INTRODUCTION By Ray Kurzweil

“No matter what quandaries we face—business problems, health issues, relationship difficulties, the great social and cultural challenges of our time—there exists an idea that will enable us to prevail.”

“We are on the cusp of profound medical advancements as Artificial Intelligence begins to unlock the mysteries of our bodies and brains. Yet many conventional healthcare practitioners are still caught up in the old paradigm and don’t practice medicine as an information technology. This means that each of us has to take control of our own healthcare.”

“We now have the ability to prevent, treat, and (soon) cure diseases with biotechnology, guided by artificial intelligence. We are beginning to reprogram our biology in the same way that we reprogram our computers.”

“We must do everything we can today to be as healthy as possible, for as long as possible, in order to benefit from the fast-approaching merger of AI and medicine. Now is the time to make maximal use of the latest medical knowledge to help eliminate our chance of disease and to drastically slow down the aging process.”

“The tools to enhance and extend our lives are already in our hands. We just need the courage to question outdated assumptions that limit our ability to use them. Tony and Peter live by this philosophy and have written this book so that you can too.”

CHAPTER 1 – Life Force: Our Greatest Gift

“I want to empower you to take full advantage of this revolution in diagnostics, biotechnology, and regenerative medicine. It has already changed my life in ways I could never have imagined. It’s transforming healthcare from top to bottom. It promises to expand our strength and vitality and potentially how long we can live.”

“Thanks to technology, every phase of medical treatment is being reimagined. On the front end, sensors and networks are upending medical diagnostics. In the middle, robotics and 3D printing are reinventing traditional medical procedures. On the back end, artificial intelligence (AI), genomics, cellular medicine, gene therapies, and gene editing are transforming medicines themselves.”

“Taken altogether, biotech is remaking sick care into genuine healthcare. It’s changing the medicine from the one-size-fits-all system we all grew up with to a totally new model: future-looking, proactive, personalized, precision medicine.”

“My goal in writing this book is to help you unleash the pure, vibrant, turbocharged energy of your life force. What better gift could you give yourself than the ability to optimize your vitality and strength to last and even increase with age?”

“One of the central principles underpinning this book is that you need to function as the CEO of your own health.”

“Regenerative medicine doesn’t just treat your symptoms. Its goal is to reverse or cure the underlying problem.”

CHAPTER 2 – The Power Of Stem Cells

“I know you’ve heard about stem cells, the precious birthright given to each and every one of us. They have two unique superpowers. Unlike other cells, they can divide and renew themselves for a lifetime. What’s more, like a cellular skeleton key, they can unlock an almost limitless array of healing powers. They can differentiate into whatever type of cell our body needs. They can repair or replace more specialized tissues in our skin, bone, muscle, blood, retinas, liver, heart, and brain. On top of everything else, stem cells can strengthen our immune system to help keep us healthy and strong.”“In a nutshell, stem cells are the body’s repair kit.”

“From the moment we’re born, our stem cell reservoir starts drying up. It’s a process called “stem cell exhaustion,” and it’s believed to be one of the main causes of aging. As we get older, some of our stem cells get used up. Most of them stick around but lose the ability to repair or replace our damaged tissues. As we reach 25 or 30, the rate of decay begins to accelerate.”

“Human beings are at their biological best at birth—it goes downhill from there.” Frozen at age zero, placental cells are in top condition. Their DNA is uncorrupted by viruses or UV rays, untainted by alcohol or tobacco or the cosmic radiation that penetrates planes at high altitude. They’re as close to a pure natural commodity as it gets. Best of all, they come from the natural afterbirth of a healthy newborn, which makes them both plentiful and free of ethical issues in their use.”

“The placenta also acts as a defense system to protect the developing fetus from a wide range of threats. The organ contains supercharged, anticancer immune cells… which may be one big reason that it’s virtually unheard of for pregnant mothers with cancer to pass it on to their babies.”

“These are cells that can develop into almost any tissue or organ: skin or brain, heart or bones, lungs or pancreas or bladder.”

CHAPTER 3 – Diagnostic Power: Breakthroughs That Can Save Your Life

“In this chapter, I’m going to share with you the newest technology—five tests that are critical to help you assess the state of your health. The first three deal with the most feared and formidable killers in our society: heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. The other two can help you attain peak vitality at any age, whether you’re in your early thirties or mid-eighties, by helping your body purge metal toxins and your hormones maximize your capacity as opposed to slowing you down.”

“There are two elements that massively impact our quality of life yet are not routinely measured: levels of hormones and heavy metals. Suboptimal hormone levels represent the greatest solvable cause of reduced performance, lack of energy, and even brain fog. Heavy metals can silently build up to toxic levels in your body and have a similar impact. But quick and easy blood tests can help you find out where you stand and what you need to do to restore your body to peak condition.”

