bad knees<\/a>, as many septuagenarians will sympathise with, but that doesn’t get in the way of riding a bike. Where does he put the bicycle on the spectrum of anti-ageing interventions?<\/p>\n“It’s certainly great exercise, from a cardiovascular perspective, so it’s very important for your heart and blood vessels,” he says.<\/p>\n
“But people underestimate the importance of weight resistance exercise as they age. Ageing decreases your muscle mass and that’s a real problem as you need it for stability, strength and so on.<\/p>\n
“Cycling is only working certain muscles, and you really need to be looking at your whole body.”<\/p>\n
Outer limits
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Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan is out now <\/p>\n
From the simple contraption of the bicycle, essentially unchanged for over a century, Ramakrishnan’s book explores the outer (and deeper) reaches of the complex anti-ageing industry.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s critical of the ‘hype’ machine that inflates the wilder ideas at the expense of the \u201cvery good science\u201d in the field that fails to surface.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want to believe that this is the way that\u2019s going to solve the ageing problem. They come at it from a particular angle and the kindest word would be to say is that they\u2019re over optimistic,” he says.<\/p>\n
In the last decade alone, after a long period in which ageing was a \u201cscientific backwater\u201d, he writes that more than 300,000 studies on ageing have been published.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not all high-quality research,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The gold standard for any research, he says, are randomised controlled trials, where people are assigned randomly to two groups so that one is just like the other. One group gets the treatment, the other doesn’t.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The problem with ageing studies as he sees it is not only the vast amount of time (and money) they need (spoiler, people already live for a long time), but how do you measure or quantify ageing?<\/p>\n
One promising way is in \u2018biomarkers\u2019 \u2013 specific measurements of our biology such as inflammation and hormones \u2013 that can help piece together our own state of play when it comes to ageing.<\/p>\n
Biomarkers, says Ramakrishan, can help get around the major problem of ageing studies taking a huge period of time to glean results.<\/p>\n
This, indeed, is how the industry is promoting anti-ageing products, but results on their own don\u2019t have the strength of multiple studies backing them up.<\/p>\n
A lot of research is funded by people and companies who have vested interests in the result going their way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trouble is that people who want to sell something don\u2019t have an incentive to do this careful measurement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might not show that there\u2019s much effect [with the treatment] and then they wouldn\u2019t like that. They\u2019ll do an observational study and say \u2018oh, people felt better after taking this or mice ran around better after doing that’.<\/p>\n
The long game
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What the naked mole rat lacks in looks it makes up for in longevity. Getty Images<\/p>\n
It perhaps shouldn\u2019t be a surprise that humans already do very well when it comes to longevity.<\/p>\n
\u2018Lifespan\u2019 broadly correlates to the size of a species and the \u2018longevity quotient\u2019, coined by ageing expert Stephen Austad and his graduate student Kathleen Fischer in 1991, is the ratio of the average lifespan of a species to what it would be if it followed scaling laws.<\/p>\n
Humans\u2019 LQ is 5, which means we live five times as long as would be expected by our size. Of mammals, only 19 outperform us \u2013 18 species of bat and the naked mole rat.<\/p>\n
Life expectancy (the average period a person is expected to live) has increased dramatically over the past century, largely because of better healthcare and a dramatic reduction in infant mortality.<\/p>\n
Yet lifespan \u2013 the maximum age of humans – hasn\u2019t moved much at all. The oldest person to have lived, Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, died at 122 almost three decades ago.<\/p>\n
Why, then, are there people \u2013 albeit at what Ramakrishnan says is the extreme end of the anti-ageing spectrum \u2013 who believe the first person to live to 1,000 years old has already been born?<\/p>\n
One of those people, writes Ramakrishnan in his book, is Aubrey de Grey, a mathematician of some repute who turned to biology \u201cbelieving ageing to be a solvable problem\u201d.<\/p>\n
His suggestions include working out how to remove senescent cells (these are cells that have stopped dividing but don\u2019t die off, and linger, causing inflammation in the body), and stopping DNA telomere lengthening mechanisms (and thus stopping cancer).<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s learned enough biology,\u201d writes Ramakrishnan in his book, \u201cto pinpoint many of the things that go wrong as we age.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut with the characteristic arrogance that many physicists and computer scientists display towards biologists, he is wildly optimistic about the feasibility of achieving them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ramakrishnan brings scepticism, then, to anti-ageing but also has his mind open to what can be achieved.<\/p>\n
He points to evolution and how it doesn\u2019t care how long we live as individuals \u2013 it cares about and selects for us to live long enough into adulthood to pass on our genes.<\/p>\n
Worse than that, he says, is that evolution selects for traits that will get you to adulthood, even if those exact traits hurt you later in life and cause ageing.<\/p>\n
This process tends to (but not always) protect us from cancer early in life, and why it\u2019s typically a disease of ageing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it also means that if some species can live a few hundred years, and they’re all made of the same material, maybe we can alter our ageing process and tinker with it and keep us healthier and possibly live longer.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Anti-ageing-5.jpg\")
