How to Become Immortal?

10 min readNov 24, 2020

For centuries, humanity tried to solve the question of life and death. Finally, the development of technology and medicine gives us insights into how to become immortal. In this article, you will learn two ways to achieve immortality, technological and biological.

Biological immortality

Is it possible to become immortal?

There are two ways in which we can try to become immortal. Technological and Biological.

1st: Technological way to become immortal

At the moment, people are mortal, the older we get, the higher the chance of dying. The current state of medicine and technology makes it possible to slow down this process, but not stop it.

Your job is to make it to the moment when technology becomes so advanced that it can defeat old age and aging. Or live to a moment when scientists learn how to significantly extend life, you will have time before the more advanced technologies of life extension appear.

Most likely first practical technologies will be ready in the next 10–20 years. And in 20–30 years, scientists will start implementation (first for the richest). We can assume that in 40–50 years, the technology will become publicly available and everyone will have a chance to become immortal.

This correlation can be traced throughout the history of humankind. The glaring example is cellphones. Thirty years ago, the cellphone was a privilege, now even first-graders have it.

Back in the early 2000s, people still used floppy disks with a capacity of 1.44 MB. 30 years ago, the internet was not a thing, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin tried to sell the site for measly $1m. Few could predict that one day we will have terabytes of cloud storage, and Google’s market cap will stand at $167 billion.

There are several directions technology can go:

Stem cell. Stem cells are cells with the potential to develop into many different types of cells in the body. They have the potential to become specialized cells, such as muscle cells, blood cells, and brain cells. Now scientists learn how to convert “ordinary” cells to stem cells. This process is called reprogramming.

3D Bioprinting. Creation of living tissues, such as blood vessels, bones, heart. Find out more in this video.

Telomeres. These are caps at the ends of the DNA molecules, and they take part in the process of cell division. Telomeres shorten over time. Cell division isn’t possible when telomeres are too short. That is one of several factors that causes cells to age. Scientists are working on long telomeres. And it works, they extended the lifespan of mice by 24 percent.

Stop oxidative stress. One theory of aging is oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants in the body, which can lead to cell and tissue damage. Scientists work ( Skulachev’s ions) on how to protect the cells from damage by oxygen.

Nanotechnology. Creation of medical nanobots for tissues and organs repair and drug delivery.

Extracellular matrix. Extracellular matrix or ECM occupies the space between cells and serves as an intranet that connects the whole organism. During aging, components of the ECM become damaged and contribute to age-related pathologies.

Epigenetics. The definition of epigeneticswas formulated only in 2008. This emerging science is studying changes caused by the activation and deactivation of genes. As we age, some genes turn off, and others turn on. Maybe we can learn how to turn off aging genes.

2nd: Biological way to become immortal

There is a theory according to which if you extend your life to 90–100 years, then the Gompertz-Makeham law ceases to affect. Basically, this law states that the older you are, the higher chance of your death. That is true for almost all organisms on our planet ( a person’s risk of dying doubles every 8 years after age 40), but there are exceptions.

Negligible senescence is a term coined by biogerontologist Caleb Finch to denote organisms that do not exhibit evidence of biological aging, which means that chance of death for an organism does not increase with aging.

Examples of animals thought to be negligibly senescent:

The naked mole-rat is the most interesting example for us because it is a mammal. In 2018 researchers found that these creatures don’t age. Their social organization is similar to insects. They live in a colony (about 100 individuals) with a division of labor: queen, several husbands, soldiers, workers, etc. In the entire colony, only the uterus and a pair of males breed.

The rest are waiting for their chance. If the queen dies, a new female and several new males get access to breeding. These lucky ones need to be in good shape. Since no one knows who will be next, the entire colony must be healthy and not aging.

These mammals are not Gompertz-Makehamlaw-abiding citizens. The risk of death on any given day is the same, no matter their point in life.

Can humans live forever?

Some scientists claim that when a person reaches the age of 90–100 years, he enters the “ late-life mortality plateau “ and Gompertz-Makeham law stops working.

