The choice is yours: You can add forty or more vigorous, fulfilling years to your life. It sounds like science fiction, but in fact it's cutting-edge science grounded in exciting new research. In The Metabolic Plan, internationally renowned biochemist Stephen Cherniske reveals the medical breakthroughs that enable all of us to extend our lives - and the quality of our lives - starting today.

Far from giving out due to inevitable wear and tear, the human body is naturally endowed with astonishing powers of renewal, self-repair, and regeneration. The secret to unlocking these powers lies not in genetic tinkering or a high-tech fix but in "tricking" your body into adopting the metabolism of a twenty-year-old. The Metabolic Plan offers a comprehensive diet and exercise regimen specifically tailored to boost antioxidant levels, combat disease, increase muscle, reduce fat, and enhance memory and vision. Cherniske shares the age-defying properties of such cutting-edge supplements as 7-Keto and debunks myths about acid/alkaline foods. Here too are detailed metabolic plans geared to the different needs of men and women and to every decade of our lives - so we'll know exactly what to focus on when.

Longer life, more energy, improved health, a pervasive sense of well-being: It's all within our grasp. At once revolutionary and eminently practical, this is the book that finally solves the puzzle of aging.

An amazing thing happens as wegrow older. I'm not talking about the appearance of gray hair, expanding waistlines, and a sudden fondness for La-Z-Boy furniture. Far more amazing is the shift in our perceptions and priorities. One day, we are happily oblivious to our own mortality, and then wham, we turn forty and suddenly realize that the fun and games do not go on forever. Then - and this is even more dramatic - we turn fifty, and double wham, we're griped by the sense that:

1. Our life is more than half over.

2. The half that's over was the fun part.

3. The rest will include progressive disability, degeneration, and decrepitude - in other words, pain and suffering.

These realizations have nothing to do with where you live, how smart you are, or what kind of work you do. They are visceral awakenings that happen on some kind of cosmic schedule. What's more, you cannot explain them to your children or your thirty-year-old colleagues. Again, its not about intelligence or sensitivity; they simply cannot feel these feelings.

Feelings, of course, do not evaporate. They bring us somewhere. Feelings about mortality commonly lead to one or more of the three Rs: religion, resignation, or research. As a scientist, I naturally gravitate to research; in fact, I have long applied myself fervently to the study of aging, and I was lucky: I was in the right place at the right time. In fact, for baby boomers, that's been the story of our lives. We've seen more change than any generation in history, and the change has been remarkably favorable.

When we baby boomers were born, life expectancy in the United Stales was sixty-five years. Today, its pushing seventy-seven, but that mark hasn't budged in the last decade and a half. What this means is that we've achieved as much benefit as we could squeeze out of advances in sanitation, decreased infant mortality, vaccinations, and antibiotics. In order to get beyond the seventy-seven mark, we're going to need dramatic new developments, but I'm not referring to genetic engineering. We've all seen news stories in which some white-coated geneticist proclaims that a life span of two hundred years or more is "just around the corner." Don't hold your breath.

I'm a biochemist, so you might think this is just professional jealousy, but I have some sobering facts for you. Genetic engineering has successfully extended only the lives of fruit flies and worms. Genetically, these are very simple organisms. You are an incredibly complex organism with (at last count) close to one hundred thousand genes. For nearly two decades, optimistic scientists have been making predictions about the eradication of genetic diseases. In some cases, like cystic fibrosis and Downs syndrome, they have even identified the specific gene that causes the problem, and yet these diseases continue to afflict us at the same - or in some cases, increasing - rates. Type-1 diabetes, sickle-cell disease, cystic fibrosis, Down's syndrome, Parkinson's disease, and certain types of cancer are well-known genetic disorders. As of this writing, more than two thousand patients have been treated with gene therapy, and not a single person has been cured.

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Copyright © 2004 by Stephen Cherniske.

Tags: Aging, Diets and Weight Loss

About the Author

Stephen Cherniske is a leading biochemist and medical writer, an early DHEA researcher, and one of the first scientists to personally take DHEA and quantify the results. He is a trained nutritionist, a college instructor in clinical and sports nutrition, and a popular lecturer. He is the author of four books on health and nutrition, and numerous articles in popular and scientific publications. More