Lifespan Quotes

“Aging, quite simply, is a loss of information.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“There isn’t much debate on the downsides of consumption of animal protein. Study after study has demonstrated that heavily animal-based diets are associated with high cardiovascular mortality and cancer risk.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Thanks to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and the abundance of sugars and carbohydrates on every supermarket shelf around the globe, high blood sugar is causing the premature deaths of 3.8 million people a year.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Because as it turns out, exposing your body to less-than-comfortable temperatures is another very effective way to turn on your longevity genes.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Why would we choose to focus on problems that impact small groups of people if we could address the problem that impacts everyone—especially if, in doing so, we could significantly impact all those other, smaller problems?”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“I believe that aging is a disease. I believe it is treatable. I believe we can treat it within our lifetimes. And in doing so, I believe, everything we know about human health will be fundamentally changed.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“In my mind, there are few sins so egregious as extending life without health. This is important. It does not matter if we can extend lifespans if we cannot extend healthspans to an equal extent. And so if we’re going to do the former, we have an absolute moral obligation to do the latter.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” R. P. Feynman,”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Youth → broken DNA → genome instability → disruption of DNA packaging and gene regulation (the epigenome) → loss of cell identity → cellular senescence → disease → death.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“The longevity genes I work on are called “sirtuins,” named after the yeast SIR2 gene, the first one to be discovered. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, SIRT1 to SIRT7, and they are made by almost every cell in the body. When I started my research, sirtuins were barely on the scientific radar. Now this family of genes is at the forefront of medical research and drug development. Descended from gene B in M. superstes, sirtuins are enzymes that remove acetyl tags from histones and other proteins and, by doing so, change the packaging of the DNA, turning genes off and on when needed. These critical epigenetic regulators sit at the very top of cellular control systems, controlling our reproduction and our DNA repair. After a few billion years of advancement since the days of yeast, they have evolved to control our health, our fitness, and our very survival. They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.”
― David Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“If the genome were a computer, the epigenome would be the software. It instructs the newly divided cells on what type of cells they should be and what they should remain, sometimes for decades, as in the case of individual brain neurons and certain immune cells.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool. • I eat a lot of plants and try to avoid eating other mammals, even though they do taste good. If I work out, I will eat meat. • I don’t smoke. I try to avoid microwaved plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-rays, and CT scans. • I try to stay on the cool side during the day and when I sleep at night. • I aim to keep my body weight or BMI in the optimal range for healthspan, which for me is 23 to 25.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“As a species, we are living much longer than ever. But not much better. Not at all. Over the past century we have gained additional years, but not additional life—not life worth living anyway.5”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Your generation, just like all the ones that came before, didn’t do anything about the destruction that is being done to this planet,” Alex told me that evening. “And now you want to help people live longer? So they can do even more damage to the world?”
I went to bed that night troubled. Not by our firstborn’s denouncement of me; of that, I admit, I was a little proud. We’ll never destroy the global patriarchy if our children don’t first practice on their fathers.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To

“We’d die quite quickly without amino acids, the organic compounds that serve as the building blocks for every protein in the human body. Without them—and in particular the nine essential amino acids that our bodies cannot make on their own—our cells can’t assemble the life-giving enzymes needed for life.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Indeed, we know more about the health of our cars than we know about our own health. That’s farcical. And it’s about to change.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“a few years ago, researchers noticed a curious phenomenon: people taking metformin were living notably healthier lives—independent, it seemed, of its effect on diabetes.16 In”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. More simply known as the Royal Society, the world’s oldest national scientific organization was established in 1660 to promote and disseminate “new science” by big thinkers of the day such as Sir Francis Bacon, the Enlightenment’s promulgator of “the prolongation of life.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“As cloning beautifully proves, our cells retain their youthful digital information even when we are old. To become young again, we just need to find some polish to remove the scratches.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Senescent cells are often referred to as “zombie cells,” because even though they should be dead, they refuse to die. In the petri dish and in frozen, thinly sliced tissue sections, we can stain zombie cells blue because they make a rare enzyme called beta-galactosidase, and when we do that, they light up clearly. The older the cells, the more blue we see.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Do your part to make humanity be the best it can be. Don’t waste a moment. Embrace your youth; hold on to it for as long as you can. Fight for it. Fight for it. Never stop fighting for it.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“It takes courage to consciously think about your loved ones’ mortality before it actually happens. It takes even more courage to deeply ponder your own.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Even if they don’t recognize its violence, children come to understand the tragedy of death surprisingly early in their lives. By the age of four or five, they know that death occurs and is irreversible.2 It is a shocking thought for them, a nightmare that is real. A “GOOD, LONG LIFE.” My grandmother “Vera” sheltered Jews in World War II, lived in primitive New Guinea, and was removed from Bondi Beach for wearing a bikini. The end of her life was hard to watch. “This is just the way it goes,” she said. But the person she truly was had been dead many years at that point. At first, because it’s calming, most children prefer to think that there are certain groups of people who are protected from death: parents, teachers, and themselves. Between 5 and 7, however, all children come to understand the universality of death. Every family member will die. Every pet. Every plant. Everything they love. Themselves, too.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“For Robin Marantz Henig, a columnist at the New York Times, the “bitter truth” about mortality came late in life, after she became a grandparent. “Beneath all the wonderful moments you may be lucky enough to share in and enjoy,” she wrote, “your grandchild’s life will be a long string of birthdays you will not live to see.”3”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“After a few billion years of advancement since the days of yeast, they have evolved to control our health, our fitness, and our very survival. They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Like sirtuins, scientists have found TOR—called mTOR in mammals—in every organism in which they’ve looked for it. Like that of sirtuins, mTOR activity is exquisitely regulated by nutrients. And like the sirtuins, mTOR can signal cells in stress to hunker down and improve survival by boosting such activities as DNA repair, reducing inflammation caused by senescent cells, and, perhaps its most important function, digesting old proteins.27 When all is well and fine, TOR is a master driver of cell growth. It senses the amount of amino acids that is available and dictates how much protein is created in response. When it is inhibited, though, it forces cells to hunker down, dividing less and reusing old cellular components to maintain energy and extend survival—sort of like going to the junkyard to find parts with which to fix up an old car rather than buying a new one, a process called autophagy. When our ancestors were unsuccessful in bringing down a woolly mammoth and had to survive on meager rations of protein, it was the shutting down of mTOR that permitted them to survive.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young. Trading reproduction for repair, the sirtuins order our bodies to “buckle down” in times of stress and protect us against the major diseases of aging: diabetes and heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and osteoporosis, even cancer. They mute the chronic, overactive inflammation that drives diseases such as atherosclerosis, metabolic disorders, ulcerative colitis, arthritis, and asthma. They prevent cell death and boost mitochondria, the power packs of the cell. They go to battle with muscle wasting, osteoporosis, and macular degeneration. In studies on mice, activating the sirtuins can improve DNA repair, boost memory, increase exercise endurance, and help the mice stay thin, regardless of what they eat. These are not wild guesses as to their power; scientists have established all of this in peer-reviewed studies published in journals such as Nature, Cell, and Science.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young. Trading reproduction for repair, the sirtuins order our bodies to “buckle down” in times of stress and protect us against the major diseases of aging: diabetes and heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and osteoporosis, even cancer.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“metformin”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To