Lifespan

Lifespan INTRODUCTION A GRANDMOTHER'S PRAYER
I GREW UP ON THE edge of the bush. In figurative terms, my backyard was a hundred-acre wood. In literal terms, it was much bigger than that. It went on as far as my young eyes could see, and I never grew tired of exploring it. I would hike and hike, stopping to study the birds, the insects, the reptiles. I pulled things apart. I rubbed the dirt between my fingers. I listened to the sounds of the wild and tried to connect them to their sources.

And I played. I made swords from sticks and forts from rocks. I climbed trees and swung on branches and dangled my legs over steep precipices and jumped off of things that I probably shouldn't have jumped off. I imagined myself as an astronaut on a distant planet. I pretended to be a hunter on safari. I lifted my voice for the animals as though they were an audience at the opera house.

"Coooeey!" I would holler, which means "Come here" in the language of the Garigal people, the original inhabitants.

I wasn't unique in any of this, of course. There were lots of kids in the northern suburbs of Sydney who shared my love of adventure and exploration and imagination. We expect this of children. We want them to play this way.

Until, of course, they're "too old" for that sort of thing. Then we want them to go to school. Then we want them to go to work. To find a partner. To save up. To buy a house.

Because, you know, the clock is ticking.

My grandmother was the first person to tell me that it didn't have to be that way. Or, I guess, she didn't tell me so much as show me.

She had grown up in Hungary, where she spent Bohemian summers swimming in the cool waters of Lake Balaton and hiking in the mountains of its northern shore at a holiday resort that catered to actors, painters, and poets. In the winter months, she helped run a hotel in the Buda Hills before the Nazis took it over and converted it to the central command of the Schutzstaffel, or "SS."

A

David Sinclair, PhD, AO, is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. One of the leading innovators of his generation, he has been named by Time as "one of the 100 most influential people in the world" and top fifty most influential people in healthcare. He is a board member of the American Federation for Aging Research and has received more than thirty-five awards for his research and major scientific breakthroughs. Dr. Sinclair and his work have been featured on 60 Minutes, Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, and Newsweek, among others. To learn more, visit LifespanBook.com and follow him on Twitter @DavidASinclair. Matthew LaPlante is an associate professor of journalistic writing at Utah State University, where he teaches news reporting and feature writing. A former US Navy intelligence specialist and Middle East war correspondent, he is the author of Superlative: The Biology of Extremes and the cowriter of multiple other books on the intersection of science and society. He lives in Salt Lake City and skis in Big Cottonwood Canyon. To learn more, visit MDLaPlante.com and follow him on Twitter @MDLaPlante.

"If you ever wondered how we age, if we can slow or even reverse aging, and if we can live a healthy 100 plus years, then David Sinclair's new book Lifespan, which reads like a detective novel, will guide you through the science and the practical strategies to make your health span equal your lifespan, and make your lifespan long and vibrant." Mark Hyman, MD, director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine and #1 New York Times bestselling author