Top 15 David A. Sinclair Quotes

Aging is controlled by single genes
Aging is slowed by adversity
Aging regulators can be modulated by small molecules
Aging is slowed by eating stressed plants
Aging is largely epigenetic noise
Cellular damage accelerates epigenetic age
Aging is a disease
Aging is reversible

Aging, quite simply, is a loss of information.

There isn't much debate on the downsides of consumption of animal protein. Study after study has demonstrated that heavily animal-based diets are associated with high cardiovascular mortality and cancer risk.

Thanks to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and the abundance of sugars and carbohydrates on every supermarket shelf around the globe, high blood sugar is causing the premature deaths of 3.8 million people a year.

Because as it turns out, exposing your body to less-than-comfortable temperatures is another very effective way to turn on your longevity genes.

I believe that aging is a disease. I believe it is treatable. I believe we can treat it within our lifetimes. And in doing so, I believe, everything we know about human health will be fundamentally changed.

Why would we choose to focus on problems that impact small groups of people if we could address the problem that impacts everyone — especially if, in doing so, we could significantly impact all those other, smaller problems?

In my mind, there are few sins so egregious as extending life without health. This is important. It does not matter if we can extend lifespans if we cannot extend healthspans to an equal extent. And so if we're going to do the former, we have an absolute moral obligation to do the latter.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." R. P. Feynman,

Youth → broken DNA → genome instability → disruption of DNA packaging and gene regulation (the epigenome) → loss of cell identity → cellular senescence → disease → death.

The longevity genes I work on are called "sirtuins," named after the yeast SIR2 gene, the first one to be discovered. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, SIRT1 to SIRT7, and they are made by almost every cell in the body. When I started my research, sirtuins were barely on the scientific radar. Now this family of genes is at the forefront of medical research and drug development. Descended from gene B in M. superstes, sirtuins are enzymes that remove acetyl tags from histones and other proteins and, by doing so, change the packaging of the DNA, turning genes off and on when needed. These critical epigenetic regulators sit at the very top of cellular control systems, controlling our reproduction and our DNA repair. After a few billion years of advancement since the days of yeast, they have evolved to control our health, our fitness, and our very survival. They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.

I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool. • I eat a lot of plants and try to avoid eating other mammals, even though they do taste good. If I work out, I will eat meat. • I don't smoke. I try to avoid microwaved plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-rays, and CT scans. • I try to stay on the cool side during the day and when I sleep at night. • I aim to keep my body weight or BMI in the optimal range for healthspan, which for me is 23 to 25.

As a species, we are living much longer than ever. But not much better. Not at all. Over the past century we have gained additional years, but not additional life — not life worth living anyway.5

I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin.

As cloning beautifully proves, our cells retain their youthful digital information even when we are old. To become young again, we just need to find some polish to remove the scratches.