The book is about the science of aging. It started out with some science how aging process can be measured and go into great details on how to reduce the aging progress and live a healthy life. I recommend this book if you’re interested in living a long, healthy life.

A quick summary:
– Our life can be separated into two stages: “Health Span” and “Disease Span.” The trick is to keep the Disease Span short. If you want to live longer, keep the telomeres long.
– On the cell level, the lengths of the telomeres at the tip of our chromosomes shorten at each level of our cell divisions determine how fast we age and when they die. The telomeres can actually lengthens. Cells reaches a Hayflick limit around 50 times before they stop dividing and die. The longer the telomeres the more times your cells can divide.
– You can think of telomeres as the aglets (as at the tops of the shoe laces) of our chromosomes. The longer they are the less fraying/healthy the chromosomes get. They are the leading indicator of our health Span, hence total life span.
– Short telomeres correlates to heart diseases and lung diseases, cognitive slowing/Alzheimer, and inflammation.
– Increase Telomerase can keep Telomere long or lengthen them. Too much of it would cause cancer though.
– The rest of book is about doing things to keep the telomere healthy:
1) stress management,
2) resilient/positive thinking,
3) anxiety/depression management,
4) right amount of exercises,
5) sufficient sleep,
6) healthy weight (level of belly protrusion and insulin sensitivity),
7) good diets (omega-3s, leafy vegetables, flax oil and flaxseeds), reduce consumption of red meat and processed food, sugary foods and drinks,
8) maintain healthy relationship with our environment, especially our neighborhood,
9) maintain healthy relationship with our loved ones: be appreciative, be present and hug them.
10) for our young ones, support them and practice warm, nurturing environment

In summary, to live a long life we need to pay attentions to all aspects our life, from mental health, the physical health and our living environment. It’s no differenc5 than we already know except now we have a way to measure how well we’re doing – Telomere lengths.