Beginning the Chase : Part 4

Chasing Life: New Discoveries in the Search for Immortality to Help You Age Less Today
by Sanjay Gupta, M.D.

(Page 4 of 4)

In the course of researching and writing this book, I've discovered some things that have already changed my own life. For example, eating well is important, no doubt, but eating less might actually buy you more years of life. All books will tell you to exercise, but it is the right types of activity, including upper body resistance training (no, not the StairMaster for sixty minutes every day) that will be of most benefit in the long run. Attitude makes a huge difference. Just the act of practicing optimism can help, as can spending valuable time every day decreasing your stress levels. I will show you how to do it reliably. Getting enough sleep at night and challenging your brain during the day in addition to socializing and maintaining hobbies all appear to be the keys to a longer, healthy life. I'll explain each of these keys to a longer life and the best ways to attain them.

Many books offering health advice focus on a single area. They may tell you how to keep your brain healthy or how to maintain peak fitness or how to lower your stress or how to sleep better. Some of these books are very good, but common sense tells us that we need a balanced approach between diet and lifestyle. In this book, I will try to offer that. I will also try to make this book a clear and concise guide that rises above the clutter.

Some of the advice may surprise you. For example, physical fitness can have a profound effect on your cognitive abilities later in life, and your mental outlook could have a profound effect on your long-term physical health. Taking lots of supplements, as many experts recommend, may not be effective whatsoever. Eating a low-calorie diet could trigger a cellular reaction that leads to a cascade of events ultimately leading to longer life. How much exercise and what kind you do can make a difference. Eating foods like dark chocolate and dishes containing the spice turmeric and drinking red wine, green tea, and even coffee can all help you live longer and healthier, with a dramatically sharper mind.

Many in the scientific community are thinking about ways to alter the human life span. They are imagining great leaps in understanding aging and dreaming up ways to counteract it. In their brave new world science, we will be able to replace worn organs the way you replace the worn brakes on a car; special enzymes or genetic therapies will rejuvenate our cells; microscopic nanobots will circulate through our bodies, warning of future health problems, which can then be addressed. Researchers are predicting stem cells will someday prevent such degenerative diseases as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. These therapeutic advances could shatter what we now consider a human life span, extending it by decades or more. Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor, thinks scientific progress is advancing so quickly, we will all be able to live forever - if we can only make it a few more decades.

Despite the flurry of activity in labs across the developed world, there is no magic elixir yet, leaving those of us who want to live longer, healthier lives to use the best information currently available as guideposts. Of course, there are no guarantees. People who live lives that are paradigms of clean living succumb to cancer, and others who spend years ignoring the best advice of doctors and others live into old age. After all, Jeanne Calment reportedly didn't give up smoking until the age of 117.

While there are no guarantees, we are not destined to a life span similar to that of our parents. Although genetics do appear to play a role in how long we live, studies suggest our DNA accounts for only about 30 percent of how long we live. The rest is up to us. There are some simple rules that we all know, even if we choose to forget them from time to time. Nothing else in this book will matter unless you make a pact with me that you will adopt the best health practices that exist today. What will we eat? How much will we eat? Where and how will we live? Will we smoke cigarettes? wear a seat belt? ride a motorcycle? Do we exercise? Lifestyle does make a difference. An astonishing 46.5 million Americans smoke, even though it will result in disability and premature death for half of them.

Nothing can stop aging, but we can take steps to increase our chances of living longer, healthier lives. For this book, I have looked at the burgeoning field of antiaging medicine. I will do my best to cut through the conflicting information out there and tell you what you can actually do right now and what treatments may be available in the future to help you age well.

We already know from closely studying our neighbors in other developed countries that lifestyle choices can result in living longer lives. More than twenty other developed nations, including Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden, have higher life expectancies than does the United States.

Many people in those countries have already learned that something strange happens as our bodies get older. While the process of aging does certainly continue, the incidence of age-related diseases starts to slow way down. The incidence of cancer, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer's disease becomes increasingly lower. It is almost as if our bodies and our minds realize that if they can get this far along, they could potentially go much longer and achieve a sort of immortality, which is the endgame of chasing life. My goal is to get you to the point where you are living longer, free of disease and of sound mind.

You won't need to inject yourself with illegal stem cells, and you won't need to travel to subzero Russia to achieve your own version of immortality - I have already done that for you. In fact, I have traveled all over the world to bring you stories of success, perseverance, and just good, old-fashioned clean living. Everywhere we go, we find one thing that binds us all together - we are all chasing life. Next stop: Okinawa, Japan, where we learn to live to one hundred.

Copyright © 2007 by Sanjay Gupta, M.D.

About the Author

Sanjay Gupta, M.D., is a practicing neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital and associate chief of service at Grady Memorial Hospital. A columnist for TIME magazine and a chief medical correspondent at CNN, he lives in Atlanta, GA.