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I’m so excited: I just learned that, according to some experts, old age officially begins at 65. I still have three more years until I’m really old.

Truth is, nobody wants to think of themselves as old. We live in a culture that tries to deny the inevitability of aging, and we often reserve our deepest feelings of denial for our pets, hopelessly wishing they would never get old.

It’s from this denial that we’re constantly trying to find or brew up the magical elixir that will make us immortal. This anti-aging campaign has come up with a lot of bunk stuff, but herbs actually can help us and our pets ease into our final years with comfort and grace.

What Happens as a Pet Ages?

There are two basic forms of aging: programmed and random. Different organisms age at different rates. We live longer than dogs and cats, but some turtle species, arctic clams and most trees live longer than we do. We can’t do much about the programmed aging except to select our parents well.

We can, on the other hand, do something about the random aspects of aging. To my way of thinking, the best of approaches lies in using herbs to help us work with the factors we can modify.

Organ systems. As an animal ages, the reserve capacity of each organ system progressively diminishes — the functional ability and mass of virtually all systems may decrease by as much as 30 percent. Herbs are the ideal medicine for helping an organ system achieve whatever functional capacity it has available.

An annual blood chemistry evaluation at the veterinary clinic can be most helpful here. If the test results identify an organ or system that is not functioning fully, we can concentrate on helping that organ with herbs.

For example, if liver function appears to be compromised, I’d consider a low-level therapeutic dose of milk thistle (Silybum marianum) or dandelion root (Taraxacum officinale). Many older animals become easily disoriented or distracted, or they may become grumpy and reclusive — all signs that the nervous system is gradually losing its reserve capacity. Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) helps treat cognitive dysfunction by increasing blood flow to the brain, and it’s also a good antioxidant herb.

Oxidative changes of aging. Living cells require oxygen, but too much oxygen can be damaging, causing a type of rapid aging of cellular structures that some have likened to cellular rust. As an animal ages, cellular damage from oxidative processes accumulates and actually feeds upon itself until the internal damage ultimately expresses as some form of externally recognizable disease such as arthritis, diabetes or cancer.

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