The processes that protect our bodies early in life are the same that hurt us later. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think it’d be very hard because you have to change things and the balance is delicate. So I’m beginning to think it’s hard to have a free lunch, where we can just get all the benefits, but none of the drawbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s going to be hard, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Picture of health<\/p>\n
The goal of much (mainstream) anti-ageing research isn\u2019t about a massive increase in lifespan, but to delay the onset of age-related diseases such as heart disease, cancer and dementia and improve our health in old age.<\/p>\n
Death\u2019s finality isn\u2019t what terrifies most people \u2013 it\u2019s the years, sometimes decades, of infirmity that lead up to it.<\/p>\n
As the number of people living to an older age increases, so too does the prevalence of ill health in old age. Doing something about it is an admirable aim.<\/p>\n
This is the idea of healthspan, rather than lifespan, and was called compression of morbidity by James Fries in 1980.<\/p>\n
The problem with it is that it also assumes the length of life is fixed. The reality is that, should we make more progress in finding cures and remedies for the diseases of ageing, we would likely live longer as a result.<\/p>\n
While disease might be solved, or least treated and delayed, the problem of frailty of old age remains.<\/p>\n
Ramakrishnan writes that in the UK, data from the ONS (Office of National Statistics and the UK\u2019s largest producer of independent statistics) shows the time we live with four or more diseases has actually increased as a fraction of our lives, rather than decreased.<\/p>\n
He remains \u201cmore optimistic that they’ll find things that will keep us healthier in old age. \u201cThere may be things that will delay the onset of those things so that we live healthier for a longer period. And then the hope is that we would have a more rapid decline. But there’s always a possibility that as we get to stay healthier, we’re simply prolonging the decline.\u201d<\/p>\n
Insurance policy
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Avoiding diseases of age, for example those that affect the brain, is what we all hope for in old age. Getty Images<\/p>\n
What\u2019s driving our collective quest to live longer, or at least \u2013 as a more mainstream idea \u2013 live better to typical ages of today?<\/p>\n
The answers are varied and numerous.<\/p>\n
Most of us are likely simply more aware than ever of how tough old age can be. With more people living longer \u2013 and living longer with diseases of age \u2013 many of us know at least one person close to us who has suffered through this later phase of life.<\/p>\n
We want to insure against that, as best we can, by getting ahead of the game with our diet and lifestyle. On another level, we\u2019re simply scared of talking about death, as much now as we ever were.<\/p>\n
And with the rise of social media and individualism making us the main characters in our story, perhaps we\u2019re simply unable to comprehend a world without us in it.<\/p>\n
Then, at the elite, monied end of the spectrum come the tech billionaires, who are often the ones funding biotech firms\u2019 research into life-prolonging techniques.<\/p>\n
They have all the money in the world and nothing is off limits. Nothing, that is, except death. They don\u2019t want the party to end.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re used to having everything their own way,\u201d says Ramakrishnan. \u201cAnd they\u2019re used to very rapid progress because in software, the timescale is often measured in months. In a year or two you can suddenly take over the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey think that anti-ageing will be solved on the same time scale as some algorithm in software. I think they have no idea of the complexity of biology.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of that research will turn out to be very useful. Some of them will claim they’re altruistic, but I have a feeling there are rather mixed motives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Age concerns
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Does social media and the tendency to put ourselves at the centre of our own universe prevent us from accepting the idea of our own death? Getty Images<\/p>\n
This is Ramakrishnan\u2019s second book, following on from 2018\u2019s Gene Machine, which told the story of his life\u2019s work on the ribosome. He\u2019s enjoyed the reception.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe critical reception has been good, including from ageing experts \u2013 although obviously not the people that I\u2019ve been critical of [ed \u2013 these were numerous!].<\/p>\n
\u201cBut many people in the mainstream ageing research community are very positive about the book. Maybe I said the things that needed to be said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kinds of books that often turn out to be like the big airport sellers \u2013 this book is not that. It\u2019s not the prescription books, like those called How to Live Forever or How Not to Age. With these books, even the titles are nonsense.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want to be sold this fantasy, this quick fix.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy book of course isn\u2019t that. What it does is give people the tools for both how to live better and how to evaluate the steady stream that comes out in the news.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery week, there’s a news item about some breakthrough in ageing. Reading the book will give them a mental framework and an understanding of why we age and why we die.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen they can ask, is this hype or is this real?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anti-ageing is big business \u2013 and growing rapidly. This once unfashionable backwater of the science community is experiencing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-807008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Anti-ageing-2.jpg\")
The goal of a lot of the more sensible research is to figure out how we can live a greater portion of our lives more healthily. Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/GettyImages-1167206668.jpg\")
Venki Ramakrishnan. Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/anti-ageing-3.jpg\")
Not all anti-ageing research is high quality. Getty Images<\/p>\n