Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old

Steele is a practicing researcher in biogerontology who happens to write popular science very well. The reader does not require a very good background in biology to appreciate the best part of this book, the causes of aging. Potential treatments for aging, as it applies to humans, is discussed, but I suspect this part of the book would be a much better read in say 5 years. There is currently an ongoing trial, being conducted in a rigorous manner, as to whether metformin is one such treatment. What funding there is for trials of treatments for human aging are typically justified in the hopes the treatment will improve a specific health problem. Steele points out that there are some indicators of a person’s expected future lifespan – telomere length, certain epigenetic changes, mitochondrial DNA density - but there is no mention that these are used as end points in any kind of treatment trials. “We can routinely improve the aging process in mice via dozens of different treatments.”, and there is evidence that lengthening lifespan will lengthen the number of years in good health. Admittedly, there was ONE study with earthworms wherein the extended life shown in laboratory conditions did not apply when the treated worms were mixed with untreated worms in more representative conditions. In general, animals subject to shorter lives because of predation, starvation, etc. age faster: there is less evolutionary selection for genetic changes which promote longer lifespans, even if the changes are otherwise neutral, and sometimes the changes can have deleterious effects on the immune system, vigor, reproductive abilities. There are a number of specific causes of human aging. There is the accumulation of senescent cells which no longer divide, are less functional, and tend to stimulate inflammation. Reasons for senescence include cellular mutations which we constantly experience, and telomere length – most cell telomere lengths shorten after each cell division, eventually causing a problem. The body becomes less capable of dealing with problem proteins, e.g. amyloids as in Alzheime’s, as well as dealing with problem senescent cells. One cause of this is a general weakening of the immune system as the thymus becomes less active. Interestingly, specialized stem cells may increasingly divide into two daughter stem cells, instead of one daughter on the way to becoming a needed special purpose cell. We all know that cutting back on sugar can reduce the build-up of insulin resistance and harmful blood sugar levels, but it also contributes to good health “in part because it will reduce the quantity of glycated proteins in your body” and “fructose reacts more readily with proteins in a test tube”, a reason fructose may be especially harmful.

Not only did I tremendously enjoyed reading the book it also opened my eyes on many aspects of aging I wasn’t familiar with. I really recommend it to anyone interested in aging and latest biological research!

If you’re considering this book in hopes of finding some magical supplement or salve to add ten years to your life, forget it. The author is a PhD physicist turned computational biologist—a serious scientist. In Ageless, he relates the latest findings about the emergence of a new field called biogerontology. The word is a mouthful, but its meaning is transparent: it’s the study of the biological basis of aging and age-related diseases. And the author, Dr. Andrew Steele, contends that advances in the field hold out hope that in the foreseeable future a combination of drugs and genetic engineering can extend both the human lifespan and our healthspan.In other words, as the subtitle of Steele’s book suggests, we are on the cusp of learning how to get older “without getting old”—staying healthy and active to the end. For me at age eighty, that’s a mighty attractive proposition. It’s hard to resist the prospect of living longer, so long as I’m not bedridden or witless during the additional years.A paradigm shift in the science of agingSteele argues that scientists are now beginning to address the phenomenon of aging itself rather than just the signature diseases and infirmities that are associated with it. It’s a paradigm shift, and if the scientists he promotes in this book receive the funding they need to move ahead aggressively, their efforts might make it possible for today’s average global lifespan of 72.6 years—already nearly 10 years higher in the world’s richest countries—to extend to 100 by the end of the century. Not by curing cancer or heart disease, or squelching every pandemic disease to come down the pike, but by manipulating the mechanisms that determine our biological age.For example, the author asserts, “rather than going after hundreds of types of cancer and finding bespoke treatments for each, we could try to deal with the DNA damage which underlies them all, the senescent cells and chronic inflammation which aggravate them all and the faltering immune defenses which they must all slip past, and reduce the odds of getting cancer in the first place.” He adds much later, “given how far we’ve come in the last 50 years, it would be foolish to bet that the kind of systems biology we’d need to cure aging won’t be possible in the next 50.” Living longer, he suggests, is in our future.Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old by Andrew Steele (2021) 321 pages ★★★☆☆Chart of the causes of aging that prevent us from living longerDiagram of a typology of the causes of aging that is similar to Steele’s. Image: from Lopez-Otin et al., “The Hallmarks of Aging.” Cell, 2013, via Brandon Keim on Medium.Complex science made simple. Sort of. Sometimes.For the average person, the science of aging is unfathomably complex. Steele makes it easy to understand—up to a point—but only so long as you have rudimentary knowledge of biology. As the son and brother of doctors, and the husband of a biologist, I’ve picked up a little of that. But I still found myself alternately befuddled or feeling my eyes glaze over as I read Steele’s detailed accounts of how some particular drug or gene acted to extend or truncate the life of mice in laboratory studies. Nonetheless, I found Ageless to be illuminating.“What’s astounding,” Steele writes, “is that the doubling of human life expectancy since the start of the 1800s has been achieved without any treatments for aging. We’ve scored some indirect hits—improved diets, exercise, cutting out smoking, and preventative medicines to reduce cholesterol or blood pressure all arguably slow parts of the aging process to some extent—but there’s not a single drug or treatment available in your local pharmacy or hospital expressly designed to slow or reverse aging.” Yet, there is every prospect that that will change in the years ahead. Continuing advances in biomedicine will make living longer likely.Living longer through scienceSteele makes clear that “aging isn’t one single thing—but nor is it thousands. We now known enough to attempt to place aging-related changes into categories. Most excitingly, there are few enough that we can hope not only to explain what drives the aging process, but potentially come up with treatments to address it.” Other scientists have proposed grouping those changes into seven or nine categories. Steele describes ten “hallmarks” of the aging process, because “given that aging is a multifaceted process, treating it is going to require a portfolio approach.” As a result, “there may well be dozens of treatments in our eventual repertoire.” DNA damage and mutations Trimmed telomeres Autophagy, amyloids, and adducts Epigenetic alterations Accumulation of senescent cells Malfunctioning mitochondria Signal failure Changes in the microbiome Cellular exhaustion Malfunction of the immune systemIf you understand all the language in this ten-item typology, you’re way ahead of me. Individually, Steele makes each of these terms (more or less) understandable in Ageless. But the experiments he describes to explore how to counter them, and the treatments he proposes, are much harder to grasp. Suffice it to say that the science seems credible. In other words, I’ll take his word for it.Keep in mind that this is not science fiction. Steele reports on human trials underway on drugs developed to counter several of the items in his list. Subjects, both lab animals and, in a few cases, people, are already living longer as a result. And other scientists are deploying gene therapy, especially now with the benefit of CRISPR-Cas9, to address others.Three parts to the bookAgeless consists of three parts. In Part 1, Steele describes “An Age-Old Problem,” noting the marked increase in life expectancy we’ve experienced in recent centuries. Part II, based on the typology above, is about “Treating Aging.” In Part 3, he advances his prescription for “Living Longer.” And that last part is the most disappointing. I surely don’t need to be told again not to smoke, drink to excess, overeat, or fail to exercise. He mentions the promise inherent in “probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics,” all of which are available in certain foods and food supplements. However, he cautions against the use of food supplements in general, many of which he insists cause more harm than good, while the others are of no use at all. Given what I’ve learned from doctors and nutritionists, I believe he does too far with that claim. And vitamin manufacturers will not be happy.Although Steele is more informative than I’m suggesting here, “Living Longer” was less rewarding for me. It is, in part, an activist’s plea for the governments of rich nations to fund anti-aging research. “Aging causes 85 percent of deaths in the U.S., but receives 6 percent of health research funding,” he notes. But I’m not the right audience for that message.About the authorImage of Andrew Steele, author of this book about living longerAndrew Steele. Image: Phil Fisk/The ObserverAndrew Steele‘s bio on Amazon reads in part: “Dr Andrew Steele is a scientist, writer and campaigner [British for “activist”] based in London. After a PhD in physics from the University of Oxford, Andrew decided that ageing was the single most important scientific challenge of our time, and switched fields to computational biology. He worked at the Francis Crick Institute, using machine learning to decode our DNA and predict heart attacks using patients’ NHS medical records. He is now a full-time science writer and presenter.”