“If there’s one thing that’s unassailable when it comes to your health, it’s that ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is pain. Ignorance is disease. And ignorance can lead to unnecessary, avoidable procedures and even death.”

“While GRAIL can search for more than 50 different types of cancer with a simple blood test, like any test it isn’t perfect. It can’t detect every cancer type, especially brain or kidney cancer. But that’s where the use of full-body MRI comes in. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is a powerful type of imaging that uses magnets, not radiation, to form high-resolution internal images of your body, imagery that can find early solid cancer cancers wherever they are lurking. Together, GRAIL and MRI full-body imaging can detect a complete spectrum of cancer at very early stages.”

“Early detection equals early treatment, less invasive treatments, and better survival rates overall.”

CHAPTER 4 – Turning Back Time: Will Aging Soon Be Curable?

“Aging, quite simply, is a loss of information.”

“It’s our biological age that matters. It’s the number that best predicts our prospects for living another thirty or fifty vibrant years or more. 1 Science shows that we don’t all age at the same tempo.”

“But emotions don’t exist in isolation. They’re heavily influenced by your physiology, most of all by your energy. Low energy tends to bring negative emotions.”

“Your energy is determined by the universe inside you: your 30 trillion or so living cells, the fundamental units of every tissue and organ and system in your body. To put two and two together, our quality of life is the quality of life of our cells—it’s where the rubber meets the road.”

CHAPTER 5 – The Miracle Of Organ Regeneration

“The decade ahead will be known for many dramatic health advances, but few will be more astonishing or impactful than this one: We may each soon have access to a set of backup organs. Today the transplant waiting time can be years, which for many people might as well be never. But what if people didn’t need to wait for someone to die before they could get a healthy kidney or heart or liver?”

“Dead” and damaged lungs can now be restored and preserved in good condition for up to twenty-two hours, enough time for them to be flown out for transplantation—with a 100 percent success rate. Another stem cell–based platform—3D-printed organs, a twenty-year-old technology—is fast advancing from skin and bladders to solid organs like hearts, kidneys, and lungs.”

“You keep digging until you reach your destination. You go full tilt. You liquidate doubt. You do not waver.

Better than just about anyone I’ve ever met, Martine rejects what I call “the tyranny of how.”

“You can construct the reality you desire when you have your massively transformative purpose. You know you’re going to win before you actually win.”

“At the moment, the bioprinter can handle anatomical details down to six microns, about one-quarter of the width of a human hair, or the size of the smallest blood vessels in the lung.”

“I can barely imagine anything more exciting than having access to a spare set of organs, ready and waiting for the time when our body parts eventually wear out.”

CHAPTER 6 – The Mighty Car T Cell: A Breakthrough Cure For Leukemia

“Of all the diseases one would love to avoid, with the possible exception of Alzheimer’s, the C-word is probably the one feared most. Cancer. The war against it has been waged for decades, with only minor progress. Did you know that all of us, throughout our lives, are accumulating mutations leading to precancerous cells? As we are exposed to factors such as toxins, sun exposure, secondhand smoke, and unhealthy diets, precancerous mutations accumulate in our cells.”

“When we’re healthy and young, our immune systems destroy these cells and their damaged DNA before any harm is done. But as we age, our immune system weakens and can be overwhelmed, a term referred to as immuno-exhaustion, and ultimately may fail to detect cancer at its earliest emergence. That’s when these precancerous cells keep growing and dividing until they become full-fledged malignancies. That’s when the real problem starts.”

“CAR T cells are the ultimate in personalized medicine. They’re a “living drug” crafted from the patient’s own tissues, and arguably the most complex cancer treatment yet invented. And here’s one sure thing: The therapy wouldn’t be nearly as advanced as it is today without Carl June’s intrepid commitment and maverick ingenuity.”

“T cells are the immune system’s infantry, its essential line of defense against outsiders.”

“Over eons of evolution, T cells have been trained to search out and destroy any foreign party (or pathogen) that might be toxic to the body. Topping the Most Wanted list are cells with foreign DNA or RNA, like viruses or bacteria. One reason that cancer cures are so elusive is that tumor cells fly under the radar like an invasion of the body snatchers.”

“To reliably take down cancer cells, T cells need to sniff them out—to recognize their signature proteins, or antigens—in a predictable way. They need a superpower gadget, a way to crack the tumor cells’ camouflage—something like infrared night-vision goggles, only on a molecular scale.”

“CAR Ts are part bloodhound, part claw crane, and part hit man, all in one miniaturized package.”

CHAPTER 7 – Incisionless Brain Surgery: The Impact Of Focused Ultrasound

“One goal is to stop opioid overdoses, which killed nearly 70,000 people in the U.S. in 2020.”

