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Rating: 
Summary: Why We Age needs Companion Volume
Review: After reading Austad's book, you should read THE IMMORTALIST MANIFESTO: STAY YOUNG & SAVE THE WORLD by Elixxir. It complements Austad's book..... Find out why Harvard's philosophy professor Cornel West calls the author FIRST RATE! ORIGINAL...RAZOR-SHARP. The Immortalist Manifesto argues persuasively that the anti-aging breakthroughs will not necessarily come in time for you and me. Unless there is an Immortalist movement which pushes society into a Manhattan Project or Apollo Program to conquer Old Age and Death. If this book does not stir us into action, nothing will. It is to Immortalism what The Communist Manifesto was to Socialism. The Immortalist Manifesto minces no words to remind us that "do-it-yourselfism" is not enough if your goal is to conquer Old Age. Just as you alone can never make it to the moon. Reading Austad won't hurt. But reading THE IMMORTALIST MANIFESTO just might save your life!
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Summary: Amazing Answers to the Right Questions in Senescence
Review: Steven N. Austad admits he spent a great deal of time studying opossums. How that research relates to why we age, one wonders. (?) Austad provides good critical analysis of historical theories of aging, but pokes too hard at researchers of the past who had few tools to work with. Though he has no criticism for Darwin. Austad's book is quite confusing at times. Austad assumes evolution is a fact, but presents no facts in support of the theory of evolution. What damages the genes that leads to accelated aging and disease? Austad notes the mitochondria in the cell exhibit abnormalities, but never points to the mitochondrial antioxidants that may protect genes from oxidative damage, such as ubiquitin (coenzyme Q10). In the end, you could read a good book about the free radical theory of disease and learn more about aging. A bevy of biologists have observed that animals and humans deprived of food live longer. Like them, Austad ends up advocating "food restriction," yet says "no one, repeat no one, knows why food restriction has this effect or how it works." But he can't connect the dots to his own research, which talks about iron and its all important role in the destructive process of oxidation. Now those humans and animals who restrict food consumption would be limiting their iron intake, right? Maybe we do know why food restriction works. Why does the body have so many intricate mechanisms to control iron (antioxidants, melanin, iron-binding proteins like hemoglobin, albumin, ferritin, lactoferrin), and organs that store iron, like the liver? Austad needs to go back to school and stay out of the sun. Beware of opossum fever! --
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: This book presents a thoroughly readable introduction to the science of aging, not just human aging, but aging among all animals. The author begins by pointing out that all claims for pockets of extraordinarily aged people in various corners of the world have always lacked documentation or other substantiation. He states that there is a limit to human longevity that has remained constant even as life expectancies have risen with improved health care and living conditions. Austad's somewhat simplistic writing style seems geared towards readers of self-help bestsellers at times, and occasionally his analogies lack clarity. Early in the text he defines the beginning of aging as the time when the probability of death is at its minimum, which seems to be about age 11 in humans. While this may be the standard measure for the science of aging (?), Austad never compares this to ordinary people's measures. For instance, many lay people distinguish between aging and longevity. They accept that there is a limit to life but within that limit, they want to have the highest quality of life possible right up until the end. Such people might define aging as a decline in life quality due to pain or illness, and loss of balance, strength, or memory. Certainly, quality of life does not start to decline at age 11. Later in the book as Austad examines ways that people might lengthen their lives, he still never takes up the issue of quality of life. Austad argues that some of the things that people do to try to make themselves healthier (exercise, vitamins) have not been shown to increase longevity but he seems to overlook the fact that they might increase the quality of life so they still might be worthwhile. Despite these weaknesses, the book is still a very good introduction to the science of aging. It summarizes much current research about aging in language that is accessible by anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Gives a persuasive answer to a difficult question
