Lifespan: The New Science Behind Anti-Aging and Longevity that Can Help You Live to 100

Is aging a disease? David Sinclair, PhD, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School one of the world’s top experts on aging and longevity, thinks so.

His new book “Lifespan: Why We Age–and Why We Don’t Have To” covers the latest research on longevity and anti-aging therapies. I was excited to read this book after listening to Sinclair on a podcast.

Sinclair believes that aging is a disease — one that is treatable within our lifetimes. According to Sinclair, there is a singular reason why we age: A loss of information. The most important loss occurs in the epigenome, the expression of genetic code that instructs newly divided cells what they should be.

Aging is like the accumulation of scratches on a DVD so the information can no longer be read correctly. Every time there’s a radical adjustment to the epigenome, e.g. after DNA damage from the sun, a cell’s identity is changed. This loss of epigenetic information, Sinclair proposes, is why we age.

Sinclair believes this can be reversed because each cell has a stored copy of our ‘youthful’ epigenetic state. This hypothesis suggests we can directly target the origins and cure all symptoms and diseases of aging at once, instead of trying to find treatments for each…