Over the ages, a lot of people have tried to reverse the aging process, stop it, or at least slow it down. While it's possible to slow it down, it's impossible to stop it and extremely difficult to reverse it. Stopping aging altogether is an uphill climb, anyway; something that is never going to happen. This reality strangely has never stopped people from trying.
Anti aging rolls back the years. Sure, it has not come to the point of actually keeping you from death, but with each day, that end becomes more possible. For the time being, human are still able to regenerate muscles, tissues and hormone; perhaps someday, we will be able to regenerate life.
Anti aging is a collection of various ways by which mankind may cheat the natural aging process. The inevitable is that at some point, you are bound to give up the ghost. However, the reality today is that through regeneration, genetic and tissue engineering, exercise and the right kind of diet, you can actually live longer and look younger than was thought possible..
To prolong your life, you might want to turn to anti aging. This however offers no guarantees as to your joy or state of mind. For that, you must be willing and able to enjoy all the benefits that come with old age, much as you might not like to acknowledge them.
Since even contemporary medicine is realized from several ancient practices, it is reasonable to conclude that a lot of ancient medicine has power to heal that much of tradition has neglected. In today's world, many of them are now being used to slow the aging process and improve health.
The Chopra Center for Wellbeing and Andrew Weil, both in America work extensively on life extension and anti aging. The latter puts much focus on alternative medicine, holistic health, and herbal supplements. It teaches and experiments on integrating Eastern and Western medicine to solve problems associated with aging. The former, however, is a stickler for mind-body medicine.
There is a lot of history that is written about various quests for life extension and preserved youth. Also much fiction is derived from this. Spanish poet Ponce de Le'n wrote about his search for the 'Fountain of Youth' as far back as the 16th century, showing that man has been interested in such for at least that long.
The percentage of happy people in the United States goes up with each age bracket from below thirty years of age to the bracket of 68-77. Just less than 80 years old, up to 38% are content with what they have achieved in their lifetimes. This is how many less people there will be, who worry about anti aging and life extension.