cause almost 90% of all disability and premature death. Such conditions are not inevitable and there is much we can individually do. And, you guessed it: it all has to do with matching our life choices to our genetic design.
 
In societies that do seem to have many long-lived individuals—such as certain groups in Russia, the Hunzas, and the Vilcabamba—fancy hospitals are nowhere to be found. Rather, there is a high level of physical activity into old age, such as farming by hand. There is also an absence of obesity, no retirement, strong families, moderation, and usefulness and purpose to the very end.
 
But even under the best of circumstances there are aging changes we have to concede. The decrease in skin elasticity, graying and thinning of hair, loss of muscle, decrease in bone density, energy, and stamina, and increased rigidity in arteries and the lens of the eye are inevitable. But affecting the rate and degree of such loss—changing the shape of the curve—is within our grasp.
 
Heeding all the dos and don'ts of the next chapter is a good start in squaring the shape of the graph. Proactively making health happen, instead of waiting for science to save us from our laziness and bad habits, gives us the best chance for a full and productive life culminating in a death that is natural and healthy.