by David A. Sinclair PhD (Author), Matthew D. LaPlante (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 5,419 ratings
Goodreads Choice
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Brilliant and enthralling.” —The Wall Street Journal
A paradigm-shifting book from an acclaimed Harvard Medical School scientist and one of Time’s most influential people.
It’s a seemingly undeniable truth that aging is inevitable. But what if everything we’ve been taught to believe about aging is wrong? What if we could choose our lifespan?
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity, reveals a bold new theory for why we age. As he writes: “Aging is a disease, and that disease is treatable.”
This eye-opening and provocative work takes us to the frontlines of research that is pushing the boundaries on our perceived scientific limitations, revealing incredible breakthroughs—many from Dr. David Sinclair’s own lab at Harvard—that demonstrate how we can slow down, or even reverse, aging. The key is activating newly discovered vitality genes, the descendants of an ancient genetic survival circuit that is both the cause of aging and the key to reversing it. Recent experiments in genetic reprogramming suggest that in the near future we may not just be able to feel younger, but actually become younger.
Through a page-turning narrative, Dr. Sinclair invites you into the process of scientific discovery and reveals the emerging technologies and simple lifestyle changes—such as intermittent fasting, cold exposure, exercising with the right intensity, and eating less meat—that have been shown to help us live younger and healthier for longer. At once a roadmap for taking charge of our own health destiny and a bold new vision for the future of humankind, Lifespan will forever change the way we think about why we age and what we can do about it.
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432 pages
September 10, 2019
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Lifespan is entertaining and fast-paced—a whirlwind tour of the recent past and a near future that will see 90 become the new 70. In a succession of colorfully titled chapters (‘The Demented Pianist’, ‘A Better Pill to Swallow’), Sinclair and LaPlante weave a masterful narrative of how we arrived at this crucial inflection point.” ― Nature Journal
“Sinclair’s work on slowing the aging process, and even reversing some aspects of it, could lead to the most significant set of medical breakthroughs since the discovery of antibiotics nearly a century ago.” ― Sydney Morning Herald
"In this insightful and provocative book that asks questions about how we age, and whether humans can overcome decay and degeneration, Sinclair grapples with some of the most fundamental questions around the science of aging. The result is an elegant and exciting book that deserves to be read broadly and deeply." -- Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author
“There are few books that have ever made me think about science in a fundamentally new way. David Sinclair’s book did that for me on aging. This is a book that anyone who ages must read.” -- Leroy Hood, PhD, professor at the California Institute of Technology, inventor, entrepreneur, member of all three US National Academies, and co-author of Code of Codes
“If you ever wondered how we age, if we can slow or even reverse aging, and if we can live a healthy 100 plus years, then David Sinclair’s new book Lifespan, which reads like a detective novel, will guide you through the science and the practical strategies to make your health span equal your lifespan, and make your lifespan long and vibrant.” -- Mark Hyman, MD, director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine and #1 New York Times bestselling author
“This is the most visionary book about aging I have ever read. Seize the day—and seize this book!” -- Dean Ornish, MD, founder and president of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute and New York Times bestselling author of UnDo It!
“In Lifespan, David Sinclair eloquently tells us the secret everyone wants to know: how to live longer and age slower. Boldly weaving cutting-edge science with fascinating bits of history, sociology, and morality, Sinclair convinces us that it is not only possible to live beyond one hundred years, it is inevitable that we will be able to one day do so. If you are someone who wants to know how to beat aging, Lifespan is a must-read.” -- William W. Li, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Eat to Beat Disease
“For years, the aging field has been about vitamins, juicebars, and snake oil. Now, in a seminal book, Harvard Professor David Sinclair has changed the landscape: he has combined precise science, practical translation, and autobiography to produce a rare book that is insightful, inspiring, and informative. He has translated a wealth of molecular detail into a program that we can all use to live longer and healthier. This is part of the ongoing revolution in aging and chronic disease, and there is no one who is better suited to write such an authoritative book than David Sinclair. For anyone interested in understanding the aging process, living longer, and avoiding the diseases of aging, this is the book to read.” -- Dale Bredesen, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Alzheimer's
“A visionary book from one of the most masterful longevity scientists of our time. Lifespan empowers us to change our health today while revealing a potential future when we live younger for longer.” -- Sara Gottfried, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Hormone Cure
“Prepare to have your mind blown. You are holding in your hands the precious results of decades of work, as shared by Dr. David Sinclair, the rock star of aging and human longevity.” -- Dave Asprey, founder and CEO of Bulletproof and New York Times bestselling author of The Bulletproof Diet
“Imagine a world in which we can live long enough to meet not just our grandchildren, but our great-grandchildren. This is Sinclair’s vision for the future of humankind, a vision that looks to science, nature, history, and even politics to make the case that it is possible to live well into our hundreds. Lifespan is boldly leading the way.” -- Jason Fung, MD, author of The Diabetes Code and The Obesity Code
“I have had the pleasure of knowing Dr. David Sinclair and following his groundbreaking research into the causes and reversal of aging for many years. In Lifespan, David takes us on an entertainingly wild ride into both the author’s fascinating personal journey of discovery and his seminal research into why we age. But more importantly, he provides us with the everyday tools that we can all use to stop what he now calls ‘the disease of aging.’. . . You owe it to yourself and your loved ones to read and follow his advice, as I have for the last 15 years!” -- Steven R Gundry, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Longevity Paradox and medical director of the International Heart and Lung Institute
“David Sinclair masterfully presents a bold vision of the future in which humanity is able to slow or reverse the aging process and live younger, healthier lives for longer. He engages the reader in a thorough examination of the science and emerging technologies that will enable humanity to achieve this vision.” -- Victor J. Dzau, MD, president of the US National Academy of Medicine and CEO of Duke University Medical Center
“Lifespan is the book we have been waiting for. It transcends everything we know about aging and longevity—a combination of brilliant scientific work, a pioneering mind, and the dream for a longer, healthier and happier life. Lifespan provides a vision for our future and the roadmap on how to get there, merging scientific breakthroughs and simple lifestyle changes to not only help us feel younger, but actually become younger.” -- Naomi Whittel, New York Times bestselling author of Glow15
“I have written about the brilliant work of David Sinclair for over fifteen years and have watched his life’s mission of using science to slow the scourge of old age and dying move from the outer edge to more mainstream biology (he’s still pushing boundaries!) as his careful work in the lab has steadily shed light on how the mechanisms of aging work in humans and in other organisms. In Lifespan, the full force of his optimism, humor, and soft-spoken eloquence as a storyteller-scientist come through. I was charmed and delighted by his skill at blending his own life’s narrative and others’ with clear and levelheaded explanations of some very complex and emerging science. I’m hoping we have David Sinclair with us and doing his science and writing books for another 500 years, give or take a century.” -- David Ewing Duncan, award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and curator of Arc Fusion
“Lifespan gives us hope for an extraordinary life. As the brilliant Dr. David Sinclair explains, aging is a disease, and that disease is treatable. This eye-opening book takes you to frontlines of incredible breakthroughs. What could be more valuable than an extended health lifespan? Enjoy this must read masterpiece!” -- Peter H. Diamandis, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Abundance and Bold
“David is a pioneer poised to change how we think about and understand aging.” -- Stephanie Lederman, CEO of the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), New York
“The most important message and priority of our time. For years to come, humanity will reflect on this book with awe and respect. Read it. . . . Your life depends on it.” -- Marc Hodosh, former owner & co-creator of TEDMED
“A tour de force. Sinclair’s book, and his life’s work ranks with humanity’s greatest contributions to helping enhance the joy and happiness of life, ranking with the works of Jenner, Pasteur, Salk, Locke, Gandhi, and Edison. Lifespan is a groundbreaking literary triptych that expertly combines the science of living longer, a practical checklist to unleash our inner potential for healthy longevity, and a brilliant philosophical, policy and ethical synthesis. A masterpiece.” -- Martine Rothblatt, founder, Chairwoman of the Board, and CEO of United Therapeutics and creator of SiriusXM Satellite Radio
“Stepping on the moon changed humanity. In Lifespan, Sinclair takes the ultimate step for humanity that will transform our lives beyond anything we could ever have imagined. If you can put your deepest beliefs aside, this will be the most important book you will ever read. The author is bold, the science is profound, and our future is here.” -- Henry Markram, PhD, professor at EPFL, Switzerland, director of the Blue Brain Project, and founder of Frontiers open-access journals
“An intellectually fascinating book with tantalizing insights on the most important issue about yours and everyone’s future.” -- Andrew Scott, PhD, professor of economics at London Business School and author of The 100-Year Life
“Throughout the book, the author’s enthusiasm jumps off the page.” ― Kirkus Reviews
“Sinclair’s dedication to understanding aging on both a microscopic and global scale is bound to shatter centuries of paradigms.” ― Scientific Inquirer
“The book, which surpasses everything we know about aging and life extension, has been written with a rich literary material of impressive depth and clarity to offer a deeper understanding of genetics and human longevity research.” ― Wall Street Pit
“Brilliant and enthralling." —Wall Street Journal
About the Author
David Sinclair, PhD, AO, is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. One of the leading innovators of his generation, he has been named by Time as “one of the 100 most influential people in the world” and top fifty most influential people in healthcare. He is a board member of the American Federation for Aging Research and has received more than thirty-five awards for his research and major scientific breakthroughs. Dr. Sinclair and his work have been featured on 60 Minutes, Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, and Newsweek, among others. He lives in Boston and enjoys hiking and kayaking with his wife and three children. To learn more, visit LifespanBook.com and follow him on Twitter @DavidASinclair.