Review: This interesting book is not about how to avoid ageing or about how to grow old gracefully, etc. Instead Austad is concerned quite simply, as his title says, in why we age. The argument that he develops from evolutionary biology is very subtle, but persuasive and profound. It's not that the ageing of individuals is good for the species. That's a fallacy, although it works that way. And it is not because of limited cell division. That too is an effect. Rather it is because evolution does not support system maintenance past the age of reproduction. In other words (this is a slippery, but nonetheless cogent and persuasive argument) no gene that either maintains the system or tears down the system or even just leaves the system as it is past reproductive age is selected. None are selected. All post-reproductive age mechanisms are instead randomly selected; that is, selected by accident. Since there is the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy, a random system will just run down. It will go to chaos; and for our bodies, that means breakdown. Simple as that. Still, the question remains, why don't we continue to reproduce as we grow older? Or, why isn't our reproductive age unlimited? The answer is subtle: such a system wouldn't work because it would be static and couldn't change with the environment. The old reproducers would, through the strength of their experience and position, control reproduction and naturally work against change. Consequently, they would drift away from their changing environment and become less fit. Also, the faster an environment changes the faster the species must adjust; therefore, reproduction at an earlier and earlier age would be selected for, consistent with the ability to gain subsistence. As is noted here and elsewhere, it is a melancholy fact that we age and die because of sexuality. Sexual reproduction only works if the young have a better chance at reproducing than the old. It should be realized that someone a generation younger is, paradoxically, a generation older in terms of genetic experience. The gene pool has mixed one more time. The young can only have the advantage if the experienced and powerful get old, weak and die. And so we do.
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Summary: All the latest lore on aging, health, and nutrition
Review: This is a relaxed, somewhat witty book on aging and health by a zoologist with an emphasis on evolutionary biology. I particularly enjoyed Austed's use of statistical analysis in the beginning of the book in distinguishing popular notions about aging from what the raw data has to say. Austed uses statistics beautifully here. When Kant was trying (unsuccesfully) to formulate a science of metaphysics, he asked what other real life example of synthetic (additive) thought a priori was used by people. Math! Austed uses math to demonstrate apodaectically that what we generally refer to as extending human life is no more than altered longevity due largely to water purification, antibiotics, and less back-breaking labor rather than an actual delaying of the aging process. He also shows how our species tends to begin dying at about ten years of age according to the statistical dictate of mortality-doubling time. The limits of how old we may grow as determined by genetics is evidently about what it was back in Socrates' time, although these days longevity is greater. If cancer, according to professor Austed, were eliminated we could add a couple of more years to average longevity and likewise with heart disease; the two most prolific killers in the industrialized world. However, even if we unrealistically eliminated all disease, not only would our genes kill us somewhere around 90 years of age, but many of us would die from accidents in any event. Aging is determined by our genetic program and chance, not necessarily in that order, and the only possible hope we have for extending our limits of aging per se lies in some far off genetically engineered discovery. Presently, if you don't get flattened by a bus, your genes will get you, no matter how many vitamins you scarf down. As for special diets, lizard's eyes (special vitamins), and magnets and crystals, these are largely placebo actuators. Unless you have special nutritional needs, a sensible diet, adequate sleep, moderate excercise, and being rich are about as much as you can do to determine your future health and longevity outside of avoiding firefights with religious fanatics and other testosterone dementias. Austed doesn't really address low stress as a longevity booster except perhaps to mention the nobles tended to live longer than peasants in pre-antibiotic days. Austed excecutes a revealing discourse on tales of how certain societies in far away mountain regions tend to live to older than normal ages by eating goat yogurt and smoking ginko leaves: these are folk tales and the author uses various examples of innoent charlatanry to demonstrate exactly how gullible people are when they very badly want to hear what they've already made up their minds to believe. I was a bit unmoved by Austed's refutation of the cellular Hayflick limit's role in aging. While controlled cell division is certainly crucial to normal development and cancer mitigation, cells, like whole organisms, are also sitting ducks for unforeseen catastrophy. A non-regenerating cell is also an accident waiting to happen through injury, free radical damage, or deliterious mutation. In terms of generalized deterioration (aging) nonregenerating cells are eventually going to deteriorate to the point where they outnumber healthy nonregenerating cells, at which point, disfunction (aging) is certain to occur; but then what do I know, maybe this is just "what I want to believe." Austed's observation that we seek a way to study certain whale species for their menopausal physiology (rare in the animal kingdom) and lower than human cancer rates is intriguing. How this would be accomplished outside of simple skin sample research is questionable however. All in all a good book to have read for interpreting the almost daily media reports of miracle breakthroughs in aging and health. Austed's reliance on hard statistical analysis is very helpful in this context.
