Michael Roizen - You - Staying Young - Make Your RealAge Younger and Live Up to 35% Longer

Fortunately, science has finally figured out most of the spectacular biological processes that control ageing. And by learning about such things as mitochondria, telomeres, sirtuin, nitric oxide and the vagus nerve – which you will do in this book – you’ll appreciate how to apply these remarkable discoveries to your own life. As we take you inside your own body, you’ll learn about the shoelacelike chromosome that affects memory loss. You’ll discover the body’s cellular energy factories that play a role in damaging and preserving your arteries (and you thought it was all due to the buttered biscuits). You’ll even figure out whether you’re a good candidate for hormone therapy as you age and understand how your third eye controls your sleeping pattern (yes, we said third ). Ultimately, by understanding the science behind your body, you’ll slow your rate of ageing – to live long and strong. While science holds the keys, only you have the power to unlock your potential longevity.

After all, ageing may be inevitable, but the rate of ageing is certainly not.

Perhaps the best way to explain the dynamics of ageing is to take a look at another complex system that’s subjected to the same forces as your body: a city. Some cities remain beautiful and elegant in their old age (think of old but elegant European cities like London), while others that may not even be so old look worn down, beat up and in need of an urban ICU. Every city experiences the ups and downs of ageing; how well the city managers and residents adapt largely determines whether the city will age gracefully or end up on the wrong side of spray paint, riots and urban decay (see Figure Intro 1).

Now, every city has its own genetic code, just as you have yours. For a city, genes are geography – whether it’s built on a river, or whether it’s located in a hot or cold climate, or whether it lies directly in a prevalent hurricane path. The city’s geography can’t inherently change. But the city can adapt to that environment, with earthquake-proof construction, underground tunnels for walking in winter-time, or a ferry system for commuting. The adaptation the city makes to survive and to thrive is what’s crucial to its vitality. The same goes for YOU.

Just because you’ve been dealt a genetic hand that predisposes you to heart disease or diabetes or needing trousers as large as a parachute doesn’t mean that you can’t mitigate the effects of those genes. One of the major things we’ll teach you is that while you can’t change your genes, you can change whether they are turned on or off, or how you express them. Not every aggressive detrimental gene needs to be turned on, and not all of your sleepy protective genes have to remain dormant. Just like a city, you can compensate elegantly if you understand your options. After all, Rome is called the eternal city.

While some cities can deteriorate if they’re not managed well, others can be maintained and revitalized if the right resources and investments are made available. That’s the way you, too, can live gracefully and passionately with a fundamentally older infrastructure. Throughout the book, you’ll learn many ways to manage your personal metropolis. You’ll see that your immune system is your body’s police force. Your arteries are like roads that can be clogged, blocked or worn down by years of abuse. Your brain is like the energy grid that supplies power to the entire city; it can be knocked out here and there if you let neurological branches fall on your power lines. Your skin, in many ways, is like a city’s parks and green space, contributing to the overall sense of beauty and vibrancy. Your fat? Yep, landfill.

Figure Intro 1 Cityscape Every city ages in very different ways, just like your body can. This rich metaphor – the geography is like your genes, roads are like arteries, the energy grid is like your brain circuitry, the green spaces are like your skin – describes the beauty of an elegant city.

You? Consider yourself the mayor, with the power to make all the decisions about what’s best for your biological city.

Our ultimate goal isn’t just to keep your biological city from naming tumbleweed as the town flower – in other words, to keep you from dying (though that is a biggie). Our goal is to put your body at the top of the “ten best cities to live in” list. It’s to make it vibrant and hip, with lots of resources and good management of those resources. Perhaps most of all, it’s to give it the ability to adjust rapidly to changing times – to reinvent itself.

How will you get to know your city and all of the things that influence it? Here’s how we’re going to introduce it to you: science has pointed to fourteen major processes that drive almost all of the ageing we experience. Those causes of ageing – everything from wear and tear to neurotransmitter imbalances – indicate the tools you’ll need to get at what you really want: to help your body live younger and stronger, and to have more energy than a Labrador puppy.

Throughout the book, you’ll encounter these causes of ageing in special sections titled “Major Ager”; in the chapters between, you’ll discover exactly how the Major Agers affect various parts of your body and find specific, practical suggestions about how you can counteract their effects. Understanding the reasons for ageing will give you insights into the action steps for extending your own warranty, which we unveil in the last chapter.

Along the way, look for these features to help you learn about your body:

Major Agers:These are the major drivers of ageing that most people have never heard of, but they work behind the scenes to age our cells. (Without our cells, we don’t do so well.) Understanding these Nobel Prize – winning processes will make you a lot wiser as you wade through the littered terrain of anti-ageing therapies. At the very least, they’ll make you sound smart around the water cooler. Take a look at our crib sheet, which summarizes these Major Agers so you can see which ones can tip the youthful scale in your favour.

YOU Tests:The beginning of each chapter will start with a quick test that you can take to assess where you stand on the ageing scale. These interactive moments will give you new insights into your own body – and how young it’s working.

YOU Tips:At the end of each chapter, we’ll list a bunch of actions and strategies to keep your body working as vibrantly at sixty as it was at thirty-five. These tips – some admittedly controversial – will provide information about simple changes you can make to alter the complexities of your body. Whenever the science gets thin because we can’t accurately extrapolate fifty years into the future, we offer the advice that we would give our families.

YOU Tools

Detailed programmes that will help you live longer

Anger-Management Plan