The Longevity Seekers PDF Download

Author: Ted Anton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226020932
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
People have searched for the fountain of youth everywhere from Bimini to St. Augustine. But for a steadfast group of scientists, the secret to a long life lies elsewhere: in the lowly lab worm. By suppressing the function of just a few key genes, these scientists were able to lengthen worms’ lifespans up to tenfold, while also controlling the onset of many of the physical problems that beset old age. As the global population ages, the potential impact of this discovery on society is vast—as is the potential for profit. With The Longevity Seekers, science writer Ted Anton takes readers inside this tale that began with worms and branched out to snare innovative minds from California to Crete, investments from big biotech, and endorsements from TV personalities like Oprah and Dr. Oz. Some of the research was remarkable, such as the discovery of an enzyme in humans that stops cells from aging. And some, like an oft-cited study touting the compound resveratrol, found in red wine—proved highly controversial, igniting a science war over truth, credit, and potential profit. As the pace of discovery accelerated, so too did powerful personal rivalries and public fascination, driven by the hope that a longer, healthier life was right around the corner. Anton has spent years interviewing and working with the scientists at the frontier of longevity science, and this book offers a behind-the-scenes look at the state-of-the-art research and the impact it might have on global public health, society, and even our friends and family. With spectacular science and an unforgettable cast of characters, The Longevity Seekers has all the elements of a great story and sheds light on discoveriesthat could fundamentally reshape human life.

Author: Robert N. Butler
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1586488554
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
Pulitzer-prize winning author Dr. Robert Butler coined the term "ageism" and made "Alzheimer's" a familiar word. Now he brings his formidable knowledge and experience in aging issues to a recent and unprecedented achievement: the extension of human life expectancy by thirty years. As Butler shows, our society had not yet adapted to this change. The U.S. has not made a research investment in aging. Only eleven medical schools out of 145 have geriatrics departments compared to England where geriatrics is the number two specialty. We have not solidified private pension plans or strengthened Social Security to ensure that people do not outlive their resources. In this urgent and ultimately optimistic book, Dr. Butler shows why and how we must re-examine our personal and societal approach to aging right now, so that the boomers and the generations that follow may have a financially secure, vigorous, and healthy final chapter life.

Author: Sarah Morgan
Publisher: HQN Books
ISBN: 1488077827
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
“The Summer Seekers is the ultimate road trip book.”—Susan Wiggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author Get swept into a summer of sunshine, soul-searching and shameless matchmaking with this delightfully bighearted road-trip adventure by USA TODAY bestselling author Sarah Morgan! Kathleen is eighty years old. After she has a run-in with an intruder, her daughter wants her to move into a residential home. But she’s not having any of it. What she craves—what she needs—is adventure. Liza is drowning in the daily stress of family life. The last thing she needs is her mother jetting off on a wild holiday, making Liza long for a solo summer of her own. Martha is having a quarter-life crisis. Unemployed, unloved and uninspired, she just can’t get her life together. But she knows something has to change. When Martha sees Kathleen’s advertisement for a driver and companion to share an epic road trip across America with, she decides this job might be the answer to her prayers. She's not the world's best driver, but anything has to be better than living with her parents. And traveling with a stranger? No problem. Anyway, how much trouble can one eighty-year-old woman be? As these women embark on the journey of a lifetime, they all discover it's never too late to start over… Don't miss USA Today bestselling author Sarah Morgan's next cozy beach read, The Summer Swap, where a widow's plan to spend the summer in Cape Cod is upended by an unexpected guest and a secret that could change everything... Get lost in more captivating stories by Sarah Morgan: The Summer Swap - Coming May 2024! The Book Club Hotel The Island Villa Snowed In For Christmas Beach House Summer

Author: Tim Halliday
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022618479X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
“A huge, beautiful compendium of 600 frogs from around the world, from the famed poison-arrow variety on up to the intriguingly named plaintive rain frog.” —Wired With over 7,000 known species, frogs display a stunning array of forms and behaviors. A single gram of the toxin produced by the skin of the Golden Poison Frog can kill 100,000 people. Male Darwin’s Frogs carry their tadpoles in their vocal sacs for sixty days before coughing them out into the world. The Wood Frogs of North America freeze every winter, reanimating in the spring from the glucose and urea that prevent cell collapse. The Book of Frogs commemorates the diversity and magnificence of all of these creatures, and many more. Six hundred of nature’s most fascinating frog species are displayed, with each entry including a distribution map, sketches of the frogs, species identification, natural history, and conservation status. Life-size color photos show the frogs at their actual size—including the colossal seven-pound Goliath Frog. Accessibly written by expert Tim Halliday and containing the most up-to-date information, The Book of Frogs will captivate both veteran researchers and amateur herpetologists. As frogs increasingly make headlines for their troubling worldwide decline, the importance of these fascinating creatures to their ecosystems remains underappreciated. The Book of Frogs brings readers face to face with six hundred astonishingly unique and irreplaceable species that display a diverse array of adaptations to habitats that are under threat of destruction throughout the world. “If you are a serious (and I mean serious) fan of the frog, you are in for a real treat.” —Boing Boing

Author: Livia Kohn
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1931483221
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
People today live longer than in any time in history and they want to stay young and active for many years to come. The Chinese have successfully practiced longevity techniques for millennia, working with process-oriented and energy-based methods. Their literature is full of essential insights and practical guidelines to longer, healthier, and happier lives. This is the first comprehensive collection of traditional longevity sources in English translation. Arranged chronologically, it presents materials from ancient medical manuscripts through medieval manuals and Daoist scriptures to late imperial works that specifically focus on women. Well organized and illustrated, it provides easy access to a treasure trove of information, fascinating to scholars, practitioners, and lay readers alike.