“According to Dr. Desai, more than 5,000 Parkinson’s and essential tremor patients around the world have found significant relief with Insightec’s ultrasound therapy. Clinical trial data shows that the average patient’s tremor had improved by 69 percent one year after the procedure, 75 percent after two years, and 76 percent after three years. As Dr. Desai explains it, “These people get better over time.”

“This technology both improves patients’ quality of life and reduces the cost of their care.”

CHAPTER 8 – Gene Therapy And CRISPR: The Cure Of Disease

“Can you imagine that you could cure your child’s congenital blindness with the mere injection of a CRISPR treatment into the back of their eye? As you’ll discover, this is happening today. Imagine using gene therapy to reprogram damaged heart cells (scars) and convert them into healthy beating heart cells.”

“You’ll learn how scientists using CRISPR restored the eyesight of a teen crooner on America’s Got Talent, helping him to overcome his inherited genetic disorder.”

“Genetic diseases are caused by mutations in the DNA, your genome, your code for life, so the solution was to find a way to replace that bad DNA with good DNA. Or, in computer terms, debug the system.”

“Why does cheaper, faster genomic sequencing matter? Because it gives us a map of how cells function, so we can design better interventions. It’s a healthcare game changer. Put differently, there are a few main ways to fix a cell. Gene therapy replaces defective or missing DNA inside a cell, gene-editing techniques like CRISPR allow you to repair the DNA inside that cell, and stem cell therapies replace that cell entirely. Thanks to our increasingly accurate maps, all of these interventions are now hitting the market.”

“Technically, it’s an engineering tool that allows us to target precise locations in the gene code and then edit that DNA. Want to remove the string of DNA that produces muscular dystrophy? Simple. Just target that spot in the genome, unleash CRISPR-Cas9, and snip, snip, snip—problem solved. One way to think of it is as the genetic equivalent of a trusty word processing program. CRISPR allows its users to snip a stretch of DNA and then either disable the affected sequence or replace it with a new one.”

“The fact that more of these novel CRISPR-associated proteins are being identified is wonderful, because it means that more options now exist to perform exquisitely targeted gene editing and to make multiple edits at the same time. That’s great news for precision medicine.”

CHAPTER 9 – The Wondrous WNT Pathway: The Ultimate Fountain Of Youth?

“Groundbreaking medicine is a slog. When you’re out to change the world, it’s usually two steps forward and one step back. Biosplice is tackling diseases that traditional medicine considers incurable or even untreatable, from arthritis to Alzheimer’s.”

“From the day we’re born until the time we die, our lives depend on the descendants of the embryonic stem cells that leave us at birth. They’re called progenitor stem cells, descendants of stem cells that then further differentiate to create specialized cell types and maintain and repair every system in our body. One family of progenitor cells replenishes our blood and bone marrow. Another fixes damage to our central nervous system, a recent discovery that’s given new hope to people with spinal cord injuries or Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis. A third, the epithelial family, keeps our skin supple and our hair follicles sprouting.”

“Wnt is special. It signals our progenitor stem cells to make specific types of tissue—“when, how much, and when to stop,” as Osman explained. It has a huge say in how our cells differentiate and also how they proliferate, or multiply. So how important is Wnt? Let’s just say it’s the foundation for all animal life.”

“But if we could retrieve the clear and timely cellular signals of our youth, or what David Sinclair calls our “lost information,” we might reincarnate our optimal selves—our 20-year-old selves. The big Biosplice breakthrough is to bring the Wnt pathway back to base. Their small-molecule medicines target and penetrate particular stem cells and dial them up or down—think of the dimmer switch that controls your table lamp. When they’re turned up, those tired, depleted cells in our joints or lungs or scalp will erupt in a frenzy of rejuvenation. When they’re turned down, overabundant bone cells, for one example—the main cause of osteoarthritis—retreat and leave room for more cartilage. When they’re turned down it also effects malignant tumor stem cells and they stop multiplying uncontrollably. Order trumps chaos. Homeostasis is restored.”

CHAPTER 10 – Your Ultimate Vitality Pharmacy

“Your ultimate vitality pharmacy contains a wealth of options to turn back your biological clock and make you feel more vibrant and alive. We’re talking about concrete steps you can take today to retrieve the energy and pain-free functionality—even the appearance—of youth.”

“Unlike chemical drugs, peptides preserve the body’s natural feedback loops and restore our homeostasis, our natural balanced state. If you’re healthy, they can help you reach and sustain your physical peak. If you’re ailing, there’s a good chance they can help make you better; they’re accepted as low-risk therapeutics for diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.”

“How does metformin work? Like intermittent fasting and intensive exercise, it stresses the mitochondria. It throws the body into hunker-down-and-repair mode. With a three-pronged mechanism involving our liver, gut, and muscle cells, it lowers blood sugar, a critical factor for anti-aging. The beauty of metformin, as opposed to insulin or other diabetes meds, is that it won’t drive the body into hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), a dangerous condition. If your level is healthy to begin with, metformin will keep it that way.”

