Forget Snake Oil--Have a Baby at 63
I have Scotch and Snickers and six-mile runs.
My husband has colloidal minerals, antioxidants, blue-green algae, gingko biloba and an abiding faith in the age-defying properties claimed by the makers of these products.
He will probably outlive me.
But I will die happy.
My husband is part of an expanding universe of people who are fighting age from the inside out. They turn not to plastic surgeons, who give only the illusion of youth, but to supplements and “engineered” foods. Longer living through chemistry.
And yet, as enthusiastically as my husband is willing to spit in the face of Mother Nature, he is also among those who expressed dismay or worse last week when doctors at USC announced that a 63-year-old woman recently became a first-time mother--the oldest yet!--after undergoing in vitro fertilization.
Arceli Keh of Highland admitted fooling doctors into thinking she was 50, five years younger than the cutoff age of 55 for fertility treatments at USC. Her baby, Cynthia, was born late last year, when Keh was three months shy of her 64th birthday.
Keh has been denounced as selfish, irresponsible, unthinking and cruel. If she and her 60-year-old husband wanted a child so badly, say critics, why didn’t they adopt? This question is specious: Adoption agencies refuse to give babies to older couples. As for selfishness, well, isn’t every act of reproduction, at heart, fundamentally selfish? Isn’t the job of the gene to replicate itself, at whatever cost?
Men reproduce into their 60s and 70s all the time with little criticism directed their way. In a nation obsessed with beating the natural clock, with harnessing the unruly course of nature, does it not make more sense to applaud Arceli Keh than to condemn her?
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I have observed the anti-aging movement from the comfort of my own kitchen, forced to turn over entire pantry shelves to my husband’s capsules and liquids and powders. With disdain, I have refused to believe that a single one of these products could do anything other than produce extremely expensive and colorful urine. I have accused my husband of squandering a fortune on nothing more than late 20th century snake oil.
I am forced to conclude, with egg (or at least the nutritionally superior egg white) on my face, that the scientific evidence may support him. According to those who study it, the aging process, like fermentation, may indeed be inhibited when certain steps are taken. This is literally true, as well: The best anti-aging “pill,” say the experts, is exercise. Eating properly, of course, is another. But other anti-aging measures, which used to be fringe science, are now accepted: Antioxidants, for instance, help rid the body of “free radicals,” which can damage cells and lead to age-related ailments such as cancer and heart disease.
Dr. Roy L. Walford, a professor emeritus of pathology at UCLA Medical School in his early 70s, has shown that low-calorie, nutrient-dense diets have extended the lives of lab rodents. Though he is reluctant to make any claims about how the diet affects him personally, he has said his goal is to live to 120. Longevity can be achieved, he says, by eating right and staying very thin--10% to 20% below your body’s “set point.”
People will be living a great deal longer, Walford says, and so it makes sense that as we postpone death, we will also postpone the age of “reproductive senescence.”
Keh may be the world’s first 63-year-old new mom, in other words, but she sure as hell will not be the last.
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Americans spend $1 billion on nutritional and drug anti-aging treatments each year. The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, founded a mere four years ago, now counts 1,300 members.
Which is not to say that snake oil is a thing of the past. On Monday, the federal government issued strong warnings about health risks associated with the growing use of over-the-counter hormone pills--the anti-aging “miracle” compounds melatonin and DHEA. The feds say the as-yet-unproven “restorative” powers of these substances may come with a stiff price: high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. But who can blame a guy for wanting the libido of a 20-year-old at 50?
History, anyway, is on the side of the “life-extension” folks. At the turn of the century, the average person could expect to live 47.3 years. Today, the figure is 76. Many believe that by the middle of the 21st century, it will be closer to 120.
So why the negative reaction to what ought to be considered the ultimate age-defying act: motherhood at the age of grandmotherhood? Someone should give Arceli Keh a medal. Vitamins, schmitamins. I haven’t felt this young in years.
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Robin Abcarian co-hosts a morning talk show on radio station KTZN-AM (710). Her column appears on Wednesdays. Her e-mail address is rabcarian@aol.com.
