If you’re interested in the latest advice on how to extend your healthspan, you should read The Longevity Code by Kris Verburgh.
The full title of the book is “The Longevity Code: Secrets to Living Well for Longer, from the Front Lines of Science”.
The book has the following description (on Goodreads):
Medical doctor and researcher Kris Verburgh is fast emerging as one of the world’s leading research authorities on the science of aging. The Longevity Code is Dr. Verburgh’s authoritative guide on why and how we age — and on the four most crucial areas we have control over, to slow down, and even reverse, the aging process.
We learn why some animal species age hardly at all while others age and die very quickly, and about the mechanisms at work that slowly but definitely cause our bodies to age, making us susceptible to heart attack, stroke, cancer, pneumonia and/or dementia.
Dr. Verburgh devotes the last third of The Longevity Code to what we can do to slow down the process of aging. He concludes by introducing and assessing the wide range of cutting-edge developments in anti-aging technology, the stuff once only of science fiction: new types of vaccines, and the use of mitochondrial DNA, CRISPR proteins, stem cells, and more.
In the course of researching and writing my own book The Abolition of Aging, I read dozens of different books on broadly similar topics. (For a partial list, scan the online copy of the Endnotes for that book.)
However, I found The Longevity Code to address a number of issues in ways that were particularly compelling and engaging:
- Persuasive advice on how to modify diet and lifestyle, now, in order to increase your likelihood to remain healthy long enough to benefit from forthcoming rejuvenation therapies (therapies which Verburgh lists as “Step 4” of a four-stage “longevity staircase”)
- A compelling analysis of different “theories of aging”, in Chapter 1 of his book, including the implications of the notably different lifespans of various animals that seem on first sight to have similar biology
- A down-to-earth matter-of-fact analysis, in Chapter 4 of his book, on the desirability of living longer lives.
The first of these points is an area where I have often struggled, in the Q&A portions of my own presentations on The Abolition of Aging, to give satisfactory answers to audience questions. I now have better answers to offer!
Allowable weakness
One “allowable weakness” of the book is that the author repeats himself on occasion – especially when it comes to making recommendations on diet and food supplements. I say this is “allowable” because his messages deserve repetition, in a world where there is an abundance of apparent expert dietary advice that is, alas, confusing, contradictory, and often compromised (due to the influence of vested interests – as Verburgh documents).
Table of Contents
The table of contents gives a good idea of what the book contains:
- Why do we age?
- Making room?
- Dying before growing old
- Young and healthy, old and sick
- Sex and aging
- What causes aging?
- Proteins
- Carbohydrates
- Fats
- Our energy generators and their role in life, death, and aging
- Shoelaces and string
- Other causes, and conclusion
- The longevity staircase
- Avoid deficiencies
- Stimulate hormesis
- Reduce growth stimulation
- Reverse the aging process
- Some thoughts about aging, longevity, and immortality
- Do we really want to grow that old?
- A new society?
- Recipes
- Afterword
About Kris Verburgh
You can read more about the author on the bio page of his website. Here’s a brief extract:
Kris Verburgh (born 1986) graduated magna cum laude as a medical doctor from the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Dr. Verburgh is a researcher at the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies (CLEA) at the Free University Brussels (VUB) and a member of the Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group at the Free University of Brussels.
Dr. Verburgh’s fields of research are aging, nutrition, metabolism, preventive medicine and health. In this context, he created a new scientific discipline, called ‘nutrigerontology‘, which studies the impact of nutrition on the aging process and aging-related diseases.
Additionally, he has a profound interest in new technologies that will disrupt medicine, health(care) and our lifespans. He follows the new trends and paradigm shifts in medicine an biotechnology and how they are impacted by the fourth industrial revolution…
Verburgh wrote his first science book when he was 16 years old. At age 25, he had written 3 science books.
Dr. Verburgh gives talks on new developments and paradigm shifts in medicine, healthcare and the science of aging. He gave lectures for the European Parliament, Google, Singularity University, various academic institutes, organizations and international companies.
And I’d be delighted to host him at London Futurists, when schedules allow!
dw2 
Leave a Reply