Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity: The Million-Copy Bestseller

by Peter Attia

a genetic analysis of participants in a long-running study of health and longevity in Hawaiian men of Japanese ancestry had identified three SNPs (or variants) in FOXO314 that were strongly associated with healthy aging and longevity. Since then, several other studies15 have found that various other long-lived populations also appear to have FOXO3 mutations, including Californians, New Englanders, Danes, Germans, Italians, French, Chinese, and American Ashkenazi Jews—making FOXO3 one of the very few longevity-related genes to be found across multiple different ethnic groups and geographical locations. FOXO3 belongs to a family of “transcription factors,” which regulate how other genes are expressed—meaning whether they are activated or “silenced.” I think of it as rather like the cellular maintenance department. Its responsibilities are vast, encompassing a variety of cellular repair tasks, regulating metabolism, caring for stem cells, and various other kinds of housekeeping, including helping with disposal of cellular waste or junk. But it doesn’t do the heavy lifting itself, like the mopping, the scrubbing, the minor drywall repairs, and so on. Rather, it delegates the work to other, more specialized genes—its subcontractors, if you will. When FOXO3 is activated, it in turn activates genes that generally keep our cells healthier. It seems to play an important role in preventing cells from becoming cancerous as well. Here’s where we start to see some hope, because FOXO3 c...