Matthew LaPlante is an associate professor of journalistic writing at Utah State University, where he teaches news reporting and feature writing. A former US Navy intelligence specialist and Middle East war correspondent, he is the author of Superlative: The Biology of Extremes and the cowriter of multiple other books on the intersection of science and society. He lives in Salt Lake City and skis in Big Cottonwood Canyon. To learn more, visit MDLaPlante.com and follow him on Twitter @MDLaPlante.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Lifespan
INTRODUCTION
A GRANDMOTHER’S PRAYER
I GREW UP ON THE edge of the bush. In figurative terms, my backyard was a hundred-acre wood. In literal terms, it was much bigger than that. It went on as far as my young eyes could see, and I never grew tired of exploring it. I would hike and hike, stopping to study the birds, the insects, the reptiles. I pulled things apart. I rubbed the dirt between my fingers. I listened to the sounds of the wild and tried to connect them to their sources.
And I played. I made swords from sticks and forts from rocks. I climbed trees and swung on branches and dangled my legs over steep precipices and jumped off of things that I probably shouldn’t have jumped off. I imagined myself as an astronaut on a distant planet. I pretended to be a hunter on safari. I lifted my voice for the animals as though they were an audience at the opera house.
“Coooeey!” I would holler, which means “Come here” in the language of the Garigal people, the original inhabitants.
I wasn’t unique in any of this, of course. There were lots of kids in the northern suburbs of Sydney who shared my love of adventure and exploration and imagination. We expect this of children. We want them to play this way.
Until, of course, they’re “too old” for that sort of thing. Then we want them to go to school. Then we want them to go to work. To find a partner. To save up. To buy a house.
Because, you know, the clock is ticking.
My grandmother was the first person to tell me that it didn’t have to be that way. Or, I guess, she didn’t tell me so much as show me.
She had grown up in Hungary, where she spent Bohemian summers swimming in the cool waters of Lake Balaton and hiking in the mountains of its northern shore at a holiday resort that catered to actors, painters, and poets. In the winter months, she helped run a hotel in the Buda Hills before the Nazis took it over and converted it to the central command of the Schutzstaffel, or “SS.”
A decade after the war, in the early days of the Soviet occupation, the Communists began to shut down the borders. When her mother tried to cross illegally into Austria, she was caught, arrested, and sentenced to two years in jail and died shortly after. During the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, my grandmother wrote and distributed anti-Communist newsletters in the streets of Budapest. After the revolution was crushed, the Soviets began arresting tens of thousands of dissidents, and she fled to Australia with her son, my father, reasoning that it was the furthest they could get from Europe.
She never set foot in Europe again, but she brought every bit of Bohemia with her. She was, I have been told, one of the first women to sport a bikini in Australia and got chased off Bondi Beach because of it. She spent years living in New Guinea—which even today is one of the most intensely rugged places on our planet—all by herself.
Though her bloodline was Ashkenazi Jew and she had been raised a Lutheran, my grandmother was a very secular person. Our equivalent of the Lord’s Prayer was the English author Alan Alexander Milne’s poem “Now We Are Six,” which ends:
But now I am six,
I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six now
for ever and ever.
She read that poem to my brother and me again and again. Six, she told us, was the very best age, and she did her damnedest to live life with the spirit and awe of a child of that age.
Even when we were very young, my grandmother didn’t want us to call her “grandmother.” Nor did she like the Hungarian term, “nagymama,” or any of the other warm terms of endearment such as “bubbie,” “grandma,” and “nana.”
To us boys, and everyone else, she was simply Vera.
Vera taught me to drive, swerving and swaying across all of the lanes, “dancing” to whatever music was on the car’s radio. She told me to enjoy my youth, to savor the feeling of being young. Adults, she said, always ruined things. Don’t grow up, she said. Never grow up.
Well into her 60s and 70s, she was still what we call “young at heart,” drinking wine with friends and family, eating good food, telling great stories, helping the poor, sick, and less fortunate, pretending to conduct symphonies, laughing late into the night. By just about anyone’s standard, that’s the mark of a “life well lived.”
But yes, the clock was ticking.
By her mid-80s, Vera was a shell of her former self, and the final decade of her life was hard to watch. She was frail and sick. She still had enough wisdom left to insist that I marry my fiancée, Sandra, but by then music gave her no joy and she hardly got out of her chair; the vibrancy that had defined her was gone.
Toward the end, she gave up hope. “This is just the way it goes,” she told me.
She died at the age of 92. And, in the way we’ve been taught to think about these things, she’d had a good, long life. But the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to believe that the person she truly was had been dead many years at that point.
Growing old may seem a distant event, but every one of us will experience the end of life. After we draw our last breath, our cells will scream for oxygen, toxins will accumulate, chemical energy will be exhausted, and cellular structures will disintegrate. A few minutes later, all of the education, wisdom, and memories that we cherished, and all of our future potential, will be irreversibly erased.
I learned this firsthand when my mother, Diana, passed away. My father, my brother, and I were there. It was a quick death, thankfully, caused by a buildup of liquid in her remaining lung. We had just been laughing together about the eulogy I’d written on the trip from the United States to Australia, and then suddenly she was writhing on the bed, sucking for air that couldn’t satisfy her body’s demand for oxygen, staring at us with desperation in her eyes.
I leaned in and whispered into her ear that she was the best mom I could have wished for. Within a few minutes, her neurons were dying, erasing not just the memory of my final words to her but all of her memories. I know some people die peacefully. But that’s not what happened to my mother. In those moments she was transformed from the person who had raised me into a twitching, choking mass of cells, all fighting over the last residues of energy being created at the atomic level of her being.
