He said
The short answer would be no, but that isn't going to cut here.
People seem to have such a negative view of age. The prime of your life ends around 20. That's when you start to realize little pains in the body start to hurt. If you slip on the ice, you might just stay down for a moment or two to make everything is still in place rather than springing up immediately.
People get old fast. Getting up off the ice is definitely different at 20 than it is at 16, and 20 is still really young.
I suppose I don't look forward to being my dad and not being able to crawl out of bed some mornings, but there isn't any supplement available that I would take in order to cling to youth. It just seems a little too desperate, and I'm much more of a go-with-the-flow kind of person.
Aging is an inevitability, even with the superpowers of this astragalus herb that is touted as the fountain of youth.
Aging isn't something anybody has to be self-conscious about. We all age at the same rate, thanks to something called the atomic clock, though Stephen Hawking has taught us that living at higher altitudes makes you age faster. So move to the coast and stay just a little bit younger than your friend who moved to Denver.
And according to Wikipedia, the most trusted online source, a side effect of taking this herb as a supplement could be a greater likelihood of cancer. It also says it might protect against cancer, so clearly the book is still out on exactly what this astragalus herb does and how effectively it does it.
Regardless of whether or not it works, if there were a pill to pop that would make me look 22 instead of the nearing 25-year-old person I am, it's unnecessary. The effects are likely to only remove a few years. It's not going to create a world of eternal 20-year-olds.
She said
I've been pretty forthcoming about the fact that I'm concerned about aging. I'm worried that with my eyesight I'm going to go downhill fast, that my skin will rapidly lose its youthful elasticity and that my already lustre-lacking hair will cease to shine.
So if someone handed me a pill and insisted that taking it every day will slow my aging and help me remain youthful, longer, I'd be so incredibly interested. I don't even know if I'd hesitate to find out the details.
But since I have the time to do the research right now, I can make an informed decision. The miracle product is the astragalus leaf. This plant is packed full of enzyme telomerase, which is apparently key to youthfulness. As I understand it, the body loses this enzyme as it ages, so by pumping ourselves full of the stuff, we're able to stay younger, longer. Apparently people who regularly took supplements containing this leaf had memories return, or their eyesight improve (yay!).
That sounds awesome. Can you imagine being able to stay healthy and young longer?
One downside is the cost. Like everything cool, this leaf is going to cost a ton of cash once more people start figuring out its awesome health benefits. Pretty soon it'll be something only the rich and famous and afford. Because, you know, they don't have other ways to look young.
But maybe this is for the best. If everyone starts living longer, and continues having children and over-populating the planet, so many of our environmental, economic and societal issues will probably only get worse. We're steadily on the way to over-populating ourselves to death (my opinion), and astragalus isn't going to help the case.
My final verdict: after considering everything, I would definitely visit this "fountain of youth," but only if I were a member of the world's most exclusive club: the wealthy and famous. Because then I would have earned it right?