Author: Vincent C. Giampapa
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1591205441
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book shows readers how they can personally direct and monitor their own health and become proactive in optimizing their quality of life. Thanks to the latest advances in genetic science, one no longer has to be a victim of genetic inheritance.

Author: Mark Schweda
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317080017
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This book examines the relevance of modern medicine and healthcare in shaping the lives of elderly persons and the practices and institutions of ageing societies. Combining individual and social dimensions, Planning Later Life discusses the ethical, social, and political consequences of increasing life expectancies and demographic change in the context of biomedicine and public health. By focusing on the field of biomedicine and healthcare, the authors engage readers in a dialogue on the ethical and social implications of recent trends in dementia research and care, advance healthcare planning, or the rise of anti-ageing medicine and prevention. Bringing together the largely separated debates of individualist bioethics on the one hand, and public health ethics on the other, the volume deliberately considers the entanglements of envisioning, evaluating, and controlling individual and societal futures. So far, the process of devising and exploring the various positive and negative visions and strategies related to later life has rarely been reflected systematically from a philosophical, sociological, and ethical point of view. As such, this book will be crucial to those working and studying in the life sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences, particularly in the areas of bioethics, social work, gerontology and aging studies, healthcare and social service, sociology, social policy, and geography and population studies.

Author: Lawrence R. Samuel
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812293657
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Aging is a preoccupation shared by beauty bloggers, serious journalists, scientists, doctors, celebrities—arguably all of adult America, given the pervasiveness of the crusade against it in popular culture and the media. We take our youth-oriented culture as a given but, as Lawrence R. Samuel argues, this was not always the case. Old age was revered in early America, in part because it was so rare. Indeed, it was not until the 1960s, according to Samuel, that the story of aging in America became the one we are most familiar with today: aging is a disease that science will one day cure, and in the meantime, signs of aging should be prevented, masked, and treated as a source of shame. By tracing the story of aging in the United States over the course of the last half century, Samuel vividly demonstrates the ways in which getting older tangibly contradicts the prevailing social values and attitudes of our youth-obsessed culture. As a result, tens of millions of adults approaching their sixties and seventies in this decade do not know how to age, as they were never prepared to do so. Despite recent trends that suggest a more positive outlook, getting old is still viewed in terms of physical and cognitive decline, resulting in discrimination in the workplace and marginalization in social life. Samuels concludes Aging in America by exhorting his fellow baby boomers to use their economic clout and sheer numbers to change the narrative of aging in America.

Author: Harold D. Roth
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438482728
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
In The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism, Harold D. Roth explores the origins and nature of the Daoist tradition, arguing that its creators and innovators were not abstract philosophers but, rather, mystics engaged in self-exploration and self-cultivation, which in turn provided the insights embodied in such famed works as the Daodejing and Zhuangzi. In this compilation of essays and chapters representing nearly thirty years of scholarship, Roth examines the historical and intellectual origins of Daoism and demonstrates how this distinctive philosophy emerged directly from practices that were essentially contemplative in nature. In the first part of the book, Roth applies text-critical methods to derive the hidden contemplative dimensions of classical Daoism. In the second part, he applies a "contemplative hermeneutic" to explore the relationship between contemplative practices and classical Daoist philosophy and, in so doing, brings early Daoist writings into conversation with contemporary contemplative studies. To this he adds an introduction in which he reflects on the arc and influence on the field of early Chinese thought of this rich vein of scholarship and an afterword in which he applies both interpretive methods to the vexing question of the authorship of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi. The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism brings to fruition the cumulative investigations and observations of a leading figure in the emerging field of contemplative studies as they pertain to a core component of early Chinese thought.

Author: Michael Fine
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1315358077
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This pioneering work addresses a key issue that confronts all industrialised nations: How do we organise healthcare services in accordance with fundamental human rights, whilst competing with scientific and technological advances, powerful commercial interests and widespread public ignorance? "The Nature of Health" presents a coherent, affordable and logical way to build a healthcare system. It argues against a health system fixated on the pursuit of longevity and suggests an alternative where the ability of an individual to function in worthwhile relationships is a better, more human goal. By reviewing the etymology, sociology and anthropology of health, this controversial guide examines the meaning of health, and proves how a community-centred healthcare system improves local economy, creates social capital and is affordable, rational, personal, and just. "This is badly needed nourishment for a medical system glutted on technology, individualism, profit and the pursuit of longevity. Read and be fed." - Christopher Koller, Health Insurance Commissioner, The State of Rhode Island, USA. "Unique. Surprising. A real eye-opener. Just about everyone who doesn't have a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo will agree that U.S. healthcare is badly broken. [This book] is making it possible for us to refocus from how to provide healthcare to how to achieve health. Their description of health as successful functioning in community, rather than as a measure of longevity is a definition that can make a reader feel healthier as they take gradually appreciate the power of the concept. On this foundation, it is not as hard as one might think to outline a healthcare system that is equitable, affordable and achievable." - Alexander Blount EdD, Professor of Family Medicine, University of Massacusetts Medical Center.