All I could think was “No one tells you what it is like to die. Why doesn’t anyone tell you?”
There are few people who have studied death as intimately as the Holocaust documentary filmmaker Claude Lanzmann. And his assessment—indeed, his warning—is chilling. “Every death is violent,” he said in 2010. “There is no natural death, unlike the picture we like to paint of the father who dies quietly in his sleep, surrounded by his loved ones. I don’t believe in that.”1
Even if they don’t recognize its violence, children come to understand the tragedy of death surprisingly early in their lives. By the age of four or five, they know that death occurs and is irreversible.2 It is a shocking thought for them, a nightmare that is real.
image
A “GOOD, LONG LIFE.” My grandmother “Vera” sheltered Jews in World War II, lived in primitive New Guinea, and was removed from Bondi Beach for wearing a bikini. The end of her life was hard to watch. “This is just the way it goes,” she said. But the person she truly was had been dead many years at that point.
At first, because it’s calming, most children prefer to think that there are certain groups of people who are protected from death: parents, teachers, and themselves. Between 5 and 7, however, all children come to understand the universality of death. Every family member will die. Every pet. Every plant. Everything they love. Themselves, too. I can remember first learning this. I can also very well remember our oldest child, Alex, learning it.
“Dad, you won’t always be around?”
“Sadly, no,” I said.
Alex cried on and off for a few days, then stopped, and never asked me about it again. And I’ve never again mentioned it, either.
It doesn’t take long for the tragic thought to be buried deep in the recesses of our subconscious. When asked if they worry about death, children tend to say that they don’t think about it. If asked what they do think about it, they say it is not a concern because it will occur only in the remote future, when they get old.
That’s a view most of us maintain until well into our fifties. Death is simply too sad and paralyzing to dwell on each day. Often, we realize it too late. When it comes knocking, and we are not prepared, it can be devastating.
For Robin Marantz Henig, a columnist at the New York Times, the “bitter truth” about mortality came late in life, after she became a grandparent. “Beneath all the wonderful moments you may be lucky enough to share in and enjoy,” she wrote, “your grandchild’s life will be a long string of birthdays you will not live to see.”3
It takes courage to consciously think about your loved ones’ mortality before it actually happens. It takes even more courage to deeply ponder your own.
It was the comedian and actor Robin Williams who first demanded this courage from me through his portrayal of John Keating, the teacher and hero in the film Dead Poets Society, who challenges his teenage students to stare into the faces of the long-dead boys in a fading photo.4
“They are not that different from you, are they?” Keating says. “Invincible, just like you feel. . . . Their eyes are full of hope . . . But you see, gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils.”
Keating encourages the boys to lean in closer to listen for a message from the grave. Standing behind them, in a quiet, ghostly voice, he whispers, “Carpe. Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”
That scene had an enormous impact on me. It is likely that I would not have had the motivation to become a Harvard professor if it hadn’t been for that movie. At the age of 20, I had finally heard someone else say what my grandmother had taught me at an early age: Do your part to make humanity be the best it can be. Don’t waste a moment. Embrace your youth; hold on to it for as long as you can. Fight for it. Fight for it. Never stop fighting for it.
But instead of fighting for youth, we fight for life. Or, more specifically, we fight against death.
As a species, we are living much longer than ever. But not much better. Not at all. Over the past century we have gained additional years, but not additional life—not life worth living anyway.5
And so most of us, when we think about living to 100, still think “God forbid,” because we’ve seen what those final decades look like, and for most people, most of the time, they don’t look appealing at all. Ventilators and drug cocktails. Broken hips and diapers. Chemotherapy and radiation. Surgery after surgery after surgery. And hospital bills; my God, the hospital bills.
We’re dying slowly and painfully. People in rich countries often spend a decade or more suffering through illness after illness at the ends of their lives. We think this is normal. As lifespans continue to increase in poorer nations, this will become the fate of billions of additional people. Our successes in extending life, the surgeon and doctor Atul Gawande has noted, have had the effect of “making mortality a medical experience.”6
But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if we could be younger longer? Not years longer but decades longer. What if those final years didn’t look so terribly different from the years that came before them? And what if, by saving ourselves, we could also save the world?
Maybe we can never be six again—but how about twenty-six or thirty-six?
What if we could play as children do, deeper into our lives, without worrying about moving on to the things adults have to do so soon? What if all of the things we need to compress into our teenage years didn’t need to be so compressed after all? What if we weren’t so stressed in our 20s? What if we weren’t feeling middle-aged in our 30s and 40s? What if, in our 50s, we wanted to reinvent ourselves and couldn’t think of a single reason why we shouldn’t? What if, in our 60s, we weren’t fretting about leaving a legacy but beginning one?
What if we didn’t have to worry that the clock was ticking? And what if I told you that soon—very soon, in fact—we won’t?
Well, that’s what I’m telling you.
I’m fortunate that after thirty years of searching for truths about human biology, I find myself in a unique position. If you were to visit me in Boston, you’d most likely find me hanging out in my lab at Harvard Medical School, where I’m a professor in the Department of Genetics and codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging. I also run a sister lab at my alma mater, the University of New South Wales in Sydney. In my labs, teams of brilliant students and PhDs have both accelerated and reversed aging in model organisms and have been responsible for some of the most cited research in the field, published in some of the world’s top scientific journals. I am also a cofounder of a journal, Aging, that provides space to other scientists to publish their research on one of the most challenging and exciting questions of our time, and a cofounder of the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research, a group of the top twenty researchers in aging worldwide.
In trying to make practical use of my discoveries, I’ve helped start a number of biotechnology companies and sit as a chair of the scientific boards of advisers of several others. These companies work with hundreds of leading academics in scientific areas ranging from the origin of life to genomics to pharmaceuticals.7 I am, of course, aware of my own labs’ discoveries years before they are made public, but through these associations, I’m also aware of many other transformational discoveries ahead of time, sometimes a decade ahead. The coming pages will serve as your backstage pass and your front-row seat.
Having received the equivalent of a knighthood in Australia and taken on the role of an ambassador, I’ve been spending quite a bit of my time briefing political and business leaders around the world about the ways our understanding of aging is changing—and what that means for humanity going forward.8
I’ve applied many of my scientific findings to my own life, as have many of my family members, friends, and colleagues. The results—which, it should be noted, are completely anecdotal—are encouraging. I’m now 50, and I feel like a kid. My wife and kids will tell you I act like one, too.
That includes being a stickybeak, the Australian term for someone who is overly inquisitive, perhaps derived from the currawong crows that used to punch through the foil lids of the milk bottles delivered to our homes and drink the milk out of them. My old high school friends still like to tease me about how, whenever they came over to my parents’ house, they would find me pulling something apart: a pet moth’s cocoon, a spider’s curled-up leaf shelter, an old computer, my father’s tools, a car. I became quite good at it. I just wasn’t very good at putting these things back together.
I couldn’t bear not knowing how something worked or where it came from. I still can’t—but at least now I get paid for it.
My childhood home is perched on a rocky mountainside. Below is a river that runs into Sydney Harbor. Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales, explored these valleys in April 1788, only a few months after he and his First Fleet of marines, prisoners, and their families established a colony on the shores of what he called the “finest and most extensive harbor in the universe.” The person most responsible for him being there was the botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who eighteen years earlier had sailed up the Australian coastline with Captain James Cook on his “voyage round the world.”9
After returning to London with hundreds of plant specimens to impress his colleagues, Banks lobbied King George III to start a British penal colony on the continent, the best site for which, he argued, not coincidentally, would be a bay called “Botany” on “Cape Banks.”10 The First Fleet settlers soon discovered that Botany Bay, despite its most excellent name, had no source of water, so they sailed up to Sydney Harbor and found one of the world’s largest “rias,” a highly branched, deep waterway that formed when the Hawkesbury River system had been flooded by rising sea levels after the last ice age.