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Summary: An entertaining introduction to the science of aging
Review: Why do we age? The simple answer is, there is no simple answer. The simplest "simple" answer is probably, we age because we live, and living wears our bodies out. In order to live we breathe because our bodies use oxygen to convert food into energy. But in the process something called "oxidative damage" happens to our cells. In other words: we rust. Inevitably. The two other main reasons why bodies wear out are connected to glucose and "browning damage", and to self-repair mechanisms of our cells that fail to stop and lead to uncontrolled cell growth - what we call "cancer". The three processes of rusting, browning and cancer are part of aging. They are "how" we age. But "why" do we age at all? Why don't we stay healthy for, say, 150 years and then simply drop dead? In very simple terms the reason is: aging is genetic. The genes do not care about the body after the body has served its purpose: to replicate the genes and ensure that they can replicate again. This is called the "selfish gene" theory, an expression coined by Richard Dawkins. Gerontology, the study of aging, is a field of science in rapid growth. I do not claim to be a specialist; therefore I do not want to go into much detail here. Steven Austad's book explains very well "what science is discovering about the body's journey through life". He ends his book with a chapter of particular interest for women ("Reproductive Aging, Menopause, and Health"), and a chapter on our hopes of how to make the best of our ultimate genetic fate ("Slowing Aging and Extending Life: Remedies and Expectations"). Apart from Austad's humor - it can be both droll and dry - I have particularly enjoyed his short portraits of scientists in the field of gerontology and evolutionary biology, such as the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, the immunologist Peter Medawar, the American scientist Raymond Pearl (who in 1938 produced the first paper analyzing the extent to which smoking reduced life expectancy, but also was of the opinion that people above 50 should forfeit their right to vote, because they would have grown too foolish), the German physiologist Max Rubner, the gerontologist Alex Comfort (who discovered the joy - and profitability - of sex), the biologist John Maynard Smith, and the two-time Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling. Austad's cameo of Max Rubner is my favorite because of its psychological insight into the downside of dedication and narrow focus: "The first scientist to investigate the rate-of-living idea in any rigorous fashion was the German physiologist Max Rubner. Rubner could make people very uncomfortable with his Teutonic bluntness. He was noted for his long silences, punctuated with outbursts of aggressively sarcastic humor. But he was also an obsessively precise investigator of the energy contained in food and the use of that energy by animals. Like obsessives everywhere, he felt that the significance of his obsession was underappreciated by others."
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Summary: This is the most amazing break through in science
Review: Wow, I am impressed. I never expected this to be a good book when I saw it on my collage reading list. This turned out not only to be scientific jargon, but keeps the reader facinated with the authors great personality which comes through in the writing. IF YOU BUY ONE BOOK EVER BUY THIS BOOK, AND IF YOU BUY ANOTHER, BUY THIS ONE AGAIN!
Rating:
Summary: This is the most amazing break through in science
Review: Wow, I am impressed. I never expected this to be a good book when I saw it on my collage reading list. This turned out not only to be scientific jargon, but keeps the reader facinated with the authors great personality which comes through in the writing. IF YOU BUY ONE BOOK EVER BUY THIS BOOK, AND IF YOU BUY ANOTHER, BUY THIS ONE AGAIN!
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