Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To by David Sinclair (PDF)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐For a Book on extending life, he ignored a very important study by a intelligent, friendly country, NORWAY. When offered a chance to buy Statins for the Norwegian population, Norway was not impressed with the American Drug Company Clinical Studies where Pfizer chose 20,000 men only, no women, and only men aged 22 to 45, no old men. The Norwegians decided to do their own Cholesterol Study. They did 4 studies named, Hunt-1, Hunt-2, Hunt-3 and Hunt-4. Norway used the entire population of 4 Norwegian cities, about 55,000 Norwegians, more than half, Women and lots of old men in the study. The results were surprising. First the Hunt-2 study says that for Women, high cholesterol is not detrimental and may be Healthy. And for old men, the study showed that Men over 60 years of age with High Cholesterol live longer than Men over 60 with Low Cholesterol. Since this is Dr. Sinclair’s book on aging, I think the Norwegian studies deserve a mention. You can find the studies at NIH PubMed. I am 83 years old and refuse to take a Statin. I was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease and Severe Calcification of my 4 Arterial Arteries. My heart surgeon gave me 1 to 2 years of remaining life. I am writing this review 10 years after my Heart Stent Surgery. I searched the internet and found on the NIH PubMed site a study from Poland by researcher, Dr Katheryn Mayzek which said the reason we build artery calcium plaque is the lack of Vitamin K2 in our diet. Being the only hope of removing Calcium from blood vessels, I bought a bunch of Vitamin K2 pills on Amazon. The max pill dosage then was 100 mcg, micrograms. It takes ten of these pills to make 1mg. My brother-in-law and my golfing buddy both had blocked heart arteries and had Stents installed. I took 12, 100mcg pills per day, 4 morning, 4 afternoon and 4 evening. My two friends would only take 2 of the weak pills. After 6 months my four heart arteries were clear of all calcium plaque. My doctor could not believe it. My two friends who only took 2 of the pills each day were still severely calcified and were given open heart surgery to install bypass arteries using arteries from their legs. I was clear. THIS IS IMPORTANT. There is a test, an x-ray, Heart CT Scan called a Calcium Score that finds ALL calcium plaque in your arteries. GET ONE. A heart surgeon and a radiologist will grade your Calcium Plaque telling you if your have dangerous, deadly plaque or not. It is not the calcium plaque that kills us, the plaque covers the interior artery wall denying the artery fresh blood for nourishment and the artery wall becomes toxic with Lesions (think of BIG pimples inside the artery wall) when the Lesion is ripe (it takes years, my 9 lesions were thought to be over 10 years old) it explodes into your artery and most people drop dead or fail to wake in the morning. The Lesions are like bullets pointed at your heart. Get the Calcium Score, it is more important than a EKG which does not detect Calcium Plaque. Calcium Scores predict your chance of experiencing a Lesion explosion in the following years. EKGs can’t do that. GET A CALCIUM SCORE. If you do have Calcium Plaque Vitamih K2, MK7 from NATTO will remove the Calcium Plaque, and it is not Cholesterol its Calcium. My heart surgeon said Cholesterol is the basic building bloc of the body and without cholesterol, we die. And the Norwegians and my Heart Surgeon both say there is NO BAD CHOLESTEROL, all cholesterol is good.He said he did not take Statins and said they were a danger and killed our Mitochondrial. We definitely cannot live without Mitochondrial so why take a Mitochondrial Poison?? That’s crazy. Another thing, ask your Cardiologist which Statin He/She takes. I have asked a dozen and they all answered, “I am allergic to Statins, they cause severe muscle pain and I don’t take Statins.” No kidding, ask your cardiologist. If you don’t know what Mitochondrial is or what it does, you need to buy one of the excellent books on Amazon that explains it to you.I am 83 years old. Retired Navy Pilot and Retired Airline Pilot. I take 6, 500mcg Vitamin K2 tablets I buy on EBAY from London. They cost so much less than any sold on Amazon. Compare the cost per 100mcg. The difference is HUGE. This information is intended for men and women. Get your Calcium Score. Know how clogged your arteries are. One last thing. Harpers Bazzar magazine and at least two other women’s magazines and Oprah have done stories on Vitamin K2. They all say, ‘Wrinkles are caused by Calcium in Soft Tissue.’ Take the K2 and the wrinkles disappear so do the purple blood vessels in our legs. No kidding it works. I also lost ALL joint pain. It was Calcium in the joints. My hip pain kept me awake. Now, all joint pain is gone. And I feel 30, not 83 and plan to live to 120 playing golf and playing with my grandchildren and great grandchildren. God Bless and Good Luck. Dave Williams

⭐I purchased this book trying to find hope during an existential crisis. The book’s overall intent is to say there is hope for a longer and more healthy lifespan, yet fails terribly when you realize you are simply standing on the dock, looking at that hope arriving and it dawns on you that you’ll be gone before it even gets close. I feel the promotional materials are misleading. Please do not assume I am a lifelong depressive pessimist. I have been considered a happy person, yet with the “help” of this book, I don’t feel so happy these days.

