A highly optimistic review of anti-aging science that may persuade older readers that they were born too soon.
An uplifting review of the science suggesting that “prolonged healthy lifespans are in sight.”
According to Sinclair (Genetics/Harvard Medical School), scientists have discovered what causes aging. They’ve also discovered how to treat it because, despite what doctors and philosophers have claimed throughout history, aging is not inevitable. It’s a disease. Throughout the book, the author’s enthusiasm jumps off the page. Scientifically inclined readers may be occasionally turned off by his affection for dramatic stories of individuals who defy aging, but they cannot deny that he is an acclaimed, award-winning scientist who works hard to explain his groundbreaking research and that of laboratories around the world. Beginning at the beginning, he writes that “way back in the primordium, the ancestors of every living thing on this planet today evolved to sense DNA damage, slow cellular growth, and divert energy to DNA repair until it was fixed—what I call the survival circuit.” In the 1950s, scientists discovered that DNA damage occurs throughout life. Since it’s disastrous for a cell to divide with broken DNA, repair mechanisms suppress growth and reproduction until they’re finished. Cells that don’t divide live longer. Insects and mice mature quickly, reproduce, and soon die. Elephants and whales grow slowly and live much longer lives. Cells of the bristlecone pine, the oldest of which is nearly 5,000 years old, show no signs of aging. Researchers have discovered the mechanism of growth suppression in hormones and also in genes that produce such specific enzymes. These longevity enhancers respond to stress but also to exercise, intermittent fasting, low-protein and low-calorie diets, and several pharmaceuticals that, the author assures readers, will soon emerge from the laboratory. Also in the works are DNA monitoring and reprogramming, already well advanced in animals, that can detect malfunctions and reset the aging clock.
A highly optimistic review of anti-aging science that may persuade older readers that they were born too soon.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9197-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A cultural history of breast cancer that focuses primarily on how social acceptance of the unequal roles of men and women has impeded progress in a woman’s disease. Leopold, a writer on women’s health issues for the Chicago Tribune, the Nation, and Self magazine and herself a breast cancer survivor, examines the social dynamics that have shaped contemporary attitudes toward breast cancer. She looks closely at the interaction between male physician and female patient as a key aspect of that dynamic. Besides giving the larger picture, Leopold includes an intimate closeup through revealing correspondence between two articulate women and their doctors. The first set, spanning the period 1917—22, is between a compliant woman, Barbara Mueller, and the famous surgeon William Steward Halsted, who developed the radical mastectomy procedure that was the standard treatment for breast cancer for most of this century; the second set, 1960—64, is between Rachel Carson, who had undergone the Halsted procedure, and George Crile, a trusted friend and surgeon from whom the noted scientist and writer sought advice when her own surgeon lied to her about her disease. Leopold notes that real changes in social attitudes toward the disease and in the biomedical approach to it were slow in coming. Nevertheless, the taboos against public disclosure were gradually lifted, notably in women’s magazines. The rise in breast cancer consciousness developed for the most part, she finds, outside the feminist movement, with women volunteers drafted by the male-dominated American Society for the Control of Cancer (later the American Cancer Society) to spread its message about the benefits of early detection. Attention is also given to the impact of the National Cancer Act of 1971, First Lady Betty Ford’s breast cancer in 1974, and the subsequent appearance of the first nationally known breast cancer advocate, Washington Post writer Rose Kushner. Now that women are involved, Leopold seems to be saying, things are looking up. A feminist approach to history for which the most appreciative audience will be found in women’s study courses.
Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1999
ISBN: 0-8070-6512-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
A soft-pedaling history that packs a lot of synthesis into a palatable-enough package.
An all-encompassing survey of how the Eastern practice took hold in America.
On the heels of Robert Love’s The Great Oom (2010)—an entertaining portrait of early yoga impresario Pierre Bernard and his popular health center—journalist Syman casts a wider net, uncovering yoga’s growth since the mid-19th century. In tackling the challenge of how to define yoga, the author’s study suffers from a kind of amorphous, throw-in-the-kitchen-sink syndrome. Syman continually probes into whether yoga is a religion or a health practice, and traces how proponents from Ralph Waldo Emerson to the Beatles fashioned it in their own way. Emerson’s discovery of “Hindoo” scriptures led to a lifelong fascination with Eastern thought, helping shape the transcendental message in his writings and poetry, while Thoreau’s Walden was the product of an ascetic in the yogi tradition. Thoreau “transmuted his work into an act of devotion,” writes the author, and “made a religion of writing.” Eastern gurus like Swami Vivekananda were featured at the World Parliament of Religions at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, and invited to teach at places like Green Acre, Maine, attracting mostly women. Bernard spread the benefits of Hatha Yoga—involving physically demanding breathing and body positions—from San Francisco to New York, and his nephew Theos Bernard traveled to the source, India and Tibet, and wrote popular books on the subject. Even Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Margaret eschewed the conventional lot for an “ideal life” as a seeker in India. Once yoga hit Hollywood, thanks to itinerant ex-pat Brits Gerald Heard and the Huxleys, stars like Gloria Swanson used it famously as their “youth and beauty secret.” Syman moves fluidly through the heady psychedelic years to the “new penitents” of today (e.g., Bikram), who like their yoga “sweaty and religious.”
A soft-pedaling history that packs a lot of synthesis into a palatable-enough package.Pub Date: June 29, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-23676-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