Why do people who have reached the “late-life mortality plateau” still die?

Imagine two rubber boats: a new one and an old one. The new one is used in terrible conditions, people swim on it both in cold and hot weather, they never wash it and throw it on the shore between sailings. The old boat has seen better days, but now it’s stored in a dry shed at room temperature. It is taken out only in the warm season to swim a bit and put back in the shed.

Which of these two boats is most likely to leak in the coming year? The old one, because the coating is damaged by the sun and salt. If the old boat had been in good condition initially, then everything would have been the other way around.

Your task is to maintain a healthy body until old age. That is still just a theory because only now medical progress allows us to reach old age with good health.

Is it possible to reach 90 years of age and stay healthy?

That will become clear in the next 20–30 years. There are people among us who integrated healthy eating, exercising, and regular check-ups into their lives at a young age.

These people understand the need to avoid sugar, alcohol, and overeating. They know about the effects of physical activity and intermittent fasting on insulin sensitivity.

There is knowledge, and there are people who use this knowledge.

Most likely, some of them will be able to live up to 90 with decent health. Because these people are still young now, we do not have statistics, and we can only make predictions.

How has a human’s life span changed over time?

We have already made vast progress in the life extension direction. For example, our closest “relatives” — chimpanzees live roughly 30 years. We already live 2–3 times longer than our nearest neighbors in the order (primates). Such a significant extension of life has become possible due to changes in using our bodies. I’ll give you a simple analogy for clarity.

Imagine a car in different operating conditions:

1) Without maintenance, bad fuel, constant rain and cold. (last up to 30000 km/ 18640 miles) 2) Without maintenance, good fuel, dry climate (last up to 50–100 thousand km / 31–62 mi) 3) With maintenance, with good fuel, dry climate (last up to 200–400 thousand km / 124–248 mi)

When do you think a car will last longer? In the first case, the car will rust and break the fastest. If we fill it with good fuel and ride in dry conditions, the car will last much longer, until the pads wear off and the filter clogs. But the car will last the longest if we regularly do maintenance, fill up with good fuel, and drive in a dry climate.

This excellent analogy shows how life span varies with operating conditions. Exactly the same thing happens with human life expectancy.

1) Ancient = without medicine + hunger + cold = up to 25–30 years. 2) Medieval = no medicine + food + warmth = 30–40 years. 3) Modern = medicine + food + warmth = 60–80 years.

You may not have thought about it before, but our life expectancy is steadily increasing. By the way, now it increases on average by one year every three years. Let’s say if the average life expectancy in a country is 65 years, then in thirty years in the same country, the average life expectancy will be about 75 years. Why? Because the operating conditions of our bodies are improving.

For most of our species’ history, we have suffered from the environment. Our ancestors had to fight fiercely for food and warmth, so they died very early (25–30 years old). That continued until we invented agriculture, made clothing, and began to build dwellings that protected us from the cold and predators.

When we made these improvements, our life expectancy almost doubled immediately. In the Middle Ages, people lived for 30–45 years, if they were lucky not to die in childhood, infant mortality reached 80–90% in those harsh times.

This went on for a very long time. In fact, until the beginning of the 20th century. People rarely lived to be 50 years old. Why? Because medicine was in its infancy. Any disease (such as sore throat, pneumonia, or throat inflammation) killed millions of people because there was no antibiotic or proper hygiene.

Every third person with pneumonia died. It was a very dangerous disease. After the emergence of modern medicine, the average life expectancy rose to 60–85 years. Moreover, where medicine is better (for example, Japan), there is a longer average life expectancy. It is not surprising. The better the maintenance of a car, the longer it lasts. It’s the same with our bodies.

Conclusion

You need to stay healthy for one until the technologies that will artificially prolong life or until 90–100 years to turn on late-life mortality plateau. This is the first article on longevity and immortality. The second article is here — The Connection Between Environment and Life Expectancy and the Role of Death.