#342 ‒ Aging well: Peter shares strategies for improving longevity with residents at a senior living center

Why do people get sick and die from old age, while some other organisms don’t? Is there a way to prevent aging in humans, or even to reverse it? In Jellyfish Age Backwards, biotech researcher Nicklas Brendborg uses Turritopsis dohrnii—the immortal jellyfish—as an entry point to explore the latest research on longevity. Brendborg weaves together cutting-edge science, evolutionary biology, and practical insights about diet, exercise, and lifestyle factors to explore how people can live the longest and healthiest lives possible.

In this guide, we’ll present two competing theories about why we suffer the effects of old age. We’ll then discuss various anti-aging strategies, including lifestyle changes and medical interventions. Our commentary will provide background information and scientific research that supports (or opposes) Brendborg’s assertions. We’ll also compare this book with other prominent anti-aging guides, like David Sinclair’s Lifespan. Finally, we’ll provide some actionable ideas to help you extend your life and enhance your health.

For all of recorded history, people have seen aging as an inevitable fact of life. Biologist and geneticist David Sinclair disagrees: He believes that old age is a deadly disease, and he’s dedicated his life to curing it.

Sinclair is a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard University. He argues that it’s not only possible—but inevitable—that we’ll learn to overcome the aging process. New medicines and technologies will increase our maximum lifespan and years of health until eventually humans won’t have a maximum lifespan—we’ll stay young and healthy forever.

In Lifespan, Sinclair discusses why aging happens, how we can prevent it, and how we might create a world where nobody has to die of old age. This guide explains Sinclair’s ideas and provides background information to make complex biological concepts more accessible to the average reader.

In From Strength to Strength, management expert Arthur Brooks says that as we get older, our professional skills start to decline, and we can no longer succeed in our current jobs. Despite this, with the right mindset, the second half of your life can be even happier and more meaningful than the first. If you find a job that suits your changing skill set, and if you change your idea of “success” from career achievement and material wealth to happiness and fulfillment, you can continue to thrive.

In this guide, we’ll first explain how and why you lose your job skills as you get older. We’ll then discuss solutions: how you can find a job that suits your changing brain, and how to achieve a meaningful life instead of fruitlessly chasing success in your former field. In our commentary, we’ll discuss whether this professional decline really is inevitable and explore some methods to keep your mind sharp. We’ll also offer strategies for making the most of your life as you age.

How do you want to spend the last decade of your life? Do you want to be weak, bedridden, and mentally foggy? Or busy doing whatever brings you joy, flexing the body and mind of someone decades younger? According to physician Peter Attia, you can extend the active and fulfilling part of your life by building the right healthy habits—and the earlier you start building these habits, the better chance you have of circumventing mental and physical decline.

In this guide, you’ll learn Attia’s recommendations for how best to eat, exercise, and otherwise take care of your body and mind. You’ll also understand how one chronic condition, metabolic dysfunction, can cause four of the most deadly diseases known to man. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Attia’s explanations of human biology and modern medicine with information from recent research. We’ll also use additional health and fitness tips to paint a broader picture of the current consensus in the complex field of wellness.

Imagine a world where our lifespans aren’t limited by illness or aging, where people could live for as long as they wanted to. This sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, but according to Tony Robbins, Peter Diamandis, and Robert Hariri, such a scenario may be more fact than fiction. In Life Force, the authors explain how ongoing development of new technologies and information in the medical field may extend our lifespans beyond what we ever thought possible. Robbins is a bestselling author and speaker, Diamandis is a bestselling author and scientist, and Hariri is a neurosurgeon and scientist.

In our guide, we’ll explore the lifestyle changes you can make now to increase your lifespan and overall health. We’ll also look at new technologies that are rapidly improving our healthcare and upcoming technologies that have the potential to bring us even closer to the ideal of immortality. We’ll supplement this with elaboration on some of the authors’ more complex ideas, and we’ll contextualize the guide’s information in the fields of science, technology, and sociology.

How do you want to spend the last decade of your life? Do you want to be weak, bedridden, and mentally foggy? Or busy doing whatever brings you joy, flexing the body and mind of someone decades younger? According to physician Peter Attia, you can extend the active and fulfilling part of your life by building the right healthy habits—and the earlier you start building these habits, the better chance you have of circumventing mental and physical decline.

In this guide, you’ll learn Attia’s recommendations for how best to eat, exercise, and otherwise take care of your body and mind. You’ll also understand how one chronic condition, metabolic dysfunction, can cause four of the most deadly diseases known to man. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Attia’s explanations of human biology and modern medicine with information from recent research. We’ll also use additional health and fitness tips to paint a broader picture of the current consensus in the complex field of wellness.

When it comes to taking care of your brain, the best time to start is now. Many people don’t consider dementia or cognitive decline until later in life, but neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s begin developing decades before symptoms appear. Fortunately, you can take steps to prevent cognitive decline and keep your brain strong and resilient throughout your life. In Keep Sharp, neurosurgeon and medical reporter Sanjay Gupta explains how we can best look after our brains in five key areas: exercise, sleep, nutrition, discovery, and social connection.

In our guide, we’ll examine how the human brain works, the potential causes of cognitive decline, and things you can do to promote a healthy brain. We’ll also explain why certain things are helpful or harmful to your brain, like why the Mediterranean diet is so beneficial and what a lack of sleep does to your brain. Throughout the guide, we’ll delve into the ever-evolving science of human cognition so you can better understand how to develop a healthier, happier brain.

In From Strength to Strength, management expert Arthur Brooks says that as we get older, our professional skills start to decline, and we can no longer succeed in our current jobs. Despite this, with the right mindset, the second half of your life can be even happier and more meaningful than the first. If you find a job that suits your changing skill set, and if you change your idea of “success” from career achievement and material wealth to happiness and fulfillment, you can continue to thrive.

In this guide, we’ll first explain how and why you lose your job skills as you get older. We’ll then discuss solutions: how you can find a job that suits your changing brain, and how to achieve a meaningful life instead of fruitlessly chasing success in your former field. In our commentary, we’ll discuss whether this professional decline really is inevitable and explore some methods to keep your mind sharp. We’ll also offer strategies for making the most of your life as you age.

What if you could think yourself to better health and a happier life—using the power of your brain and your body, not by asking the universe to do it for you? Science writer David Robson argues in The Expectation Effect that your brain’s predictions about your body, your health, your intellect, and your emotions are so powerful that they create your reality. By changing what your brain predicts, you can change the reality your brain creates for you and the limits it sets for you.

Drawing on extensive scientific research, the book explores the expectation effects that shape your health, determine how well you age and how long you live, and influence how you respond to stress. Throughout the guide, we’ll look at the strategies Robson recommends for stopping the negative outcomes of expectation effects and creating positive outcomes, and we’ll connect his ideas to what other experts say about how you can use these effects to improve your health and happiness.