ACCORDING TO JIM / LIFESPAN
I exercise religiously; lately as much as six times per week. I pay strict attention to what and when I eat, including focusing on what’s called time-restricted eating and dabbling a bit with caloric restrictions. I have never smoked. I have even started to practice meditation. Yet, despite all of that I still have at least one disease that I know of. You have it, too.
Aging.
That’s right - aging is a disease! So argues David A. Sinclair, PhD, Harvard Medical School professor of genetics, and author of the new riveting book, “Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don’t Have To.”
Aging.
That’s right - aging is a disease! So argues David A. Sinclair, PhD, Harvard Medical School professor of genetics, and author of the new riveting book, “Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don’t Have To.”
I have mentioned previously that when I turned fifty a few years ago, it precipitated my personal version of a midlife crisis – which manifested itself into an even more heightened awareness of my own mortality. That, in turn, resulted in a recommitment to using my remaining time to improve every facet of my life, which in turn instigated a rebirth of my love of books. So, I guess it was inevitable that I eventually got around to reading a book on longevity. And I’m glad I did.
Sinclair writes,
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Sinclair proffers his “Information Theory of Aging” and aptly uses an analogy, that of a scratched CD, which renders complicated science readily understandable. The Information Theory of Aging says that aging is due to the loss of epigenetic information over time, much of which he believes can be recovered. The songs are still on the compact disk, the player’s laser still has the ability to read the CD, and if the scratch can be addressed the music will return to playing nicely.
(By the way, apparently rubbing toothpaste works on actual DVDs and CDs; who knew?) 
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Through the use of wondrous medical advancements such as AMPK activators, TOR inhibitors, sirtuin activators, Senolytics, cellular reprograming and gene therapy, not to mention activating our longevity genes through the long-heralded and tried-and true means of diet and exercise, Sinclair says we buff and renew our CD. Which is to say we regain our lost information, and add years of longevity to our lives. The numbers he asserts are startling – which in turns raises a whole host of other societal and ethical concerns that Sinclair touches upon, too. Not the least of those is the question of whether we are already bumping up against the Earth’s inherent capacity, as the world population exceeds 8 billion people.
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I don’t want to live forever – not that Dr. Sinclair promises anyone that. And the book’s title is somewhat deceiving in that his goal – and mine—is not lifespan, but health span. We don’t want to live longer ill. We want to live longer well.
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“When a doctor looks at a 50-year old person right now, his or her goal is to keep the patient ‘less sick,’ not to ensure that he or she will be healthy and happy for decades to come.” Sinclair strongly – and rightfully – asserts, “It does not matter if we can extend lifespans if we cannot extend health spans to an equal extent. And so, if we’re going to do the former, we have an absolute moral obligation to do the latter.”
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After all, there are so many more books I want to read.
