A profound revolution is afoot in the biomedical sciences. Aging is typically understood as a biological process of growing older with deleterious effects on our cognitive and physical capacities—a natural, normal, and universal phenomenon that everyone must undergo with the passage of time, without exception. In the previous decades, there was no possibility of scientifically intervening in aging, either to control it or decelerate it. Our ancestors simply had to accept it and only looked for the best way of successfully aging, regardless of how much pain or suffering it could cause in for them and those in their lives.
Traditionally, medicine has tried to manage and treat many age-related diseases (ARDs), such as Alzheimer’s or various cancer types. In contrast, biogerontology has made huge advances over the past decade hoping to improve people’s health, such as the discovery of the hallmarks of aging—for instance, cellular damage, which leads to an increased risk of the appearance of these ARDs. From this new perspective, aging could be considered a syndrome, as a special type of disease inherent in all humans, and the underlying cause common to all ARDs. Now, the scientific community already has enough knowledge to start developing anti-aging treatments (AATs) in humans, similar to those currently being studied in other model organisms. The research line will focus on the intervention in the aging process itself, regardless of a favorable outcome in its first phases, since what really matters is to intervene now. These AATs are still hypothetical, but they provide a plausible picture of a scientific approach to addressing aging. This profound revolution is based on a substantial change in medicine: the shift away from a restorative approach to ARDs and towards a preventive alternative starting around the first moments in which we age.
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