At the age of 10, I had already discovered through exploration that the river in my backyard flowed down into Middle Harbor, a branch of Sydney Harbor. But I could no longer stand not knowing where the river originated. I needed to know what the beginning of a river looked like.
I followed it upstream, left the first time it forked and right the time after that, wending into and out of several suburbs. By nightfall I was miles from home, beyond the last mountain on the horizon. I had to ask a stranger to let me call my mother to beg her to come pick me up. A few times after that I tried searching upstream, but never did get anywhere close to the fount. Like Juan Ponce de León, the Spanish explorer of Florida known for his apocryphal quest to find the Fountain of Youth, I failed.11
Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to understand why we grow old. But finding the source of a complex biological process is like searching for the spring at the source of a river: it’s not easy.
On my quest, I’ve wound my way left and right and had days when I wanted to give up. But I’ve persevered. Along the way, I have seen a lot of tributaries, but I’ve also found what may be the spring. In the coming pages, I will present a new idea about why aging evolved and how it fits into what I call the Information Theory of Aging. I will also tell you why I have come to see aging as a disease—the most common disease—one that not only can but should be aggressively treated. That’s part I.
In part II, I will introduce you to the steps that can be taken right now—and new therapies in development—that may slow, stop, or reverse aging, bringing an end to aging as we know it.
And yes, I fully recognize the implications of the words “bringing an end to aging as we know it,” so, in part III, I will acknowledge the many possible futures these actions could create and propose a path to a future that we can look forward to, a world in which the way we can get to an increased lifespan is through an ever-rising healthspan, the portion of our lives spent without disease or disability.
There are plenty of people who will tell you that’s a fairy tale—closer to the works of H. G. Wells than those of C. R. Darwin. Some of them are very smart. A few are even people who understand human biology quite well and whom I respect.
Those people will tell you that our modern lifestyles have cursed us with shortening lifespans. They’ll say you’re unlikely to see 100 years of age and that your children aren’t likely to get to the century mark, either. They’ll say they’ve looked at the science of it all and done the projections, and it sure doesn’t seem likely that your grandchildren will get to their 100th birthdays, either. And they’ll say that if you do get to 100, you probably won’t get there healthy and you definitely won’t be there for long. And if they grant you that people will live longer, they’ll tell you that it’s the worst thing for this planet. Humans are the enemy!
They’ve got good evidence for all of this—the entire history of humanity, in fact.
Sure, little by little, millennia by millennia, we’ve been adding years to the average human life, they will say. Most of us didn’t get to 40, and then we did. Most of us didn’t get to 50, and then we did. Most of us didn’t get to 60, and then we did.12 By and large, these increases in life expectancy came as more of us gained access to stable food sources and clean water. And largely the average was pushed upward from the bottom; deaths during infancy and childhood fell, and life expectancy rose. This is the simple math of human mortality.
But although the average kept moving up, the limit did not. As long as we’ve been recording history, we have known of people who have reached their 100th year and who might have lived a few years beyond that mark. But very few reach 110. Almost no one reaches 115.
Our planet has been home to more than 100 billion humans so far. We know of just one, Jeanne Calment of France, who ostensibly lived past the age of 120. Most scientists believe she died in 1997 at the age of 122, although it’s also possible that her daughter replaced her to avoid paying taxes.13 Whether or not she actually made it to that age really doesn’t matter; others have come within a few years of that age but most of us, 95 percent to be precise, are dead before 100.
So it certainly makes sense when people say that we might continue to chip away at the average, but we’re not likely to move the limit. They say it’s easy to extend the maximum lifespan of mice or of dogs, but we humans are different. We simply live too long already.
They are wrong.
There’s also a difference between extending life and prolonging vitality. We’re capable of both, but simply keeping people alive—decades after their lives have become defined by pain, disease, frailty, and immobility—is no virtue.
Prolonged vitality—meaning not just more years of life but more active, healthy, and happy ones—is coming. It is coming sooner than most people expect. By the time the children who are born today have reached middle age, Jeanne Calment may not even be on the list of the top 100 oldest people of all time. And by the turn of the next century, a person who is 122 on the day of his or her death may be said to have lived a full, though not particularly long, life. One hundred and twenty years might be not an outlier but an expectation, so much so that we won’t even call it longevity; we will simply call it “life,” and we will look back with sadness on the time in our history in which it was not so.
What’s the upward limit? I don’t think there is one. Many of my colleagues agree.14 There is no biological law that says we must age.15 Those who say there is don’t know what they’re talking about. We’re probably still a long way off from a world in which death is a rarity, but we’re not far from pushing it ever farther into the future.
All of this, in fact, is inevitable. Prolonged healthy lifespans are in sight. Yes, the entire history of humanity suggests otherwise. But the science of lifespan extension in this particular century says that the previous dead ends are poor guides.
It takes radical thinking to even begin to approach what this will mean for our species. Nothing in our billions of years of evolution has prepared us for this, which is why it’s so easy, and even alluring, to believe that it simply cannot be done.
But that’s what people thought about human flight, too—up until the moment someone did it.
Today the Wright brothers are back in their workshop, having successfully flown their gliders down the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk. The world is about to change.
And just as was the case in the days leading up to December 17, 1903, the majority of humanity is oblivious. There was simply no context with which to construct the idea of controlled, powered flight back then, so the idea was fanciful, magical, the stuff of speculative fiction.16
Then: liftoff. And nothing was ever the same again.
We are at another point of historical inflection. What hitherto seemed magical will become real. It is a time in which humanity will redefine what is possible; a time of ending the inevitable.
Indeed, it is a time in which we will redefine what it means to be human, for this is not just the start of a revolution, it is the start of an evolution.
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Product details
Publisher : Atria Books; Illustrated edition (September 10, 2019)
Language : English
Hardcover : 432 pages
Customer Reviews: 4.6 out of 5 stars 5,419 ratings
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Kindle Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Meh - not much actionable except for a single page
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2019
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Dr. Sinclair has been doing the podcast rounds and you can learn a lot more from those podcasts about his research than you can from this book. The book itself is full of anecdotes and socio-political-economic idea;, it might be useful as an introduction for those flirting with the idea of life extension, but this book isn't for those who are already interested in it. There's one page in the "Conclusion" section where he mentions what he does which is a 1g NMN, 1g resveratrol, Vitamin D, K2, 83mg aspirin, avoid sugar, bread, pasta, skip one meal a day, get your blood tested, don't smoke, avoid plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-Rays, CT scans, sleep in a cold bedroom, do cold exposure, do exercise.
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R. Cronise
5.0 out of 5 stars He changed my life. Let him change yours.
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2019
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As one of the pioneers in longevity research, David challenged status quo and demonstrated that nature’s longevity genes seemed to be conserved throughout biology. This is good news, because the changes that occur with aging seem to be correctable later in life. This isn’t another self-help book with meal plans and shopping lists. Instead, it will guide you through the real challenges and progress on our path to not just living longer, but importantly, living healthier.
Although this is plenty technical, it’s not an academic tome. Anyone, researcher or layman alike, will be able to follow the story thanks to the inclusion of so many personal accounts and reflections. After finishing, you will have a new perspective and hopefully realize that we have the ability right now to extend healthspan and the very real possibility of extending lifespan in the coming decade.
