Looking into all the ailments of the human body over its lifetime, I’ve come to a simple conclusion; aging is simply the effects of multiple repetitive trauma injury over time. The human body is protected, fairly well until it is born, and as soon as it is born, it is subject to trauma. What traumas specifically depends on that body’s environment coupled with its inherent tendencies.
Example: when a baby is born, it is without signs of aging, of course. However, due to its inherent tendencies (sun lover, alcoholism, obesity,) over its years, that same “baby” will encounter various stresses that will inevitably adversely affect its physical appearance. Things such as too much sun, smoke/pollution, fatty foods, alcohol and other drugs, and even the inherited gene that fosters a tendency to be obese put serious stress on the body, changing the way it would otherwise look.
“Nature” and “nurture” play a role in the aging process, though, so that this same baby, though not carrying necessary genes in inheritance to be predisposed to such stresses, can also be introduced to them through the environment from which it is raised.
Examples would be a family that always went to the beach in the summer, never stressing the dangers of too much sun on the skin. Also a family that tended to tell its children to “clean their plates,” to the point of it being a forced action on the part of the child, a family with cigarette smokers and/or alcoholics drinking and smoking around the baby. These would create the same stressors for the human body, and over time, such injury, if repeated, of course, becomes repetitive trauma to the body, thus “aging” it from its original form.
Therefore, to me, aging is just that; repetitive trauma on the body. Some forms of such trauma are both avoidable and reversible. Not all, but if one wishes to actually “see” such changes in his or her own body, the first step is in realising how it got into the state its in now. Finding the cause could find the “cure.” However, with such a philosophy as aging being due to repetitive injury of the body, there’s then no such thing as “reversal” of the aging process. It is just another form of changing the body’s appearance.