We all know that we age – but do you know exactly how, and why? And do you wonder what you can do -whatever your age – to slow the process so you can live well, for longer?

Medical doctor and researcher Kris Verburgh is fast emerging as one of the world’s leading research authorities on the science of aging. The Longevity Code is Dr. Verburgh’s authoritative guide on why and how we age—and on the four most crucial areas we have control over, to slow down, and even reverse, the aging process. We learn why some animal species age hardly at all while others age and die very quickly, and about the mechanisms at work that slowly but definitely cause our bodies to age, making us susceptible to heart attack, stroke, cancer, pneumonia and/or dementia. Dr. Verburgh devotes the last third of The Longevity Code to what we can do to slow down the process of aging. He concludes by introducing and assessing the wide range of cutting-edge developments in anti-aging technology, the stuff once only of science fiction: new types of vaccines, and the use of mitochondrial DNA, CRISPR proteins, stem cells, and more.

Book Review

Although the book blurb mentions future technologies, the first two thirds of book is the usual diet and lifestyle information - though of course backed up by proper research - which, to be fair, is still the best approach for those with time to wait. There is one chapter that talks about the prospect of reversing the ageing process and possible interventions, but it is very brief. Likewise the mention of the ethics of life extension.

At the back there is a whole chapter of healthy diet tips and recipes - useful, but not groundbreaking. Though I did enjoy the "What Are Proteins?" appendix which gives a super brief guided trip from atoms and molecules, through amino acids to proteins.

Highlights

Here are 100 key points from The Longevity Code.

