How We Age: The Science of Longevity – by Dr. Coleen Murphy

The author is not a glossy “name brand” and has nothing to sell (besides her book). This shows, because it’s clearly not a book that was rushed out as a marketing ploy. Indeed, she begins with the words:

❝This book took me several years to write and is largely based on information I gathered while teaching my class, “Molecular Mechanisms of Longevity: The Genetics, Genomics, and Cell Biology of Aging,” at Princeton University.❞

~ Dr. Coleen Murphy

Thus, as you may imagine, it’s a thorough book, thoughtful, with conscientious attention to detail. As a reader, you are essentially getting the knowledge of a Princeton genomics class.

She covers what’s going on in our genes, in our cells, and in our bodies, when we age; why some animals don’t, and what things affect that. She talks biomarkers of aging and the industry gold standard “Health-Related Quality of Life” metrics. We learn about insulin signalling and FOXO targets; the role of caloric restriction or intermittent fasting, topics such as molecular homeostasis in the regulation of longevity (hello senolytics and chaperone-mediated autophagy), the microbiome and epigenetics, as well as mitochondrial management, cell replacement (including induced pluripotent stem cells), and even DNA repair. And yes, a lot about cognitive aging and how to slow it too.

The style is academic and/but perfectly readable; she explains everything as we go. We’ll note, though, that it’s not dry academic—her personality comes through throughout, in a good way that makes it a pleasant read as well as an informative one.

Bottom line: if you’d like a much deeper understanding of the mechanics of aging than we have room to get into in our articles at 10almonds, this book is a highly recommendable perfect opportunity.

Click here to check out How We Age, and learn about the science of longevity!

PS: we’ve reviewed a few books about the science of aging/longevity recently, and they’ve each been good, but if you’re going to get only one, we recommend this one, as in this reviewer’s opinion, it’s the best 😎