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Title: Why We Age: What Science Is Discovering about the Body's Journey Through Life by Steven N. Austad ISBN: 0-471-29646-5 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 11 March, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: All the latest lore on aging, health, and nutrition
Comment: This is a relaxed, somewhat witty book on aging and health by a zoologist with an emphasis on evolutionary biology. I particularly enjoyed Austed's use of statistical analysis in the beginning of the book in distinguishing popular notions about aging from what the raw data has to say. Austed uses statistics beautifully here. When Kant was trying (unsuccesfully) to formulate a science of metaphysics, he asked what other real life example of synthetic (additive) thought a priori was used by people. Math! Austed uses math to demonstrate apodaectically that what we generally refer to as extending human life is no more than altered longevity due largely to water purification, antibiotics, and less back-breaking labor rather than an actual delaying of the aging process. He also shows how our species tends to begin dying at about ten years of age according to the statistical dictate of mortality-doubling time. The limits of how old we may grow as determined by genetics is evidently about what it was back in Socrates' time, although these days longevity is greater. If cancer, according to professor Austed, were eliminated we could add a couple of more years to average longevity and likewise with heart disease; the two most prolific killers in the industrialized world. However, even if we unrealistically eliminated all disease, not only would our genes kill us somewhere around 90 years of age, but many of us would die from accidents in any event. Aging is determined by our genetic program and chance, not necessarily in that order, and the only possible hope we have for extending our limits of aging per se lies in some far off genetically engineered discovery. Presently, if you don't get flattened by a bus, your genes will get you, no matter how many vitamins you scarf down.
As for special diets, lizard's eyes (special vitamins), and magnets and crystals, these are largely placebo actuators. Unless you have special nutritional needs, a sensible diet, adequate sleep, moderate excercise, and being rich are about as much as you can do to determine your future health and longevity outside of avoiding firefights with religious fanatics and other testosterone dementias. Austed doesn't really address low stress as a longevity booster except perhaps to mention the nobles tended to live longer than peasants in pre-antibiotic days. Austed excecutes a revealing discourse on tales of how certain societies in far away mountain regions tend to live to older than normal ages by eating goat yogurt and smoking ginko leaves: these are folk tales and the author uses various examples of innoent charlatanry to demonstrate exactly how gullible people are when they very badly want to hear what they've already made up their minds to believe.
I was a bit unmoved by Austed's refutation of the cellular Hayflick limit's role in aging. While controlled cell division is certainly crucial to normal development and cancer mitigation, cells, like whole organisms, are also sitting ducks for unforeseen catastrophy. A non-regenerating cell is also an accident waiting to happen through injury, free radical damage, or deliterious mutation. In terms of generalized deterioration (aging) nonregenerating cells are eventually going to deteriorate to the point where they outnumber healthy nonregenerating cells, at which point, disfunction (aging) is certain to occur; but then what do I know, maybe this is just "what I want to believe."
Austed's observation that we seek a way to study certain whale species for their menopausal physiology (rare in the animal kingdom) and lower than human cancer rates is intriguing. How this would be accomplished outside of simple skin sample research is questionable however.
All in all a good book to have read for interpreting the almost daily media reports of miracle breakthroughs in aging and health. Austed's reliance on hard statistical analysis is very helpful in this context.
Rating: 5
Summary: An entertaining introduction to the science of aging
Comment: Why do we age? The simple answer is, there is no simple answer. The simplest "simple" answer is probably, we age because we live, and living wears our bodies out.
In order to live we breathe because our bodies use oxygen to convert food into energy. But in the process something called "oxidative damage" happens to our cells. In other words: we rust. Inevitably. The two other main reasons why bodies wear out are connected to glucose and "browning damage", and to self-repair mechanisms of our cells that fail to stop and lead to uncontrolled cell growth - what we call "cancer".
The three processes of rusting, browning and cancer are part of aging. They are "how" we age. But "why" do we age at all? Why don't we stay healthy for, say, 150 years and then simply drop dead? In very simple terms the reason is: aging is genetic. The genes do not care about the body after the body has served its purpose: to replicate the genes and ensure that they can replicate again. This is called the "selfish gene" theory, an expression coined by Richard Dawkins.
Gerontology, the study of aging, is a field of science in rapid growth. I do not claim to be a specialist; therefore I do not want to go into much detail here. Steven Austad's book explains very well "what science is discovering about the body's journey through life". He ends his book with a chapter of particular interest for women ("Reproductive Aging, Menopause, and Health"), and a chapter on our hopes of how to make the best of our ultimate genetic fate ("Slowing Aging and Extending Life: Remedies and Expectations").
Apart from Austad's humor - it can be both droll and dry - I have particularly enjoyed his short portraits of scientists in the field of gerontology and evolutionary biology, such as the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, the immunologist Peter Medawar, the American scientist Raymond Pearl (who in 1938 produced the first paper analyzing the extent to which smoking reduced life expectancy, but also was of the opinion that people above 50 should forfeit their right to vote, because they would have grown too foolish), the German physiologist Max Rubner, the gerontologist Alex Comfort (who discovered the joy - and profitability - of sex), the biologist John Maynard Smith, and the two-time Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling.
Austad's cameo of Max Rubner is my favorite because of its psychological insight into the downside of dedication and narrow focus: "The first scientist to investigate the rate-of-living idea in any rigorous fashion was the German physiologist Max Rubner. Rubner could make people very uncomfortable with his Teutonic bluntness. He was noted for his long silences, punctuated with outbursts of aggressively sarcastic humor. But he was also an obsessively precise investigator of the energy contained in food and the use of that energy by animals. Like obsessives everywhere, he felt that the significance of his obsession was underappreciated by others."
Rating: 5
Summary: This is the most amazing break through in science
Comment: Wow, I am impressed. I never expected this to be a good book when I saw it on my collage reading list. This turned out not only to be scientific jargon, but keeps the reader facinated with the authors great personality which comes through in the writing.
IF YOU BUY ONE BOOK EVER BUY THIS BOOK, AND IF YOU BUY ANOTHER, BUY THIS ONE AGAIN!
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Title: The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging by S. Jay Olshansky, Bruce A. Carnes ISBN: 0393048365 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 15 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging by T. B. L. Kirkwood ISBN: 0195128249 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $37.50 |
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Title: How and Why We Age by Leonard Hayflick, Robert N. Butler ISBN: 0345401557 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Clock of Ages : Why We Age, How We Age, Winding Back the Clock by John J. Medina ISBN: 0521594561 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 13 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Chance, Development, and Aging by Caleb Ellicott Finch, T. B. L. Kirkwood ISBN: 0195133617 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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