OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.
“A fascinating look at how scientists are working to help doctors treat the aging process itself, helping us all to lead longer, healthier lives.” —Sanjay Gupta, MD Aging—not cancer, not heart disease—is the underlying cause of most human death and suffering. The same cascade of biological changes that renders us wrinkled and gray also opens the door to dementia and disease. We work furiously to conquer each individual disease, but we never think to ask: Is aging itself necessary? Nature tells us it is not: there are tortoises and salamanders who are spry into old age and whose risk of dying is the same no matter how old they are, a phenomenon known as “biological immortality.” In Ageless, Andrew Steelecharts the astounding progress science has made in recent years to secure the same for humans: to help us become old without getting frail, to live longer without ill health or disease.
“A fascinating look at how scientists are working to help doctors treat the aging process itself, helping us all to lead longer, healthier lives.” —Sanjay Gupta, MD Aging—not cancer, not heart disease—is the underlying cause of most human death and suffering. The same cascade of biological changes that renders us wrinkled and gray also opens the door to dementia and disease. We work furiously to conquer each individual disease, but we never think to ask: Is aging itself necessary? Nature tells us it is not: there are tortoises and salamanders who are spry into old age and whose risk of dying is the same no matter how old they are, a phenomenon known as “biological immortality.” In Ageless, Andrew Steelecharts the astounding progress science has made in recent years to secure the same for humans: to help us become old without getting frail, to live longer without ill health or disease.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the cover
1
The Age of Aging
Cast your mind back 25,000 years. It’s late on a warm spring afternoon in what we now call southern France, and you’re gathering firewood a short way from your camp. The men are out hunting, carrying spears and seeking out game like deer and bison. You and your fellow nomads look pretty much like modern humans, but life is very different—not least because of the ever-present risk that it will end suddenly.
At 28 years old you’re doing quite well for a prehistoric woman. There are risks everywhere. A tiny scratch could get infected and kill you; you could meet a sudden end in an accident or animal attack; or other prehistoric humans, hungry and desperate, could murder you in a fight. Most tragic of all, though, out of the five children you’ve given birth to, two have died—one shortly after birth from what we’d now understand to be a serious fever, and another aged three who you buried just a month ago. Prehistory is a dangerous place to live, and death seems to strike at random, often without obvious cause. There’s no understanding of germs or birth defects—perhaps you blame capricious, vengeful gods or spirits in an attempt to make sense of it all.
It’s hard for us to work out exactly how long prehistoric humans lived, not least because prehistory is defined as the period prior to written records. There were no birth certificates or insurance companies compiling detailed mortality tables. However, surveys of bones at a handful of archaeological sites, plus extrapolation from modern hunter–gatherer societies, give us some idea—and it’s at once better and worse than you might expect.
First, the bad news: life expectancy was poor, probably somewhere between 30 and 35 years. Statistically speaking, a lot of you reading this would already be dead. However, life expectancy is a number which can obscure as much as it reveals. This is because it’s an average and comes with all the attendant statistical pitfalls. The main reason that it was so strikingly low in prehistory was the appalling rate of infant and child mortality. Infections in the first few years of life struck down many, many babies and children. You probably had only a 60 percent chance of making it to 15 years old—barely better than tossing a coin. This huge number of deaths at young ages drags down the average age at death significantly.
However, if your coin came up heads and you made it to your late teens, you could expect to live another 35 or 40 years, taking you comfortably into your fifties. This “remaining life expectancy” is itself an average, so it’s quite likely that a few ancient humans did make it into their sixties or seventies—what we, in modern times, would start to call “old age.” A headline 35-year life expectancy both masks the terrible toll of childhood deaths and underplays how long the oldest early humans lived. Such is the challenge of summarizing a complex phenomenon like human lifespan with a single number.
This was the story for tens of thousands of years: eye-watering levels of child mortality held overall life expectancy down; most who made it to adulthood lived decent but not exceptionally long lives. For millennia, death was an omnipresent feature of human life, often rapid and without warning. Those who escaped the capricious clutches of infectious disease, injury or bad luck were greeted by an inexplicable state of decline which we’d now recognize as aging: a gradual loss of faculties in a world where fitness, keen senses and mental...
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Device Compatibility Notice
The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.
| Sign In
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.
If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
Author and narrator Andrew Steele is a specialist in the "new science of getting older without getting old." No one dies of old age, Dr. Steele argues, and as we reduce the underlying causes of death, we increase average longevity. Putting aside the question of where we'll put all these additional old folks, Steele offers a fascinating survey of contemporary medicine and the research on longevity in animals and humans. Although Steele is a television personality in Britain, as the audiobook's narrator, his delivery strikes the American ear as too rapid, and he runs words together. While his voice may lack charm and accessibility, the topic of longevity is fascinating. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