• Of the 150,000 people who die every day, 100,000 die of old age.
• Aging is not simply a matter of inevitable wear and tear.
• The average life span of an animal species, or the rate at which it ages, is determined by the average time that this animal species can survive in the wild.
• A few animal species are known to age negligibly or negatively, including certain species of turtles, lobsters, and fish.
• In theory, a blue whale has a thousands-of-times-greater risk of getting cancer than a human does.
• No mole rats with cancer have ever been found thus far.
• The average age of humans is about 80, which is still a lot compared to mammals of similar size.
• Nature can quickly increase the life span of animals whenever the circumstances make it feasible.
• The animal with the highest longevity quotient is the Brandt’s bat, which has an LQ of 9.
• What was a good thing at a younger age (strong bones) may cause accelerated aging (hardening of the blood vessels and heart attack) at a later age.
• Nature does not care that you age and decline after you have produced children.
• When you are around age 75, the risk of cancer no longer increases.
• There is an inverse relationship between reproduction and life span.
• Castrated cats and dogs live longer. Likewise castrated humans live an average of fourteen years longer.
• When we are eleven, our risk of dying is lowest ... when we have a risk of dying of 1 in 40,000.
• Every eight years, you double your risk of dying.
• There are very few animals that have a menopause.
• About 40,000 years ago, there was a sudden increase in grandparents ... during that same period humans also made enormous cultural advances.
• Nature ensures that reproductive cells age very slowly and can rejuvenate themselves.
• Each cell in your body originates from cells that have made countless divisions, for almost four billion years.
• There is no law of nature that prohibits immortality.
• Lab animals that produce many free radicals actually live longer.
• The body contains more than 20,000 different kinds of proteins.
• One in three people between the ages of 85 and 90 has Alzheimer’s.
• Supercentenarians often die of amyloidosis ... a generalized agglomeration of proteins everywhere in the body.
• Numerous studies point to a clear relationship between animal proteins (not only red meat) and a greater risk of all kinds of aging-related diseases.
• Vegetable proteins generally contain less sulfuric amino acids and less growth-stimulating methionine.
• According to some studies, vegetarians live four to seven years longer than do people who eat meat.
• In the short term high protein diets may improve some health parameters, but in the long term they accelerate aging.
• The gut can absorb only short sugars, such as glucose and fructose.
• Fibers are long carbohydrate chains (composed of glucose or fructose) that cannot be broken down by the gut.
• Fibre serves as food for our good intestinal bacteria.
• Insulin and IGF together increase the metabolism of the cells but that also causes them to age faster.
• Mice that produce less growth hormone and less IGF live up to 100 percent longer than regular mice.
• Smaller people live longer or have less risk of cancer and aging-related diseases.
• As we grow older, more and more sugar cross-links form between the transparent proteins that make up the lens of the eye [resulting in cataracts].
• Whole grain foods will always be healthy if you compare them with something less healthy.
• People can drastically improve their health by eating a diet with less starchy foods, including whole grain varieties.
• For more than 190,000 years, the human species did not eat bread, potatoes pasta, or rice.
• Despite the sugars in fruit juices, they can confer health benefits.
• People with abdominal fat have three times a greater risk of dementia.
• People with a waist circumference that is 80 percent of their height die on average twenty years earlier.
• About 60 percent of the dry weight (with all the water removed) of the brain is fat.
• By eating fish once a week, you can better protect yourself against macular degeneration.
• People who ate a handful of walnuts daily had a 45 percent lower risk of heart attack.
• There is no relationship between an elevated cholesterol level and the risk of a heart attack.
• The more cholesterol our cell walls contain, the more liquid and flexible they are.
• People who have a mutation that makes them produce large cholesterol particles have a greater chance of reaching the age of 100.
• The more carbohydrates you replace with saturated fats, the less risk of a heart attack.
• The Samburu people in Uganda have diets that consist of 70 to 80 percent fats, including lots of saturated fats but nevertheless they have very little obesity or clogged blood vessels.
• A rough estimate is that there about ten million billion mitochondria in your body.
• Mitochondria contain their own DNA that forms little circles.
• Some antibiotics are harmful for mitochondria since they are actually ancient bacteria.
• Some people are born with a rare mitochondrial disease, whereby these typical symptoms of aging begin at a young age.
• The symptoms of progeria do resemble those of aging to a certain extent, but many typical symptoms and diseases associated with aging do not occur.
• When telomeres are too short, they can cause all kinds of symptoms that we also see in normal aging.
• Ashkenazi Jews, who tend to live to be very old, sometimes possess a particularly active form of telomerase.
• Stem cells in the bone marrow create two million red blood cells per second.
• Lots of senescent stem cells and senescent skin cells in our skin contribute to wrinkles, sagging skin.
• The result of food industrialization is that we fill ourselves up with food and drink that make us fat and supply few micronutrients.
• Many large studies have shown that dietary supplements of minerals and vitamins do not decrease mortality (risk of dying).
• There are eight different forms of vitamin E, but most supplements contain only alpha-tocopherol.
• Most people in the West do not get sufficient B vitamins from their diet.
• Most Europeans get too little selenium because the soil in Europe contains very little of it.
• People whose diet contains ample vitamin K have less blood vessel calcification.
• Our ancestors consumed an average of 11 g of potassium per day and only 0.7 g of sodium.
• People living in the six US states with the most radioactive background radiation had a 15 percent lower risk of dying of cancer compared to the other states.
• A study with more than 230,000 people shows that antioxidants do not extend life span.
• When athletes take antioxidants after training to promote recovery, they actually undo the benefits of exercise.
• One reason coffee is healthy is because it contains mildly toxic substances that activate an alarm-protein, called Nrf2, in our cells.
• The mildly toxic substances in broccoli activate the production of more detoxification proteins in the liver.
• Women who ate more than 2 pounds of broccoli per month, had a 40 percent lower risk of breast cancer.
• Cacao contains even more catechins than green tea.
• People who ate blueberries three times per week had a 26 percent lower risk of getting type 2 diabetes.
• Consuming one glass of alcohol per day is associated with an increased risk of dying.
• Growth-stimulating substances, such as insulin, IGF, and growth hormone, accelerate aging.
• Between 50 and 65 percent of people in the West are overweight.
• Exercise is a very inadequate method for preventing obesity.
• Some people who have long intestines will absorb more calories from the same amount of food.
• Following a carbohydrate-rich meal, people quickly become hungry again.
• Cheese is like a partially digested, fermented form of milk, so you cannot compare them.
• It is possible to develop vaccines against the proteins that agglomerate in the body and drive aging.
• The first antibiotic was developed around 1942 and it was so difficult to make and expensive that the first patient, who initially responded successfully, still died because the antibiotic was no longer available.
• According to some researchers, it is only a matter of time before the first effective cross-link breakers are developed that work in humans.
• New mitochondrial DNA can be transported into the mitochondria to rejuvenate them.
• Thanks to Yamanaka’s method, it became much easier to make stem cells.
• CRISPR proteins are designed to search out and rewrite specific genes in the DNA.
• Cells in the body can be rejuvenated by exposing them to a young environment, such as young blood.
• Aging is a plastic process, amenable to reversal.
• For most people, life span is 75 percent dependent on lifestyle and 25 percent is genetically determined.
• An increasing number of physicians and scientists are beginning to see aging as a disease, or at best an “abnormal” normality.
• [If you] could cure all heart disease at once, the average life span would increase by only 2.8 years because people would still die from other aging-related diseases.
• The thought that old age goes hand in hand with a loss of physical and mental capacities, is why many people simply do not want to be very old.
• According to some estimates, by the year 2300 the number of Europeans will decline from 455 million to 59 million.
• 86 percent of healthcare costs is spent on aging-related diseases.
• By 2030, in many developed countries there will only be two working people for every retiree.
• People who were still working after they turned 70 had a 2.5 times greater chance to be alive at age 82 than did those who did not.
• From a biological perspective there is no ultimate age limit for our species.
• Medications mainly alleviate the symptoms, but they do not address the causes.
• At an unprecedented rate, we see one article after another appear about things that were considered impossible a few years ago.