1: “We’ll tell you a familiar story,” Michael Roizen, the Chief Wellness Officer Emeritus at the Cleveland Clinic, and his co-authors Peter Linneman and Albert Ratner write in The Great Age Reboot: Cracking the Longevity Code for a Younger Tomorrow.
Picture someone receiving a tough medical diagnosis. Their loved ones gather to support them, feeling helpless as they try to help.
“But then something happens. The person whose future looked bleak pulls through.
There may be several reasons a treatment succeeds, but often a health professional will note that the person’s strong physical condition and robust immune system made a difference.
“And deep down, you know there’s truth to it,” they observe. “While a strong body can’t weather every medical storm, there’s little doubt that a stronger body can surely weather storms better than a weaker one.”
Similarly, you likely know someone who has lived to tell after experiencing a terrible disease, accident, or surgery.
“One of the main themes that often emerges from these stories,” the authors write, “is that the person’s preexisting physical and mental strength fortified their body for battle and made them better equipped to handle the stresses that they endured.”
2: Yesterday, we looked at the incredible pace of innovation in health and medicine.
“Within the next 10 years the world will rocket into new norms of aging, new population increases, new life spans, and new ways of living,” Michael, Peter, and Albert write.
“The changes will be radical, and they will come fast,” they note. “We believe that longevity is not only the next disruptor, but the greatest disruptor ever. It has the potential to cause changes even more sweeping and powerful than the invention of the [micro] chip 60 years ago.”
To benefit from what is coming, you must, however, “take control of your health destiny,” the authors suggest, “rather than wait for every fix to come your way.”
Because “the best way to prepare for a healthier future is being healthier now.”
Imagine somewhere you’d like to travel that will require you to walk up an incline.
“Maybe it’s the Spanish Steps in Rome or the Potala Palace in Tibet,” the authors write. “Or maybe it’s a serene hill in your local park. Or the top row of your favorite team’s stadium.”
You’ve just reached the top. You look down. “You will see two kinds of people,” Michael, Peter, and Albert predict.
“First, there’s the spry set,” they write. “They’re smiling, laughing, barely breaking a sweat, and fully enjoying the journey. They’re excited about reaching the destination, and—despite the fact that it took some effort—can’t wait to experience what awaits when they arrive. Lickety split, that was fun.”
Then there’s another group laboring as they make their way to the top.
“Who have to stop and catch their breath 10 times on the way up,” the authors share. “Every. Step. Takes. So. Much. Out. Of. Them. Huff. Puff. Are. We. There. Yet?”
There’s actually a third group. Those who decide not to try at all.
“What’s the difference between [these groups], besides the speed and ease at which they travel?” the authors ask.
“It might be their size or age, yes. It’s most certainly their overall health,” they note. But you know what it’s less likely to be? Their genes endowed at birth.
“Instead, it’s their lifestyle choices,” they share.
3: The bigger point? The authors argue that proactively improving your health through lifestyle changes is crucial for taking advantage of future advances in longevity, since your actions now determine how well you can benefit from medical innovation later.
The possibility of living additional decades in good health later requires us to be intentional now about being in good health.
“The upside?” they ask. “You will literally get to change your family medical destiny—if you want to.”
“Whether you’re the one who zips up the incline or struggles to the top, you have self-engineered your body to end up in that place.”
Scientists now know that you can turn genes on or off with lifestyle changes.
By the time you are 55 years old, 80 percent of your health outcomes are determined by your choices. These choices drive which of your genes are on and which are off.
“So while your genetic component at birth certainly has some influence on your ultimate health and longevity,” they note, “life outcomes are much more about engineering via your behaviors, choices, and decisions than they are about genes.”
In fact, “after implementing lifestyle interventions of diet, stress management, and physical activity,” Michael, Peter, and Albert write, “men were able to turn off the genes that fostered prostate cancer growth and turn on a gene that produced a protein that causes cancer cells to self-destruct.
“The same process applies for colon and breast cancer,” they state. “Lifestyle changes switched on genes that fought cancer—and turned off genes that promoted cancers.”
Good choices turn on good genes, and bad choices turn on bad and destructive genes.
“This genetic engineering occurs through a lifetime of daily decisions that you make,” the authors note. “It occurs because of what you eat today—and what you ate the thousands of days before that. Those choices can make you healthy, which in itself will allow you to repair yourself when the time comes.”
The habits you form over a lifetime—exercising or not, smoking or not, handling stress or not—determine whether you handle the incline easily, struggle through it, or completely avoid it.
“But the larger point,” Michael, Peter, and Albert say, “whether you’re comparing ability to walk up steps, clothes sizes, vim and vigor, or trips to the doctor’s office—is that this whole fight for longevity and “youthfulness” is far less about a predetermined genetic destiny than you think.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: If my daily choices are influencing which genes are switched on and off, what habits am I reinforcing today that my future self will either thank me for—or regret?
Action: Choose one health habit this week—nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, or recovery—and make a small improvement that I can realistically sustain over time.
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