David A. Sinclair > Quotes

“Aging, quite simply, is a loss of information.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“There isn’t much debate on the downsides of consumption of animal protein. Study after study has demonstrated that heavily animal-based diets are associated with high cardiovascular mortality and cancer risk.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Thanks to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and the abundance of sugars and carbohydrates on every supermarket shelf around the globe, high blood sugar is causing the premature deaths of 3.8 million people a year.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Because as it turns out, exposing your body to less-than-comfortable temperatures is another very effective way to turn on your longevity genes.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Why would we choose to focus on problems that impact small groups of people if we could address the problem that impacts everyone—especially if, in doing so, we could significantly impact all those other, smaller problems?”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“I believe that aging is a disease. I believe it is treatable. I believe we can treat it within our lifetimes. And in doing so, I believe, everything we know about human health will be fundamentally changed.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“In my mind, there are few sins so egregious as extending life without health. This is important. It does not matter if we can extend lifespans if we cannot extend healthspans to an equal extent. And so if we’re going to do the former, we have an absolute moral obligation to do the latter.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” R. P. Feynman,”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“The longevity genes I work on are called “sirtuins,” named after the yeast SIR2 gene, the first one to be discovered. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, SIRT1 to SIRT7, and they are made by almost every cell in the body. When I started my research, sirtuins were barely on the scientific radar. Now this family of genes is at the forefront of medical research and drug development. Descended from gene B in M. superstes, sirtuins are enzymes that remove acetyl tags from histones and other proteins and, by doing so, change the packaging of the DNA, turning genes off and on when needed. These critical epigenetic regulators sit at the very top of cellular control systems, controlling our reproduction and our DNA repair. After a few billion years of advancement since the days of yeast, they have evolved to control our health, our fitness, and our very survival. They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.”
― David Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Youth → broken DNA → genome instability → disruption of DNA packaging and gene regulation (the epigenome) → loss of cell identity → cellular senescence → disease → death.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“As a species, we are living much longer than ever. But not much better. Not at all. Over the past century we have gained additional years, but not additional life—not life worth living anyway.5”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool. • I eat a lot of plants and try to avoid eating other mammals, even though they do taste good. If I work out, I will eat meat. • I don’t smoke. I try to avoid microwaved plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-rays, and CT scans. • I try to stay on the cool side during the day and when I sleep at night. • I aim to keep my body weight or BMI in the optimal range for healthspan, which for me is 23 to 25.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Indeed, we know more about the health of our cars than we know about our own health. That’s farcical. And it’s about to change.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Your generation, just like all the ones that came before, didn’t do anything about the destruction that is being done to this planet,” Alex told me that evening. “And now you want to help people live longer? So they can do even more damage to the world?”
I went to bed that night troubled. Not by our firstborn’s denouncement of me; of that, I admit, I was a little proud. We’ll never destroy the global patriarchy if our children don’t first practice on their fathers.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To

“Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. More simply known as the Royal Society, the world’s oldest national scientific organization was established in 1660 to promote and disseminate “new science” by big thinkers of the day such as Sir Francis Bacon, the Enlightenment’s promulgator of “the prolongation of life.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“We’d die quite quickly without amino acids, the organic compounds that serve as the building blocks for every protein in the human body. Without them—and in particular the nine essential amino acids that our bodies cannot make on their own—our cells can’t assemble the life-giving enzymes needed for life.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“a few years ago, researchers noticed a curious phenomenon: people taking metformin were living notably healthier lives—independent, it seemed, of its effect on diabetes.16 In”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“As cloning beautifully proves, our cells retain their youthful digital information even when we are old. To become young again, we just need to find some polish to remove the scratches.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“And that’s the world’s biggest problem: the future is seen as someone else’s concern.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To

“Analog data are superior for this job because they can be changed back and forth with relative ease whenever the environment within or outside the cell demands it, and they can store an almost unlimited number of possible values, even in response to conditions that have never been encountered before.25 The unlimited number of possible values is why many audiophiles still prefer the rich sounds of analog storage systems. But even though analog devices have their advantages, they have a major disadvantage. In fact, it’s the reason we’ve moved from analog to digital. Unlike digital, analog information degrades over time—falling victim to the conspiring forces of magnetic fields, gravity, cosmic rays, and oxygen. Worse still, information is lost as it’s copied. No one was more acutely disturbed by the problem of information loss than Claude Shannon, an electrical engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“The quantum physicist Max Planck also knew this to be true. “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light,” Planck wrote shortly before his death in 1947, “but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”26 Having witnessed a few different sorts of revolutions during my life—from the fall of the Berlin Wall in Europe to the rise of LGBTQ rights in the United States to the strengthening of national gun laws in Australia and New Zealand—I can vouch for these insights. People can change their minds about things. Compassion and common sense can move nations. And yes, the market of ideas has certainly had an impact on the way we vote when it comes to issues such as civil rights, animal rights, the ways we treat the sick and people with special needs, and death with dignity. But it is the mortal attrition of those who steadfastly hold on to old views that most permits new values to flourish in a democratic world.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Another STAC is NAD, sometimes written as NAD+.39 NAD has an advantage over other STACs because it boosts the activity of all seven sirtuins.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Hoelzel made it to 74, despite having subjected himself over the years to experiments that included swallowing gravel, glass beads, and ball bearings to study how long it would take for such objects to pass through his system. And people say I’m crazy.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To

“Here’s the important point: there are plenty of stressors that will activate longevity genes without damaging the cell, including certain types of exercise, intermittent fasting, low-protein diets, and exposure to hot and cold temperatures (I discuss this in chapter 4). That’s called hormesis.28 Hormesis is generally good for organisms, especially when it can be induced without causing any lasting damage. When hormesis happens, all is well. And, in fact, all is better than well, because the little bit of stress that occurs when the genes are activated prompts the rest of the system to hunker down, to conserve, to survive a little longer. That’s the start of longevity.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“And because aging isn’t a disease by the commonly accepted definition, it doesn’t fit nicely into the system we’ve built for funding medical research, drug development, and the reimbursement of medical costs by insurance companies. Words matter. Definitions matter.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Our equivalent of the Lord’s Prayer was the English author Alan Alexander Milne’s poem “Now We Are Six,” which ends: But now I am six, I’m as clever as clever. So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“Don’t be disheartened by my claim that we are the biological equivalent of an old DVD player. This is actually good news. If Szilard had turned out to be right about mutations causing aging, we would not be able to easily address it, because when information is lost without a backup, it is lost for good. Ask anyone who’s tried to play or restore content from a DVD that’s had an edge broken off: what is gone is gone. But we can usually recover information from a scratched DVD. And if I am right, the same kind of process is what it will take to reverse aging.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“In animal studies, the key to engaging the sirtuin program appears to be keeping things on the razor’s edge through calorie restriction—just enough food to function in healthy ways and no more. This makes sense. It engages the survival circuit, telling longevity genes to do what they have been doing since primordial times: boost cellular defenses, keep organisms alive during times of adversity, ward off disease and deterioration, minimize epigenetic change, and slow down aging.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

“The way doctors treat illness today “is simple,” wrote S. Jay Olshansky, a demographer at the University of Illinois. “As soon as a disease appears, attack that disease as if nothing else is present; beat the disease down, and once you succeed, push the patient out the door until he or she faces the next challenge; then beat that one down. Repeat until failure.”
― David A. Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To