We met in 2009 and he encouraged me to write collaborative journal articles (metabolic winter hypothesis and oxidative priority) and now that work ultimately is the basis for our book, The Healthspan Solution, which focuses more on what we can achieve with diet. It’s been an honor working with him and having a man of his insight as a mentor and friend.
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Timothy D. Lundeen
5.0 out of 5 stars All about healthy life extension, by a leading scientist
Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2019
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. David makes three critical points:
* longer healthy lifespan improves all of our lives, not just personally, but for all of the people we love
* mechanisms to increase lifespan are part of our cells and often just need to be activated
* increasing healthy lifespan will not make the world overcrowded, but will benefit everyone by increasing productivity and overall well-being
All of these are well-supported and convincing, including touching and memorable personal experiences.
I do have one major issue, though. Our current medical system is focused on the bottom line, making money is more important than the best protocol. Look at Vioxx, for example, which killed thousands of people so that Merck could make more money. David has personal experiences with the system: his Mom almost died from poisoning by prescription medicine, and his daughter could have died from a serious Lyme infection that was not properly handled.
Yet David accepts that vaccination is a medical miracle, without doing any research on its risks and benefits. I hope he will take a serious look at all the issues:
* the extremely high rates of chronic illness in vaccinated vs non-vaccinated children, The Children’s Health Defense has a good series based on peer-reviewed research
* the connection between aluminum and autism, with artists having the highest levels. See Dr Chris Exley’s peer-reviewed work. Most vaccines have high levels of aluminum that has been shown to stay in the body and migrate to the brain
* the connection between vaccination-induced brain inflammation and brain injury, see vaccine papers dot org, which includes full-text copies of peer-reviewed research: "powerful scientific evidence has emerged indicating that vaccines cause brain injury such as autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression, attention-deficit disorder and other mental illnesses. This scientific evidence has been largely ignored by the media, and by medical institutions that are supposedly guided by science."
* the actual history of vaccination. Medical historians estimate that ALL of modern medicine, including vaccination and antibiotics, reduced childhood mortality by 4-6%. That is, 94-96% of the reduction was from improved sanitation and nutrition. For example, scarlet fever has been eradicated — without any vaccine. A good source is the book Dissolving Illusions.
* the actual contents of vaccines as analyzed by Corvelva, showing high levels of contamination
* the lack of liability for vaccines by the medical industry. Instead, a government fund compensates injuries, and has paid out over $4 billion. This does not motivate safer vaccines!
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T. S
4.0 out of 5 stars Useful, if you know a bit of cell biology
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2019
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I am reading and am continuing to read. This book is important. But one would need a basic education in cell biology to completely understand what the author is talking about. Page 5 has a couple of paragraphs where out of nowhere, the author starts talking about “DNA, gene, genetic material, cell division, chromosome, tumor”. If you have no clue what these are, you will have a hard time following the author. If you are like me (software engineer) I would urge you to learn about basic cell biology first and then read this book to fully appreciate it. If I were the author, I would definitely look at providing an introductory chapter on cell biology in the next edition (if the intended audience is lay people)
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Ben
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important books ever written
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2019
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I've been following Dr Sinclair for some time and have always been impressed by his ability to explain the most complex science to us commoners. But I didn't truly grasp the breadth of different science he is involved in until now.
The breakthroughs they are making now is astounding, and the speed they are occuring is dramatic.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg once he (and others) convince the policy makers to treat aging as a disease and fund the research. It has the potential to stop nearly all chronic disease, so the efforts should be increased 1000x times, or more.
I believe this will happen soon, and this book may be a significant factor in the dawning of a new era for humankind.
Dr Sinclair is a visionary with the ability to truly change the world.
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David Weiseth
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the preeminent thought leaders in this space, ie longevity
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2019
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I have two gurus I rely on for longevity advice, Sinclair and Longo, they actually offer two different approaches to the subject matter, but between the two you have a great lay of the land.
This book is highly recommended, I am reading it now, very slowly to glean all I can, I have been waiting for this book's release for 6 months, finally the day has arrived.
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3.0 out of 5 stars A book of two halves: the first part fascinating, the second...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2019
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Although the book is split into three sections - the past, the present and the future - it reads as two halves: what is essentially scientific and what is decidedly ethical. When Dr Sinclair confines himself to his subject, it very difficult to put the book down. He discusses the advances in genomics, etc, that led him and others to studying ageing, before discussing current research and the notion that ageing is more a disease than a natural process. He includes some scientific detail, a few useful analogies and a good smattering of anecdotes to impress and educate the reader, which, despite some obvious padding, he undeniably does.
I think a typical scientist would and should stop right there; for science does not concern itself with morality but with pure knowledge whether constructive or destructive. Nonetheless, Dr Sinclair goes on to debate the real and political consequences of people living, if not forever, certainly much longer than they do now. To me, this is where the book rapidly goes down hill. Dr Sinclair knows there will be serious repercussions: an increase in population; a greater demand for resources; more pollution; more carbon emissions; etc, etc. He says that alongside the big increase in population in the 1800's was a huge increase in the standard of sanitation and health as though it were causative - more people lead to more benefits. He thinks that GMO and foods modified by other technologies will provide the solution to feeding the ever-increasing numbers of mouths and gets irritated when some people have the temerity to question their safety. Also, because he would be content to work doing his interesting research in his lab for the next 50 years, it does not mean a miner would like to spend another 50 digging coal.
Despite Dr Sinclair's faith in the ingenuity of man, there are times when i sense he is trying to convince himself of his utopian vision rather than the reader. Living to infinity is not the be all and end all; living a healthy life is more important, whether one lives to 70 or 90.
At some point I will re-read the first half of the book - which I enjoyed - but not the second. I must be only part Luddite.
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Thomas Burgess
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting. Not sure of the ethics.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 22, 2019
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Very interesting book. Destroys the paradigm that aging is natural and opens your mind to it being a disease (basically a failure in our genes.)
Richard Dawkins touched on why we would inherit genes that fail as we age: essentially we reproduce before we suffer from these age-related ailments, and so natural selection has not filtered it out as it presumably has young man/woman ailments that would kill off the would-be reproducer.
The book uses scientific terms and explanations and so some reading on physiology may be beneficial alongside this book. Note taking is a must if you're wanting to retain and be able to explain the contents.
The reason I've given it 3 out of 5 stars is the completely lack of concern over the animals the author and his colleagues tested on. I know its commonplace (though this doesn't make it right) but there is not even any acknowledgement from the author that this is cruel behaviour. He will talk about how he'll age mice prematurely (yes fascinating but cruel), starve them, dissect them prior to natural death, etc. He does comment on how easy it is to buy mice to test on, though. Well, as long as subjecting unlucky animals to torture is convenient!
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CI
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 22, 2019
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Great book. Really interesting. Gives a glimpse of the future in terms of cutting edge gene therapy but also provides advice that anyone can implement now e.g. fasting, exercise, calorie restriction and certain supplements. Highly recommended.
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Lindsay Tideswell
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 15, 2019
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For someone who is not a Scientist or indeed aware of any of the issues in the book, this book is a must read if you are in the slightest bit interested in enjoying this wonderful life for as long as possible. It has certainly opened up my mind to what is possible and encourages you to look at our human bodies in a totally different way. I guess for experts a lot of the information is 'old hat' for me it proved to be the springboard to find out as much as I can about living longer and healthier. I hope to be a very well informed layman in 6 months time able to make some key decisions. Outstanding read.
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Stan
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 20, 2019
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I am reading this book while traveling. It is better than I expected and deeply personal from David. I already know many of the topics the book is talking about but I find it very useful to consolidate my knowlege. The knowledge in this book is of enormous value and at the same time the book is low cost. I think it is the most important book I read this year.
