Nick HutchisonFounder and CEO, BookThinkers

Is aging a disease? 🦠 I love Dr. Sinclair’s thoughts on this subject!

12 Jan 2023 · 1 min

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Dr. Sinclair argues aging should be classified as a disease, not a natural process. A condition affecting fewer than 50% of people gets called a disease and gets treated; one affecting more than half gets called aging. The distinction is arbitrary and masks that aging meets every medical definition of disease.

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Aging is a disease. That's a pretty interesting stance. Right. Well, I don't think it takes a genius to realize that aging is a disease by definition. If you look up in the medical dictionaries what a disease is, it's a condition that results in a deterioration of function and that can eventually lead to death. And that's exactly what aging is. But for some reason, I think historical reasons, psychologically as well, we put it in a different category. And it turns out that the dividing line is simply just how many people get that disease. If something happens that's horrible over time to less than 50% of the population, we call it a disease and we try hard to treat it. We sometimes, we give it names like a syndrome. But if it happens to more than 50% of us, let's say even if it's just 50.5, uh, we call that aging. And that's just a total arbitrary cutoff.