It always seems to take us longer to shift from the reactive to the proactive side of things. Take mental health, for example: for decades we had detailed classifications of what was wrong with people, but only much later did we begin defining what mental health actually looks like—giving us a positive direction to aim for. Aging may be similar: if we continue to treat it only as a collection of problems, we miss the chance to frame it as something we can understand, measure, and ultimately improve. Defining aging as a disease could be the step that pushes us to move from describing decline to actively pursuing healthspan.
I had not seen the following piece before I wrote this essay. It looks at obesity as a disease and compares it to aging as a disease.
It always seems to take us longer to shift from the reactive to the proactive side of things. Take mental health, for example: for decades we had detailed classifications of what was wrong with people, but only much later did we begin defining what mental health actually looks like—giving us a positive direction to aim for. Aging may be similar: if we continue to treat it only as a collection of problems, we miss the chance to frame it as something we can understand, measure, and ultimately improve. Defining aging as a disease could be the step that pushes us to move from describing decline to actively pursuing healthspan.