--- title: Longevity & the Science of Aging description: Aging science studies why we age and what slows it. You will learn the biology of aging, the evidence behind exercise, nutrition, sleep and drugs like metformin and rapamycin, and how to read longevity claims critically. category: health-medicine subcategory: medical-sciences difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/longevity-and-aging-science --- # Longevity & the Science of Aging Aging science studies why we age and what slows it. You will learn the biology of aging, the evidence behind exercise, nutrition, sleep and drugs like metformin and rapamycin, and how to read longevity claims critically. ## Available Resources 4 Books • 2 Websites • 2 Papers ## Podcasts ### 1. FoundMyFitness **Author:** Rhonda Patrick Long-form interviews and solo episodes from biomedical scientist Rhonda Patrick, covering nutrition, micronutrients, sauna and cold exposure, exercise, and aging. Episodes work through the underlying studies, so you can judge the evidence behind common health claims. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en-us | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.foundmyfitness.com/ **Tags:** nutrition-science, longevity, exercise-physiology, micronutrients, health-research ## Youtubes ### 1. The Optispan Podcast with Matt Kaeberlein **Author:** Matt Kaeberlein Free video series from a biogerontologist who spent two decades running an academic aging lab, covering rapamycin, metformin, biological-age tests and supplement claims, and regularly explaining why specific popular longevity assertions fail on the evidence. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGqk9xB1t4A&list=PLMsCBsuFjwYihXNnTsVcg5VKxszL62Tjq **Tags:** longevity, biogerontology, rapamycin, biological-age, supplements, evidence-evaluation ## Books ### 1. Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity **Author:** Peter Attia, MD, with Bill Gifford Physician's framework for extending healthspan, arguing for early risk assessment and heavy emphasis on cardiorespiratory fitness, strength, lipids, glucose and sleep. Evidence quality varies by chapter; the exercise and metabolic sections rest on the strongest data. Covers the exercise/nutrition/sleep half better than any other single accessible source, and its strongest material - VO2max and muscular strength as mortality predictors, ApoB rather than LDL-C as the lipid target, the case for acting decades before disease onset - sits on genuinely solid epidemiology. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593236599?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** longevity, healthspan, exercise-physiology, cardiovascular-risk, metabolic-health, sleep ### 2. Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old **Author:** Andrew Steele Popular-science tour of aging biology organised around the hallmarks framework: senescent cells, telomeres, stem-cell exhaustion, epigenetic change and the trials now testing them. Written by a computational biologist, and openly optimistic about the field's prospects. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525566317?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** aging-biology, hallmarks-of-aging, cellular-senescence, telomeres, longevity ### 3. The Blue Zones American Kitchen: 100 Recipes to Live to 100 **Author:** Dan Buettner Cookbook of 100 plant-forward recipes drawn from American regional and immigrant cuisines, framed by Dan Buettner's Blue Zones research on long-lived populations. Readers learn the dietary patterns linked to longevity and how to cook beans, greens, whole grains and vegetables daily. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426222475?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** plant-based-eating, longevity, blue-zones, healthy-recipes ### 4. The Blue Zones **Author:** Dan Buettner Journalistic account of communities with unusually many centenarians, including Sardinia, Okinawa, Loma Linda and Nicoya. Buettner reports on their diet, daily movement, sense of purpose and social ties, and distills them into nine lessons readers can apply to living longer. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426207557?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** longevity, blue-zones, healthy-aging, lifestyle, centenarians ## Papers ### 1. A Science-Based Review of the World's Best-Selling Book on Aging **Author:** Charles Brenner Peer-reviewed rebuttal of David Sinclair's Lifespan, walking through the sirtuin, resveratrol and partial-reprogramming claims and the replication failures behind them. A short, concrete case study in checking a popular longevity narrative against the primary literature. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9669175/ **Tags:** longevity, sirtuins, resveratrol, critical-appraisal, aging-biology ### 2. The Hallmarks of Aging **Author:** Carlos Lopez-Otin, Maria A. Blasco, Linda Partridge, Manuel Serrano, Guido Kroemer The 2013 Cell review that organised aging biology into nine hallmarks: genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alteration, proteostasis loss, deregulated nutrient sensing, mitochondrial dysfunction, senescence, stem-cell exhaustion, altered intercellular communication. A 2023 update adds three more. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3836174/ **Tags:** hallmarks-of-aging, aging-biology, genomic-instability, cellular-senescence, mitochondria, review-article ## Websites ### 1. senescence.info - The Science of Ageing **Author:** Joao Pedro de Magalhaes Academic portal maintained by a molecular biogerontology chair at Birmingham, covering aging theories, evolutionary biology, cellular senescence, telomeres and caloric restriction, plus sceptical essays on anti-aging medicine and the GenAge, DrugAge and AnAge databases. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.senescence.info/ **Tags:** biogerontology, theories-of-aging, cellular-senescence, genomics, caloric-restriction, aging-databases ### 2. NIA Interventions Testing Program (ITP) Program page for the NIH-funded trials that test candidate lifespan-extending drugs in genetically heterogeneous mice at three independent sites. Lists compounds tested, published survival results for rapamycin, acarbose, canagliflozin and others, and links the underlying data. The ITP is the only place where 'drug X extends lifespan' has been tested to a standard that survives replication, and most celebrated compounds failed there. It answers the metformin and rapamycin questions in the topic note with actual survival curves rather than mechanism stories. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.jax.org/research-and-faculty/research-centers/aging-center/research/itp **Tags:** longevity, lifespan-extension, mouse-studies, rapamycin, geroscience, drug-trials --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. 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