Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

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.

In the meantime, however, almost any periodic fasting diet that does not result in malnutrition is likely to put your longevity genes to work in ways that will result in a longer, healthier life.

Today, analog information is more commonly referred to as the epigenome, meaning traits that are heritable that aren’t transmitted by genetic means.

Arlan Richardson and Holly Van Remmen spent about a decade at the University of Texas at San Antonio testing if increasing free-radical damage or mutations in mice led to aging; it didn’t.16 In my lab and others, it has proven surprisingly simple to restore the function of mitochondria in old mice, indicating that a large part of aging is not due t... See more

The longevity genes I work on are called “sirtuins,” named after the yeast SIR2 gene, the first one to be discovered. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, SIRT1 to SIRT7, and they are made by almost every cell in the body. When I started my research, sirtuins were barely on the scientific radar. Now this family of genes is at the forefront of medic... See more

It’s a misconception that cloned animals age prematurely. It has been widely perpetuated in the media and even the National Institutes of Health website says so.19 Yes, it’s true that Dolly, the first cloned sheep, created by Keith Campbell and Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, lived only half a normal lifespan and ... See more

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.

Here’s the important point: there are plenty of stressors that will activate longevity genes without damaging the cell, including certain types of exercise, intermittent fasting, low-protein diets, and exposure to hot and cold temperatures (I discuss this in chapter 4). That’s called hormesis.

Science has since demonstrated that the positive health effects attainable from an antioxidant-rich diet are more likely caused by stimulating the body’s natural defenses against aging, including boosting the production of the body’s enzymes that eliminate free radicals, not as a result of the antioxidant activity itself.