How and Why We Age

by Leonard Hayflick

"How long can humans live? Is immortality possible? Just what is the aging process? The aging and inevitable death of the human body have inspired more myths and outrageous quackery than anything else subject to scientific inquiry. . . . Now comes a most fascinating book, insightful and scholarly, to provide what answers have emerged so far."
--San Francisco Chronicle
Here, at last, preeminent cell biologist Leonard Hayflick presents the truth about human aging. Based on more than thirty years of pioneering research in the field, How and Why We Age explores not only how our major biological systems change as we grow older, but also examines the intangible alterations in our modes of thinking and feeling, our moods and sexual desires, our personality traits and our memories.
With the immediacy of the latest scientific discoveries, Dr. Hayflick explains how aging affects every part of the body, and dispels many of the most persistent aging myths, to show that:
* Hearts do not naturally get weaker with age.
* Regular exercise and a low-fat diet won't slow aging.
* Curing cancer would only add two years to the average sixty-five-year-old American life. Curing heart disease, however would add fourteen years.
* Only five percent of people over the age of sixty-five are in nursing homes
* No human has lived--or probably can live--past 120 years.
Gracefully written, clearly organized, and packed with essential facts and statistics, How and Why We Age is a landmark study of the aging process for readers of all ages.
"Written in clear, nontechnical language, it is an excellent introduction to the scientific and demographic literature on this multifaceted subject."
--Nature

Genres: Science, Health, Nonfiction, Biology

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the information is outdated, however, the book is well thought out and an enjoyable read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rather enjoyed reading through this book. Aging is certainly not the topic that I think most people want to even think about, much less read a bunch of commentary on studies, theories, and what-not about, yet I'm certainly curious about it myself. It likely comes back to idea that we fear what we don't understand, and while I would not say I understand aging after reading this book, I do feel like I have a little more understanding of what we do and don't know about it. The way in which the author takes us through studies that have been done, and analyzed them from a scientific perspective... where they were not able to be duplicated, where they were, which ones suffer from which deficiencies in terms of structure, mechanisms, an analysis of the actual difficulties in constructing good studies, which ones were able to add to the collective knowledge, even if it wasn't necessarily a lot. It definitely felt like a critical text, and I certainly appreciate that.

However, I will also say that having gotten to the end of the book, and appreciated it, I then found this: 'Successful tampering with the processes of biological fitness and adaptation is probably beyond our ability to master, although some of our present actions are certainly having a negative influence on the fitness and adaptation of humans.' The rest of that paragraph echoes some of my own beliefs about the, 'effect of our actions is to undermine the fundamental process of evolution in which only the fittest survive.' Such an agreement with a belief of my own certainly should cause me to wonder if my own objectivity is to be questioned here.

Then also there was this line: 'Unless human overpopulation is controlled soon, the planet will suffer irreversible degradation and humanity will experience a continued increase in poverty, starvation, and virtually all of the other ills that presently concern us.' Again, I cannot agree with this enough.

Which is only to say, that I could be a biased reviewer, as I seem to share some fundamental beliefs that agree so strongly with the authors stated opinions.

[Wmba Dams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old book that I was recently given. As it is a bit dated as well as too long I just browsed the interesting parts and skipped those of no interest to me.

There is a lot of data and information on all aspects of aging of everything.

If you are in the field this is a good overview. If you are just curious you will find many things of interest that are covered.

The writing is easy enough to read and requires no special background to understand it.

I read the original hardback edition. The paperback is newer and might have some additional information or corrections included.

A good book if you have any interest or curiosity about the subject. But a terrible book to be forced to read for some class you didnt want to take but your advisor made you.

[Barbara Boyd-Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful info for this last chapter.. Very readable...