Archive

The Anti-Aging Pill - Is the 125-year Life Span About to Become Common?

Overview of The Anti-Aging Pill - Is the 125-year Life Span About to Become Common?:

Book Review

by Scott C. Tips

The Anti-Aging Pill – Is the 125-year Life Span About to Become Common?By Bill Sardi (2004; Here and Now Books, 457 West Allen Ave #117, San Dimas, CA 91773; 190 pages; $19.95). As this book’s dust jacket tells us, Bill Sardi is a health journalist and consumer advocate who has written eight other health books; The Anti-Aging Pill is Mr. Sardi’s ninth and perhaps his most interesting. Well-researched, thought-out and simply written, he draws upon numerous scientific sources to pull together some seemingly different longevity concepts and then present them to us in an easy-to-understand way.

Mr. Sardi first reminds us that animals and humans live longer when they have a calorie-restricted diet. A concept first widely popularized by the late Dr. Roy Walford of UCLA, caloric-restrictive diets have been seen by the general public as a bit severe and dire. As I would sometimes say, you only seem to live longer when you don’t have much to eat because your life is a living hell. The author corrects me, and others like me, by noting that calorie restriction, also formerly called “fasting,” does not need to be considered a negative when it can lengthen life span some 40% by prolonging the time cells have to repair their DNA, stimulating the production of good enzymes, restricting consumption of oxidizers such as iron that feed tumor growth, reducing the incidence of diabetes as well as the risk of heart disease, and limiting exposure to toxic agents in foods. Frances Adelhardt, in her recent article on fasting (HFN, Vol. 22, No. 2, p.6) , pointed out similar benefits.

But the author does not stop here, he also explores the concept of hormesis (derived from the Greek word that means “to excite”). Hormesis is a controversial theory that small doses of poisons or toxins will actually stimulate a strong immune or bodily response, whereas a larger dose of the same thing will kill an animal or person. Homeopathy works on this principle. It is equally applicable, though, to other areas, such as moderate drinking of wine being healthful and life extending while heavy drinking decreases life expectancy. Similarly, Mr. Sardi demonstrates that low-doses of radiation, even ionizing radiation, are healthful to living organisms while large doses can be lethal. He compares a map of the United States where radon gas (which is radioactive) is plentiful with a similar map showing the incidence of lung cancer and finds the lung-cancer rate at its lowest where radon gas is at its highest. Low doses of radiation, he says, strengthen the body as do moderate amounts of alcohol.

By comparing those populations who live long through calorie-restricted diets (such as Okinawans) with those whose lengthened lives must compare through exposure to low-levels of radiation (modern-day radiologists live longer than non-radiological doctors), the author then makes the life-span extending case for red wine and its main active ingredient resveratrol.

Red wine, which is often rich in resveratrol, is responsible for the so-called “French Paradox” where the French with their fat-rich diets washed down with much red wine have fewer heart attacks than many other cultures eating supposedly healthier diets. According to Mr. Sardi, resveratrol helps people live longer by molecularly telling our genetic machinery that our bodies are calorically restricted. By drinking resveratrol-rich red wine, or by taking a pill that properly preserves resveratrol, one can enjoy the life-span extending effects of calorie restriction with having to actually eat less. But red wine must be properly cared for because, as the author says, the resveratrol content in wine will quickly disappear, in as little as one day once the bottle has been uncorked.

Resveratrol also acts hormetically by stressing the body just enough to promote a stronger body response to the environment. For this and other reasons, resveratrol can be a formidable life-extension tool. The trick is to make sure that your source of resveratrol is truly active and not oxidized.

If I have any complaint about this informative book, it would be that someone should have proofread the book prior to printing. Numerous typographical and grammatical errors throughout the book are annoying and distracting to the reader. Yet, the message given still shines through; and it is a message easy to understand and even easier to act upon.