⭐⭐ Lifespan by Sinclair
| Full Title | Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don’t Have To |
|---|---|
| Authors | David A. Sinclair |
| Year Published | 2019 |
| Date Read | April 03, 2021 |
| Rating | 2/5 stars |
Listened to just over half. I got tired after hearing the nth description of a research result about SIR2 or mTOR — interesting to find out about, but ultimately I have no conceptualization of how these proteins fit into a broader story so it’s hard to really grok what’s being explained.
Overall though I thought there were a few interesting ideas. One is that we should start seeing aging as a disease similar to any other; it sounds like a few countries are starting to do so but the idea was mostly new to me. Two is that much of this research is way early — there were a bunch of research results on mice or tapeworms, but the best Sinclair could do in terms of humans were anecdotes of his friends or family. It’s great that his 70-year-old father started feeling better after supplementation, but that should be very far from a recommendation for people generally to start using NMN. I felt like there was also a willful conflation here of some results in non-humans — a paper
might come out about fruit flies, and Sinclair would cite it as “that result in humans would mean 20 years of extra life”; feels a little deceiving to me.
The final piece that I’d like to follow up on is the link between longevity and stress, particularly around hunger and thermoregulation. The book didn’t focus too much on it, but from the sound of it there are actually human trials on this stuff with potentially interesting results.
Probably would not recommend other than to folks that are already interested in longevity assisted by exogenous supplementation.