Aging without becoming old: myth or reality?

Abstract

The marked increase in life expectancy witnessed in the last few decades has turned the topic of aging into an extremely important issue. Consequently, priority should be given in the future to developing the new framework needed for a ‘successful aging’ research program. This article focuses on finding evidence for the real meaning of successful aging in the conviction that it is important to thoroughly discuss the related issues and recommend new policies to implement in public-health circles. To this end, we provide some indicators on how to age without growing old. We would all agree that ‘aging’ is becoming an increasingly important issue for policy makers all over the world. Unfortunately, nothing can be done to delay, stop or reverse the human aging process [1], despite the promise of anti-aging products (intended to make us look younger) that may well succeed in changing our appearance, but do not change our chronological age. In order to provide recommendations on healthy aging for healthcare professionals, we first need to answer some relevant questions. For instance: • What do aging and being old really mean? • Is it possible to live to be 120 years and still be healthy? • Is being healthy synonymous with successful aging? • Can we say that healthy aging is the same as successful aging? • What exactly do we mean by successful aging? This may not be the whole list of the issues that need to be considered. Nevertheless, encouraged by previous work on the subject [2], in the following sections we attempt to provide some answers to these crucial questions. The implementation of these new practices will no doubt