Day 1493 – The Other Pandemic – Aging – Ask Gramps

Published: Oct. 9, 2020, 7 a.m.

Welcome to Day 1493 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomThe Other Pandemic - Aging – Ask GrampsWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1493 of our Trek, and our focus on Fridays is the future technological and societal advances, so we call it Futuristic Fridays. My personality is one that has always been very future-oriented. Since my childhood, I have yearned for the exploration and discovery of new technologies and advancements for the future. I grew up with the original Star Trek series, and even today, as I am now on my 65th revolution around the sun, I still dream of traveling in space. Each week we will explore rapidly converging technologies and advancements, which will radically change our lives. At times, the topics may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but each area that we explore is already well on its way of becoming a reality over the next couple of decades.
To keep with our theme of “Ask Gramps,” I will put our weekly topics in the form of a question to get us on track. This week’s question is, Hey Gramps, I understand that Covid-19 has impacted nearly every country in the world and has become a politically charged subject, but how does it compare to other diseases? 
The Other Pandemic - Aging
Last week we learned how Artificial Intelligence would change our shopping experiences. This week, I want to focus on a pandemic that is not considered a pandemic, aging. I am using some of the information mentioned in Peter Diamandis’s blogs and book “The Future is Faster Than You Think.”
As the world continues to face the ravages of COVID-19, there is a second pandemic killing everyone… it’s called aging. You may think to yourself, Gramps, that’s silly. Everyone ages, and everyone will eventually die. While I understand that, ask yourself, can what we consider a typical lifespan be increased significantly? For the first time in history, scientists and entrepreneurs think there’s a way to slow aging in its tracks, and perhaps even reverse it.
In today’s podcast, we’ll do a quick review of the cutting-edge technology that gives me tremendous hope that we can add a healthy 20 or 30 years onto our healthspan, ultimately making 100 years old the “new 60.”
COVID-19 Comparison: As of today, over 36 million confirmed COVID-19 cases have been recorded globally, and those are only the ones that have been tested. Since its initial outbreak, over 1 million deaths globally have been in patients who have tested positive with COVID-19. I realize that some individuals may have died of other causes during this period, but it is still significant. Not to minimize this number at all, because all life is precious. As a point of reference, globally, cardiovascular disease kills over 18 million per year and cancer over 10 million.  Some of the Covid patients would have been in these numbers.
To put this in context, approximately 7.8 billion people are alive today, roughly 9 percent of them over the age of 65 and suffering from the deadliest disease on Earth: Aging.
Without competition, aging is the #1 correlated variable for deaths due to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, respiratory disease, and dementia. In effect, 9 percent of the population equates to 720 million confirmed cases of aging. Even then, this is an extraordinarily conservative estimate as many people begin experiencing the effects of aging in their 50s.
Despite these...