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Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To
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Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To
by David A. Sinclair (Goodreads Author)
4.21 · Rating details · 11,355 ratings · 1,325 reviews
It’s a seemingly undeniable truth that aging is inevitable. But what if everything we’ve been taught to believe about aging is wrong? What if we could choose our lifespan?
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity, reveals a bold new theory for why we age. As he writes: “Aging is a disease, and that disease is treatable.”
This book takes us to the frontlines of research many from Dr. David Sinclair’s own lab at Harvard—that demonstrate how we can slow down, or even reverse, aging. The key is activating newly discovered vitality genes, the descendants of an ancient genetic survival circuit that is both the cause of aging and the key to reversing it. (less)
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Hardcover, 432 pages
Published September 10th 2019 by Atria Books
Original TitleLifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To
ISBN1501191977 (ISBN13: 9781501191978)
Edition LanguageEnglish
Literary AwardsGoodreads Choice Award Nominee for Science & Technology (2019)
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Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To
Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To
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Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To
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Always Pouting
Jan 03, 2020Always Pouting rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Oh boy, I just finished this and I'm incredibly annoyed. I want to start off by saying that I didn't pay for this and I'm glad I didn't. I had credits on Amazon to get a kindle book so this was one of the ones I bought because I had heard Sinclair on Peter Attia's podcast and I had thought that this book would be more research and science heavy. The last almost hundred pages of this book of 300-ish pages is what put me in such a bad mood. Personally I have zero patience for self styled thought leaders of any kind and people who want to spend all my time telling me about some inevitable future. The last third of this book is about the future and supposedly is grappling with the ethics of extending human life, which it doesnt do convincingly. There was no mention of research really and Sinclair uses random studies to try to justify his idea that living forever will actually be good for us. What was the point of using that study on people who stopped to help other people to try and say that people living longer might feel less rushed and imply it would make us kinder and then to proceed to acknowledge what an idiotic thing that was to say because of the leap being made. Like just leave it out man. Also I don't care about his politics, even if a lot of it aligns with my own, like why are you telling me this. It just felt annoying and self important for him to tell me these things I dont care about. I dont want to know about Sinclair's hopes and dreams and positions on high profile issues. The best part of this book was just the middle part where he actually discussed the research and science and interesting ideas of what may be happening. I wish it had been more of that and less of this exposition of himself and his life. Also this is going to be hypocritical but it was so annoying how it didn't have as much of a cohesive structure or flow through out the book and how he jumped from thing to thing without building on it and going into depth and detail about it. I know my reviews are chaotic but I'm not charging money or styling myself as some expert in something who can enlighten you on the subject.
I feel like the whole purpose of this book is for Sinclair to expand on his on feelings and experiences around the issue of aging. It serves the purpose of persuasion to push for viewing aging in the framework he thinks it should be viewed in and to thus allow for more attention/funding towards the issue. None of that is wrong per se but it could have been done much better and concisely if he didn't jump around trying to predict the future and cover technologies that he's clearly not working on first hand and thus creating weaker sections in the book. I probably would've given it a higher rating regardless of my own expectations for a book heavier, being heavier on the science side and work being done in his lab, if it hadn't felt so grating to have it jump around so much, have him pushing himself as some predictor of the future, and having him only superficially address concerns with what he wants to do. I also would probably have given this a better rating if it weren't filled with so many anecdotes and name dropping so many people who I also don't care about. I think its great that people are accomplished and they're very impressive people etc but just giving me names and one sentence descriptions of what people are working on is useless for my own purposes.
Anyway this is 2.5 stars from me, this might be a good read for someone else but as someone with more of a science background who wants to read books on research that are rigorous and more heavily focused on the research itself, which actually goes over things like limitations of said research in a more thorough fashion, this didn't appeal to me at all. I don't enjoy people predicting the future either, regardless of how much merit those predictions have and how often that person is right, because the future isn't set and is shaped by decisions we make today and I'd much rather here how people themselves are working to shape it and why they think we should work to shape it that way. Just people espousing what is and isn't possible isn't really appealing to me because I already am open to trying things out and I would much rather they saving their persuasion for others. Also I wanted Sinclair to talk about the science, if I wanted to political theory I would go to other sources, nothing is worse than high profile people, especially thought leaders, worrying about things like the far right and left and polarization. Like everyone's entitled to their opinions on it but write a separate book or something. You don't see me begrudging Pinker for being annoying about it and I simply choose not to pick up his book because I know it'll annoy me with its framing.
I know I should just stop but also this isn't the reason I rated it 2.5 stars because halfway through when he was talking about research I was probably at 3.5-4 stars rating wise but man as someone with a fundamentally surly temperament there's nothing more annoying than people who insist we need to be optimistic. Like yeah things are getting better but who cares, how is it useful to focus on that instead of problems and addressing them. Like maybe I just don't care enough about feeling good about things and so this just wouldn't appeal to me anyway.
Also Sinclair said he isn't afraid to die at the end of the book but insists through out the book that death is painful and horrible. Sinclair needs to read about Montaigne's experience with death and how it changed his fears of death by showing him actually its not bad. I also have almost died and can also attest that when it's happening it isn't painful at all, it just happens and in fact at points you feel euphoric even. I'm going to leave it at that because my own feelings of death weren't really relevant to how I felt about the book in general.
Anyways TL;DR: this was 2.5 stars because I was expecting a book that was heavier on covering the science in this area and because the last 100 pages pissed me off. Others may enjoy it if they go in knowing what to expect and have less curmudgeonly personalities. (less)
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Katie
Sep 12, 2019Katie rated it liked it
Shelves: science, non-fiction
If I am being honest, I expected more from a 400+ page book written by one of the leaders in longevity. It is well written and the illustrations are lovely, but the information on extending healthspan could be summarized in a paragraph. I was also disappointed in how shallow some of the explanations were. I was hoping for an substantive monograph written for the lay person (like Zimmer’s work) but this is not that.
So then what is taking up the bulk of these 400+ pages?
Anecdotes, personal background, topics related to government budgeting, why health span research is important, and other things I did not buy this book for.
For those of you who wanted something deeper, check out the Landmark Cell Reviews collections on Aging and Metabolism (These research papers are all open archive and not blocked by journal fees):
https://www.cell.com/cell/collections...
https://www.cell.com/cell/collections... (less)
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Mario the lone bookwolf
Sep 03, 2020Mario the lone bookwolf rated it really liked it
Shelves: 0-mental-strength, 0-biology
Immortality sounds... nice. Too utopic, still, but prolonging life for spans that seem unimaginable at the moment may be a standard procedure in a not so far future.
Sinclair, a professor of genetics and expert in the field of the science of aging from the Harvard medical school, summarizes the status quo of how to stay young and healthy as long as possible.
At the moment, the way to a longer life is a pretty hard one, focussing on some elemental and prooven elements:
Workout for both strength and endurance.
Have a happy relationship and a social network of few, close, real, true friends. Tricky.
Rarely eat until you are replete, calory restriction, fasting, detoxication, time-restricted eating, and a healthy diet are some of the most important factors because they can slow the aging process. Other factors are nice too, but those are the ones that don´t just boost your happiness and immune system, but really let you get old slower. Not just each cigarette shortens your life, but each extra snack too.
Pets aren´t a bad idea.
Find fulfillment in work, but a work-life balance too.
Perfect sleeping cycle between 7 and 9 hours with or without power naps, but one between 15 to 30 minutes might be recommended.
No orgies, drugs, very small doses of alcohol and sugar, no getting fat and untrained.
Curiosity, trying new things, always searching for something new and different, brain training, puzzles, foreign languages, self-reflection, life-long learning.
