So in the next six months it seems if you have £440 to spare you can get a fairly definitive answer to the question we all ask on occasion - barring being involved in an accident - how long will I live?

A new chromosome test will help you to understand how quickly you are aging and how many years you have left.

It has been created by a Spanish firm and uses a blood test to determine how long your telomeres are.

It seems a telomere is an area of repetitive DNA sequence at the end of a chromosome. It prevents the tip of the chromosome from deterioration and fusing with other chromosomes, therefore the longer your telomere is the longer it is before the end of the chromosome starts to break down.

Life Length, which have come up with test believe it can tell you to a fairly high degree of accuracy just how long you have left.

Inventor, Maria Blasco, head of telomeres research at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, has told the medical media:

"Knowing whether our telomeres are a normal length or not for a given chronological age will give us an indication of our health status and of our physiological 'age' even before diseases appear."

When it becomes available it seems you will trot off to the GP who will then send off the blood sample with the results back in a week. However there is also a 24 hour turnaround service - a bit like the stories of the palm reader telling the man not to open the envelope until you get home I suppose!!!

However there are those geneticists who while agreeing that telomere length is linked to the age of the person, add a person with really short telomeres is not necessarily close to death.

The makers say the aim of the test is to identify potential weaknesses early and encourage a healthy life. The flip side is if you are told you've got five years to live will you sell up and spend those five years travelling the world drinking and eating only to find that six years later you are still around with no home, no money and no job?

In Greek mythology Cyclopes had a single eye but were cursed with having the ability to foresee their own death. Now as keen as I am on medical science which enables me to shield my body from excessive wear and nutritional supplements which can add to the body's ability to regenerate cellular degrading I am still uneasy to be given a fairly precise "death by" date.

Maybe I'll keep my telomeres to myself.

jonguy@elixirnews.com

"Tide and time wait for no man" according to St. Marher in 1225, but let's face it we all want to push back the ravages of time and ladies, men are no exception.

You only have to look at the cluster around the mirror in the gym or the various skin preparations which are now commonplace after the shower to see men are buying into the whole anti-aging quest as keenly as their female counterparts. Where we differ is that is very much about not looking our age and trying to push back the creeping effects of growing older plain and simple along with the chance to live life to the full. Indeed bald for us can still be beautiful, and like me for man men the temptation of plastic surgery is not there it's not going to extend your life although judging by some of the adds in my spam box it can extend something else. I think many men are happy to work towards their goal via exercise diet and the odd nutritional bit of help alongside that myriad of skin products. However, are we missing something?

What we really want is a way to replace what has been lost - and I am not talking about Viagra although I know a fair few chaps who are in their late forties or early fifties who need a little help in that department which is shocking. Nothing impacts a man more than an inability to rise to the occasion.

I was delighted to be asked to become the Men's Editor of Elixir magazine in some ways I am the ideal test case. I have a desire to discover ways in which I can prolong not only my time on this planet but also the quality of that time but I am not and don't think I could ever be a total health freak living on a lettuce leaf and green tea.

I've run marathons, done a half iron man in the past three years but as the years go by the exercise gets harder as work impedes the ability to spend hours on the road or down the gym.

If anyone believes they have a way to enhance the length or quality of life then let me know the aim is to deliver to our readers the news, the research and the options and maybe we can find the elixir we all desire.

I look forward to finding out.

jonguy@elixirnews.com