⭐Lifespan: Why We Age – And Why We Don’t Have ToThis is one of the most important books that I’ve read in the past decade. I’ve been excited about scientific progress against aging for the past 40 years, and have been taking supplements of various kinds since I was in my 20’s. David Sinclair’s book details most of the real progress in the field, with the best examples coming rather recently – in the past few years. Sinclair exudes optimism, which matches my own natural tendency.As a narrative, the book succeeds in bringing the reader to an understanding of David’s initial motivation in his field, using the story of his grandmother Vera’s lifelong vitality giving way to decline and, ultimately, death. The reader also gets an historical retracing of the road to knowledge of telomeres, CRSPR, Sirtuins, and cell reprogramming. Did you know that there were sharks that have had life spans measured to have exceeded 500 years?Twice, while in bed reading the book late at night, I bolted upright when a new fact was revealed. The first wake-up was an anecdote in the book about one of Sinclair’s researchers coming to him for help on an issue with the young man’s mother. Seems she had started having menstrual periods again after starting to take a supplement (NMN, I think) that many on David’s research team were taking themselves. Another shock was hearing of the reprogramming of optic tissue cells, using 3 of the 4 activators known to enable an adult cell to become a pluripotent stem cell. The 3 activators were CRSPR’d into the DNA of the receiving tissue, along with an activation mechanism that depends on receiving a certain antibiotic. So, dosage modulated regeneration of Optic nerve tissue was achieved in rats. That fact opens up the possibility of not only slowing or stopping aging, but actually reversing it.The first half of this book covers the history and amazing scientific discoveries, but unfortunately the second half oozes with virtue signaling as it reveals David to be an altruistic collectivist with all manner of political prescriptions he thinks are needed to save humanity from itself – from gun control to climate activism. I suppose it is inevitable that the progressive bubble of an academic environment blinds its inhabitants by disallowing any political disagreement. However, it made me come to question Sinclair’s own scientific rigor. If he hasn’t read of the hiding of temperature data, and suspiciously always lower “adjustments” to past temperature records which is central to the global warming hoax, what alternative aging hypotheses might he be ignoring as well?I dug into this a bit, after remembering that GlaxoSmithKline spent nearly a billion dollars back in 2008 for one of David’s startups working on Sirtuins (Sirtris). Back then, I was hoping that we’d see new anti-aging pharmaceuticals within a decade. Glaxo shut down the unit in 2013. That sounds ominous, right? But, comments on Glaxo’s page say that core researchers were offered positions in other parts of the company, and that Glaxo still thought the Sirtuin drug candidates were valuable.In the book’s “Cast of Characters”, it is stated that Elizabeth Blackburn was “controversially dismissed” from Bush’s Council on Bioethics “allegedly for her advocacy of stem cell research and politics-free scientific inquiry.” What’s missing from this statement is that said advocacy was for “embryonic stem cell research”.Bush’s constituency believed that this meant using human lives (albeit very young lives) for research, and this constituency did not want their tax money to pay for what they considered an immoral act. Again, the book seems to be using the material to make political jabs. Perhaps Dr Sinclair doesn’t realize this, perhaps he does.Much is also made in the book’s second half about trying to guarantee that anti-aging therapies would be made available to all, regardless of cost. I would hope that the examples of pricing in the space, auto, and computer industries show how capitalist countries succeed in bringing costs down for everyone, without government mandates. Space Shuttles used to cost roughly $20,000/kg for orbital flights. SpaceX has brought that cost down to around $2,000/kg. It is still way too expensive for the average American tourist. However, cars were once only affordable to the wealthy. Henry Ford employed capital to force down prices, extending affordability to the middle class.Prices start out high, which enables start-ups to raise capital. Then as volume goes up, unit costs are driven lower by competition. That’s how we got to 256GB USB sticks for $32. I once paid $10,000 for 0.004% of that much space. Drug prices would be driven down faster if the FDA only mandated safety testing, instead of both safety and efficacy. If drugs are guaranteed by the FDA to be safe, then we consumers should be allowed to try anything we want. Companies that want more market share would pay for efficacy trials, the results of which could be used in advertising. Drug development costs/prices might drop by 90% in that kind of market. Sure would cut the wait time for anti-aging therapies.

⭐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.

⭐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!

⭐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.

⭐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.

⭐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.

Keywords

Free Download Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To in PDF format
Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To PDF Free Download
Download Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To 2019 PDF Free
Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To 2019 PDF Free Download
Download Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To PDF
Free Download Ebook Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To