—Woody Allen
Congratulations! It's the year 2057, and today is your birthday! You blow out all 111 candles in one big puff.
You're in great shape, just as fit now as when you were 80, way back in 2026. You still jog and swim on alternate days. And you've decided to take up windsurfing.
Just last week, your doctor gave you yet another clean bill of health: no heart disease, no cancer, no degenerative illness. Your cholesterol is holding steady at 140, and your arteries are as clean and supple as when you were 20. There's no arthritis in your joints, no osteoporosis in your bones. Your body's chronological age belies its biological age of 62 or so. You're full of pizzazz and right on track to celebrate your 120th birthday—perhaps more.
You've accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience in your lifetime. Still, you've retained your youthful joie de vivre. These days, your most pressing problem is deciding what to do with all of the extra years that lie ahead. You could start a new career (your third) or travel or spend more time with your great-great-grandchildren.
As you look back over a long and productive life span, your still-sharp mind reviewing the cherished memories of 11 decades, you're thankful that years ago you happened to read a book called Renewal. Because you know it changed your life forever.
Impossible? Too good to be true? I don't think so. I'm a physician who specializes in anti-aging medicine, preventive medicine, and natural healing from both Eastern and Western traditions. In recent years, I've seen anti-aging medicine truly come of age, as it were. No longer considered voodoo, the field has gained scientific respectability, as increasingly sophisticated research spawns powerful strategies for slowing—and even reversing—the aging process. This book will empower you to easily understand and implement these medical breakthroughs as a life-extending lifestyle that really works.
Life is nature's most spectacular accomplishment—an astonishing, extraordinary, unprecedented kind of miracle. As fabulous as it is, however, life would cease abruptly if cells didn't have the ability to renew themselves. To stay alive, your cells need protection from harmful invaders. When protection fails, they need the capacity to heal. When their capacity to heal fails, they die.
Of course, organs and tissues are made up of cells. This means that when too many cells become injured or die, organs and tissues likewise begin to malfunction. For example, cumulative damage to brain cells may cause a person to think or move a tad slower or to lose the car keys more often. Cumulative damage to heart cells may lower a person's exercise tolerance, so that walking a mile or even mowing the lawn demands a little more effort than it used to. Cumulative damage to the cells in bones and joints may lead to osteoporosis and arthritis. Ultimately, widespread cumulative damage to cells shortens life.
You can see why the cellular repair process is so important. Surprisingly, despite major advances in cell biology, we still know precious little about how cells heal themselves. The extreme complexity of the process has baffled some of the most brilliant minds of our time.
Fortunately, we do know a great deal about how to stimulate cellular repair, and how to protect cells from becoming damaged in the first place. All you need to do is:
These five strategies are the foundation of Renewal Theory, which states that life span can be greatly extended by minimizing cellular damage while optimizing cellular repair and regeneration. The chapters that follow examine these strategies in great detail, explaining why each is important and outlining specific actions you can take to maximize your chances of leading the longest life possible.
Just how long is the longest life possible? Modern science offers a number of theories. For the most part, they fall into two general categories: program theories and damage theories. Program theories suggest that human genes are precoded for a specific age of death. Damage theories contend that cumulative wear and tear determines the age of death. Combine the two, and you get a theory of aging that goes something like this: Life span cannot be extended beyond its genetically programmed limit, but it can be shortened by the cumulative effects of a lifetime of excessive cellular damage.
This is kind of a bleak outlook—but don't despair. Both program and damage theorists agree that a human's genetically programmed maximum life expectancy is about 120 years. Most of us fall far short of that mark because we fail to take steps to prevent or repair the cumulative cellular damage that can occur over the course of a lifetime. Cumulative cellular damage, especially after age 30, accelerates aging. Controlling this damage, which is the goal of the Renewal Anti-Aging Program, slows down aging.
Before we move on, let's explore program theories and damage theories in a bit more detail.
Central to program theories is the concept of maximum life span, the genetically determined age beyond which a human cannot live. Program theories state that the chromosomes in all animal cells contain a preset biological clock. This clock ticks away throughout life until an internal alarm goes off, triggering death. In effect, aging and death are literally etched into the genetic blueprint.
The age at which death occurs varies from one species to the next. Mice, for instance, have a maximum life span of about two years, while turtles can survive 150 years or longer. For us humans, maximum life span is about 120 years.
If we want to break the 120-year barrier, we first have to figure out how the genetic program for maximum life span works. Solving this puzzle has become the mission of researchers in molecular biology and genetics. Their first step, under way now, is to isolate the genes responsible for aging. Once located, these genes can be reprogrammed for a longer life span, and perhaps someday for immortality.
Of course, this work is still in its infancy, and several
decades may pass before it produces definitive answers. But the reality of
using genetic reprogramming for longevity is simply a matter of time. In
fact, research focusing on the pineal gland, which produces the hormone
If the human body is genetically programmed to last 120 years, why do we fall so short of that milestone? According to damage theories, it's the cellular wear and tear inflicted by daily life that accelerates aging and does us in much too soon.
The damage referred to in the phrase damage theory is caused exclusively by free radicals. Free radicals, the rogues' gallery of biochemistry, are highly charged, rapidly moving molecular fragments that harm healthy cells. The more free radicals present, the more damage they cause, and the more the aging process speeds up as a result.
So where do these free radicals come from? Some occur naturally, as by-products of normal human cellular metabolism (though the optimally healthy body has efficient systems for removing them). Many more result from poor diet, deficiencies of key nutrients, and exposure to toxins. A list of the causes of free radicals would include virtually every toxic substance known. A list of the effects of free radicals would also be long, encompassing all of the common diseases afflicting humans.
This doesn't mean that every disease is caused exclusively by free radicals. Some people inherit genetic predispositions to certain health problems, such as heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease. So if you possess a "sick gene," are you doomed to illness? Absolutely not. Whether or not such a gene "expresses" itself depends entirely on you. If you minimize free radicals and keep your cells healthy, you can either prevent a disease from occurring or reverse it if it has already begun.
As you'll discover in chapter 2, your greatest allies in the
battle against free radicals are nutrients known as antioxidants.
Renewal Theory, the basis for this book, builds on both program and damage theories. I like to think of it as the body's master plan for rejuvenation. It goes something like this: You are genetically programmed to live 120 years. To achieve this maximum life span, you need to do what you can to minimize cellular damage, which precipitates disease and accelerates aging. This means supplying your body with ample quantities of the raw materials that it uses to protect healthy cells, repair damaged cells, and replace irreparable or dead cells.
Protection, repair, and regeneration—these bodily functions are at the heart of Renewal. You can keep them going strong with help from my Anti-Aging Diet, Anti-Aging Supplement Program, and Anti-Aging Exercise Program, which are outlined later in this book.
Remember that the key to longevity is within everyone's reach. The choices you make every day—from what you eat and drink to which supplements you take (or don't take) to whether or not you exercise—exert a profound influence over how long you live. Those 120 years that nature has allotted you are ultimately in your hands.
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Since free radicals play such a pivotal role in the aging process, let's take a closer look at these cellular desperadoes. We'll examine how they influence life and death, both on the miniature stage of the individual cell and in the broader theater of the human body.