Young Forever

January 6, 2023
Physician and prolific best-selling author Hyman (Food Fix, 2020) focuses here on how and why people age, how to improve one's "health span" rather than just lifespan, and how to follow his "young forever" regimen. He shares commonsense advice based on various studies and his own visit to Sardinia, Italy, home to the longest-living men on earth. They're active people with strong connections to family, friends, and community. Unlike most Americans, they don't fuel their "metabolic engines with carbs, a dirty-burning, inefficient fuel." Hyman shares much valuable wisdom, including the importance of being curious, loving others, practicing self-care, reading, walking, and hanging out with inspiring friends and colleagues. He then gets into what might be considered more woo-woo territory, including hyperbaric oxygen chambers and "home ozone generators," while his recommending brand-name supplements can seem a bit too promotional. With a much-needed glossary, this guide, despite the caveats, is a useful reference for anyone who wants to improve their quality of life.

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February 20, 2023
“Your health span can equal your life span,” contends Hyman (The Pegan Diet), a senior adviser at Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, in this competent program. Outlining strategies to maintain good health into one’s later years, Hyman promotes common wisdom about refraining from smoking, getting “75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week,” and maintaining a protein-rich diet. More novel suggestions promise to “reverse biological aging” by harnessing hormesis, a phenomenon in which small stressors “kick your body into high gear to protect itself,” ranging from mild (a 16-hour fast) to more extreme (spending time in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which increases air pressure levels). He digs into the science behind aging and explains that readers should avoid eating sugar because it binds with proteins in human blood and tissue, damaging DNA and shortening telomeres (structures implicated in the aging process located at the ends of chromosomes). Some of the more intense and expensive therapies will be impractical for many (the stem-cell injections Hyman touts are not yet legal in the U.S.), but the detailed exercise, dietary, and supplement regimens will have wider appeal. A few unrealistic remedies aside, this makes for a solid primer on keeping up one’s health in old age.