Mindfulness.
Be happy and resistant to stress, be conscious, meditate. Control of emotions and thoughts
Etc.
There is a huge and completely unnecessary exposition and anecdote problem in Sinclair´s writing, a prime example of very clever and competent people who don´t take the time to invest in creative writing and science communication skills, not to speak of show, don´t tell. Instead of driveling about the organization, unimportant parts of research, himself, and even some completely irrelevant things, he could have used these dry, boring knowledge as exposition by including it in stories, not making it an appendix one asks why it´s there, because readers want the science of aging, not the boredom of bureaucracy that let´s one feel immortal by slowing time to zero. That´s especially a missed chance because there are so many sciences and knowledge around this topic of, well, dying later, that dozens of books could be written about it from the perspectives of different fields.
By simply avoiding this inflation with the help of a professional science writer, cutting aways at least half of the redundancy and empty narrative calories and pimping the rest, as many of the leading science nonfiction writers use to do, he could have made a solid 5 star and presented his knowledge in a much more appealing way. When people write autobiographies, they should name, and not camouflage, their mindchild.
The hard truth is, until a probable wonder cure may make one immortal, the only way to possibly live until this point is to live the very hard life of an always hungry, happy, curious, positive, etc., ascetic. Good genes might be helpful too and in understanding those might lie one of the first medical applications, first in adding them in vitro fertilization processes to create long-living humans and later possibly in adult ones too or even create new longevity genes. To pimp telomeres so much that they last forever and youth never goes is more of a long-term perspective.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejuven...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_ex... (less)
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Michael
Oct 03, 2019Michael rated it liked it
Being part of the health enhancement community for my entire career I was familiar with the topics and theories on aging as presented by Havard Med School staffer Dr. David Sinclair.
Many of Dr. Sinclair's recommendations such as calorie restriction (CR), exercise, sleep and moderate to low protein intake are well vetted.
Other suggestions including the intake of NAD, Metformin, and Rapamycin MAY have anti-aging effects but are less well known and have potential downsides.
Since living long sounds dreadful with a broken body and mind I tend to focus more on healthspan. My personal recommendations did not change as a result of reading this book.
-Sleep 7-9 hours each night. Find your sweet spot.
-Strength Train 2-3 times per week
-Do 3 conditioning sessions per week mixing sessions that are long and easy to short and challenging. Murdering yourself with three ten minute WODS leaves a lot to be desired.
-Eat when the sun comes up and stop when the sunsets. Time-Restricted Eating (TRE) On occasion skip a meal.
-Don't get fat. Limit your sugar and alcohol.
-Read, play word games, Lumosity and meditate
-Find someone to love
-Get a dog, walk them, pet them.
Never forget, Your DNA loads the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger.
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Mario Tomic
Sep 20, 2019Mario Tomic rated it it was amazing
Coming from a perspective of someone who studies evidence-based nutrition, exercise, and healthy lifestyle factors for over a decade now, this book is a must-read.
Solving aging is one of the final frontiers for humankind, and the information David has provided here is a big step in the right direction. It has the power to bring more awareness to solving aging as well as shift strong limiting beliefs that have been deeply rooted in public as well as the scientific community.
We've come very far in research, but sadly the mainstream still hasn't caught up as many of the theories often mentioned have already been invalidated. Big thanks to David and his team for putting together all the most up-to-date longevity research in one place.
Having read this book I'm even more excited about future research and grateful to be alive in this time where such research is taken seriously. (less)
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Bharath
Jul 25, 2021Bharath rated it it was amazing
This is a fascinating book covering the latest advances (including from his lab at the Harvard Medical School in Boston and others) in ageing research.
Dr Sinclair starts by discussing our attitudes towards ageing – most people think of it as inevitable. As a result, while many serious diseases such as cancer, heart diseases, dementia and others have received considerable funding, ageing still continues to receive a small fraction of that. Also, grants awarded to ageing are often used up for research into diseases more prevalent typically in old age (such as dementia), rather than ageing itself. The fact though is that ageing leaves you more susceptible to many diseases and also invariably affects quality of life for many. The advances in medicine have improved the average age by greatly reducing early deaths and fighting diseases. Humankind has so far however not been able to raise the maximum age – very few make it past 100.
Ageing need not be considered inevitable says Dr Sinclair, and should rightfully be declared a disease. There is now a reasonably good understanding of why we age. While side effects such as telomere shortening were known since some time, the underlying cause may be simpler and more focused. It is the result of the survival circuit (which all organisms have) being unable to cope with increasing damage which can no longer be repaired. Research is reaching a point where this can be arrested – in a few years. Even if medical intervention to significantly increase lifespan is years out – there is a lot we can do even today. There is evidence that intermittent fasting, exercise (such as yoga and some strenuous), a careful diet plan (lots of veggies, nuts avoiding meat, processed foods, dairy & sugar) and some already available medication (the evidence though is not fully conclusive) can do a lot to extend lifespan. He also cites his personal example and that of his father, who remains active well into his eighties. I looked at some of his photos and he certainly looks well younger than his age of 50+!
The last section covers what we can expect in the future and the impact of arresting ageing on society and nations. This section is unnecessarily longer than required, and goes into some simplistic ethical discussions (as expected steering clear of the speciesism and animal cruelty rampant in medical research).
This is an excellent and very readable book which I strongly recommend all read. If you are looking for detailed diet information ‘How Not to Die’ is an excellent book. ‘Brain Food’, ‘The Diabetes Code’, and ‘The Case against Sugar’ are informational reads as well. There may be some amount of information which will seem contradictory but it is not difficult to resolve it to make a decision.
My rating: 4.5 / 5. (less)
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G
Sep 17, 2019G rated it it was ok
The book consists of 1) a history of aging and longevity related science, 2) a a handwavey survey of some interesting metabolic pathways and genetic/epigenetic programming techniques that Prof. Sinclair and friends have pursued, 3.) philosophical, aesthetic, and moral arguments on why pursuing lifespan extension is good.
It's well-written and I enjoyed Prof. Sinclair's distinctive writing style and purview. I learned a bit on what papers and authors I should read more deeply for Parts (1) and (2), but I was disappointed in the overall depth and lack of systematic, holistic discussion of how the individual research streams came together. I thought (3) was finely articulated, but no conceptual new grounds were covered.
The main thesis that Sinclair builds up is his "Information Theory of Aging." He's inspired by Claude Shannon's seminal work and the TCP/IP protocol, but the analogy is not very well-fleshed out and feels like a forced analogy. Essentially, Prof. Sinclair believes that epigenetic 'debris' accrues on DNA and aging cells lose differentiation. Sinclair believes this can be reversed because each cell has a stored copy of 'youthful' epigenetic state that can re-programmed towards. It's an intriguing idea but he unfortunately doesn't provide much evidence or even a mechanism of how this actually works in practice.
Recommended for novice longevity enthusiasts, but there's not much new insight for the serious reader unfortunately. (less)
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Shaun
Mar 17, 2020Shaun rated it it was amazing
Shelves: health-coaching, non-fiction, read-2020
This is an intriguing book written by the renowned Harvard researcher, David Sinclair.
Sinclair believes that our attitudes about the inevitability of aging may be somewhat flawed. In fact, based on his research, he believes that not only will we be able to slow aging down, we may someday be able to reverse it.
He discusses the shortcomings of aging research that is partly a function of the fact that we don't currently classify aging as a chronic disease, thereby making its research ineligible for government funding. He also argues, and strongly so, that aging is by far the biggest threat we face, pointing out that most other chronic diseases are secondary to the aging process.