Worldwide average life expectancy is 73 years, making age-related health decline a global medical problem. Dr. Andrew Steele received his PhD in physics from Oxford University but began a career in biology after seeing a graph of the exponential increase in age-related ill health (dementia, cardiovascular disease, cancer, frailty, etc.) as we age. The book is an excellent primer on the biology of aging and medical therapies under development to slow or reverse age-related health decline. I highly recommend this book.

This book was recommended to me by a friend, so I purchased it. FIRST - it is NOT a diet book or a book on what to do to prevent aging (which I appreciated). The author wants to educate the reader on the aging process, different theories and hypothesis' on aging and how it affects different species. I found it excellent reading. I warn you again, it is an educational book, not a longevity FIX IT book.

Essentially, a brief summary of the book is that research is ongoing, there is some hope, but do not expect any treatment in the very near future, meanwhile eat healthy and exercise. Overall, it is a very good book for understanding the process of aging. Delves into scientific evidence and provides good description of the most recent developments. However, do not expect it to give you any valuable practical advice apart from you already probably know: you need eat healthy, do not smoke, exercise etc.

Andrew Steele’s Book “Ageless” has injected youth into this reader( who’s 78). Though terminology is necessarily scientific it is very worthwhile to persevere in the reading. A reference book to refer to and enforce what you’ve learned. An extraordinary read. Thanks Andrew.

I bought this based on a recommendation I saw on Twitter, but really, this book is only for diehards. Lots of references to various research studies but the end conclusions and recommendations are simply "eat well, exercise, and don't smoke". The entire book could have been covered in a single article. Admittedly, I skipped the middle of the book because it seemed to be going nowhere, but the conclusions and recommendations spoke volumes. I was disappointed with this book.

Beware anyone who cares about animals. this book is full of disturbing animal experiments. Treating animals as though they were just disposable commodities is disgusting unnecessary "science". It is time the human race stopped being "me me me me" and took responsibility for their own health. In one page I could tell you to exercise more and eat a wholefood Vegan diet. After 78 years on this planet I am sickened by the way laboratory animals are treated to try and "fix" human beings.

In Ageless, Andrew Steele investigates the reasons we age, and the cutting edge research that is starting to make breakthroughs into how we can potentially combat some of the worst effects of old age.Rather than trying to treat the symptoms of one disease at a time, scientists are looking at the causes of ageing at a cellular level, and developing treatments to halt that process. These in turn often have a positive impact on many of the diseases associated with old age, such as Alzheimer's, heart disease and cancer. Most of this hasn't progressed into human trials yet and is still being tested in the lab, and this does involve animal testing. Some of the results are astounding, although they will not necessarily translate into humans.I knew nothing about biogerontology before reading this, and I found it fascinating, even if I didn't fully understand all the biological details. I had no idea how advanced medical research has become in understanding and potentially fixing the aging process.The main takeaway from this book is to try to stay alive long enough to benefit from any treatments that derive from all this research!