The last fourth of the book explores the social, cultural, and ethical implications of extending life significantly. This, for me, was wasted space as it's all supposition and didn't really do the topic justice.
Definitely worth a read for anyone who is interested in cutting edge anti-aging science. According to Sinclair, understanding why we age (something that is becoming more clear) is the first step in stopping and maybe reversing the process. Some things that might slow aging...fasting, short exposure to temperature extremes (hot or cold), the diabetes medication metformin. According to Sinclair, it's an issue of when and not an issue of if we will be able to slow/reverse aging. The cure for aging is on the horizon. And, he's probably right. (less)
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Elise
Jul 20, 2019Elise rated it really liked it
I read this for work and while the science/DNA-level detail in the front part is pretty dense, the book really opens up when he writes about the possibility for treating aging as a disease and all the things that currently kill us (heart disease, cancers) as its symptoms. And then the social impacts of society living much, much longer than we currently do. I am now operating as if I will live to 100, and we're talking GOOD years, not wasting away. So this book has really changed the way I think about aging, which I used to just accept as something inevitable. (less)
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Henry
Feb 26, 2020Henry rated it it was amazing
Highly recommended. There is a lot of complicated science in this book (at least to me), but there are ideas and views that cannot be ignored. You may not agree with everything the author espouses, particularly some of his political views, but this book provides a lot of important things to think about and, if you are so inclined, to discuss with others. Providing thought provoking ideas is always good.
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Flaviu
Dec 23, 2019Flaviu rated it it was amazing
I have a feeling this will be a long review, so if you're just looking for some cliff-notes then mine are: "This book has the potential to change the way you live your life. You might not enjoy reading it (*1), but the topic it addresses will definitely affect you personally. Whether it's right after reading it (*2), or at a societal level in the years to come, that's up to you."
Now for the long version...
My previous knowledge of David Sinclair was from his visits to JRE podcast, where I found him to be an insightful and smart fella' (*3). This also comes across throughout the book, which was nice to see. I'm not denying that I went into this with a bias towards liking it, but like everything I read, I try to correct for it.
The way I see it, books can serve many purposes. Whether it's as simple as keeping you from having your own thoughts for a few dead minutes (*4), entertaining you with a well-written prose, engaging you in an action-twisted plot or changing your entire world-view by completely removing a deep-rooted assumption you've previously held since you were 4 years old, I'll have to say this book very much does the latter.
I'm not a slob to begin with. Ever since high-school my views were that your body should not be mistreated. That is if you plan on it being there for you in the long run. You either routinely take care of it as a force of habit, or you eventually try to patch it up in a very painful, costly and potentially mentally debilitating way at some point in the future (which personally, I see the loss of mental faculties as the highest price you can pay for neglect). This lead me to always try my best at being up to date on the latest medical discoveries and trying to fine tune my mental model of how my body works in hopes of better maintaining it.
That being said, I always started off by assuming that I have somewhere around 40-ish healthy adult years ahead of me (if I'm lucky), and that I should try and work around that when it came to setting goals and thinking what long-term choices are best for me to take. This book challenges that assumption to it's core.
What if my previous goal of having a decently healthy standard lifespan are me setting a low bar? Of course, I'll be lucky to have that in any case, but what if I could set the bar at actually increasing the limit of those 40 years instead? My previous goal of keeping a good health is already on the table and is pretty much included in the new goal, so what would it cost me to raise my health-span (*5)?
This book did a decent job at answering that question for me and I found the answer shocking. I think the reason I found it shocking is because of a life-long aversion to anything that advertises *rejuvenation* or *making you young again* gained from the bombardment of marketing buzzwords and a tradition of snake-oil salesmen humanity has had for millennia. It might be a case of boy-cry-wolf at a grand scale. We've been burned by bad/fake science & marketing for many years, so now when actual hard science tells us that "hey... you know this crazy idea we've had about stopping aging, well it seems it might actually be doable."(*6), our knee-jerk reaction is to ignore it.
David is not promising that, but what he does is show you just how close we might be to achieving it soon. That to me is mind-blowing out of the box. The book details how different discoveries clicked together in recent years to get us from seeing it as a crazy idea to a technology problem?! And as far as it goes, we're pretty good at solving technology issues when they get enough time and funding.
There's a great deal of things you can do now that are natural and proven to at least postpone some aspects of aging, but the review is long already and I want you to do the work of reading it to actually find out.
*1 - you might not enjoy the style, length, analogies, etc.
*2 - by curving your calorie intake, taking better care of yourself etc.
*3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0...
*4 - that's not something we allow anymore as a society.
*5 - health-span = % of lifespan lived in good health
*6 - scientific shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (less)
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Bejinha
Oct 04, 2019Bejinha rated it it was ok
The book is 99% of personal anecdotes, tedious and lengthy lab studies, descriptions of yeast cells, government funding, and epigenetics.
And 1% on how you should:
• exclude animal proteins
• exclude sugar
• exclude dairy
• eat a lot less of everything else (calorie restriction).
I'm following it. (less)
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Marios
Oct 20, 2019Marios rated it it was amazing
Absolutely fascinating read about the past (what we know), present (what we are learning) and future (where we are going) of the anti-aging science research. Along with “Why we Sleep” of Matthew Walker this is another of those fundamental books one should read. Actually I can’t help but imagine future generations looking back in our times and wondering how were people going about their lives without learning about or caring to understand longevity factors such as nutrition, exercise, sleep, mental health, preventive health checks, body monitoring etc.
Returning to the book, apart from providing a general background of how our bodies work on the molecular (DNA, RNA, proteins) and cellular level, the author proposes the hypothesis that aging is a result of a loss of information. This theory suggests that over time our cells loose the ability to accurately “read” the genetic information which remains always intactly stored into our DNA (this genetic information is what tells the cell what to be and how to behave), resulting in malfunction, loss of cellular identity or death, which manifests as the symptoms and diseases we all associate with aging.
If this hypothesis proves correct (and there are many experiments that support it), if we could eventually prevent, slow or even reverse this information loss, it follows that could directly target the origins and cure all symptoms and diseases of aging at once, instead of trying to find treatments for each individual disease (ie. cardiovascular, dementia etc) as scientists have been trying to do until now. It is plausible that in the future we could regenerate and reverse the age in tissue (this works already in mice), or restore our overall health and vitality to the levels of a 20 or 30 year old on demand.
How could that happen? Without giving out more fascinating research and experiments referenced in the book, this is one of the best talks of the author I found online summarizing his theory: https://youtu.be/9nXop2lLDa4
Then, what could you do today to help your body slow the aging process?
The author takes 1g of NMN every morning + 0,5-1 g of resveratrol powder with yoghurt to raise his NAD levels. These can be found over the counter.
He also takes 1 g of metformin in the night (needs prescription).
He checks his blood regularly and supplements with vitamin D, K2 and 83mg of aspirin.
Eats as few carbohydrates (sugar, pasta, breads) as possible.
Usually skips one meal per day or makes a meal smaller.
Tries to walk, go to gym, sauna, ice cold pool and keep a low BMI.
Doesn’t smoke, avoids toxins, excessive radiation and other common sense damaging factors.
And what should you do?
If you are under 30 or even maybe 40, I would probably avoid the supplements. There are no long term studies of the effects of the NMN and no human studies. On the other hand, in short term or animal studies no toxicity or side effects have been demonstrated and many anti-aging researchers allegedly take it. If I was older I would probably give it a shot and I actually intend to experiment with my parents with NR (similar to NMN and tested in human trials).
Of course science has the annoying habit of regularly disproving theories and crashing dreams, but until that happens I look forward to a future of scientific revolutions and increased lifespan and healthspan. (less)
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