“Our cells absorb small amounts of NAD+ precursors from certain foods. But it would be a tall order to drink enough milk or eat enough salmon or mushrooms to make up for our age-driven shortfall. So what’s the solution? It’s twofold. The first solution, according to Dr. David Sinclair and other top scientists in the age reversal space, lies in NAD+ supplements.”

CHAPTER 11 – Living Pain-Free

“Pain is also big business, which makes a lot of sense when you consider that chronic pain is estimated to affect 20 percent of people at some point in their lives.”

“Opioids, including oxycodone (commonly sold as OxyContin) and fentanyl, are powerful painkillers that are highly effective at relieving pain after surgery or trauma. The downside is that they are also highly addictive.”

“German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” All this is to say that if you’re in pain, don’t despair! There are tools to help, and we’re going to share with you how to access them and how to self-advocate.”

“For the best results, you must drill down and find the source of the pain instead of merely treating symptoms.”

“Energy is what sustains human life. Our bodies rely on a charge of energy to fuel every cell; likewise, an optimal level of magnetic energy is required for optimal health. That energy is maintained when we consume the nutrients and minerals we need, get quality sleep, and stay active and energetic by moving our bodies.”

“Pain occurs when your body gets out of alignment. Think about it: Our body’s number one job is to keep us upright, balanced, and in sync.”

“In order to heal, he would first need to find the source of his pain—his posture and balance. You see, Egoscue believes that the human body is perfectly designed; pain creeps in only due to overuse, injury, or underuse that puts the body out of balance and sets us up for injury.”

“Most kinds of bodywork are based on the theory that pushing on tissue—massaging or kneading it—is fundamental to getting it to relax. So what if I were to tell you that the secret to easing pain lies in something as simple as some gentle repositioning?”

CHAPTER 12 – The Longevity Lifestyle & Diet

“The simple lifestyle changes that we’re about to share with you can have an immediate and enduring impact on your vitality, your energy, your strength, and your quality of life. The good news is that these actionable insights are available to you right now. All you need is a solid grasp of what works and a commitment to harness that understanding in ways that will dramatically increase your chances of living a long, vigorous, and healthy life.”“In short, your basic, day-to-day lifestyle choices will have a profound impact on your quality of life, your healthspan, and your lifespan—and those choices are entirely in your hands.”

“One of his favorite examples involves telomeres, which are the protective caps at the ends of your chromosomes, much like the plastic tips on your shoelaces. As you age, your telomeres tend to shorten, causing your cells to malfunction and die. Shorter telomeres are associated with an elevated risk of premature death from many illnesses, including heart disease, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, and a rogues’ gallery of cancers. To put it bluntly, as your telomeres get shorter, your life gets shorter, too.”

“Longo also recommends eating fish a maximum of two or three times a week, being careful to avoid types that contain notoriously high levels of mercury, including tuna and swordfish.”

“When Dr. Longo recommends that people adopt the habit of fasting, they often respond about as enthusiastically as if he’d suggested sleeping on a bed of nails. “They see it as a crazy idea,” he says. “Lots of people are still in the camp of eat-all-the-time, and if they go one or two meals without eating, they think they’re going to die!”

CHAPTER 13 – The Power Of Sleep: The Third Pillar Of Health

“One of the many miracles of modern science is that it’s become possible to measure more accurately than ever the many benefits of sleep—and the devastating effects of sleep deprivation—on our biological mechanisms. The health implications are so remarkable that sleeping better has become an urgent priority for me, Peter Diamandis, Bob Hariri, and many of the most high-performing people we know.”

“Dr. Walker says he used to regard sleep as “a third pillar of good health,” along with eating well and exercising regularly. “But I think I’ve changed my mind: I’d now suggest that sleep is probably the foundation on which those other two pillars of diet and exercise sit.”

“Walker, who is English, emphasizes that our modern “epidemic of sleep deprivation” isn’t just an American phenomenon, but a global issue that’s especially bad in rich countries.”

“But when adults routinely start to get less than eight hours of sleep, their risk for serious medical conditions increases significantly.… Once you get below seven hours of sleep, the brain stops being able to perform in a cognitively optimal way.” I’m sorry to tell you, but this is about to get worse…”

“A lack of sleep is also associated with a heightened risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. It even contributes to psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety and significantly reduces the “ability to experience pleasure and positive emotions.”

CHAPTER 14 – Strength, Fitness & Performance: Your Quick Guide To Maximum Results

“Exercising just fifteen minutes a day can slash the risk of death by 14 percent and boost life expectancy by three years on average.”

“Too much pain is not gain. Achieving the right dose of exercise and effort is the key to success.”“Muscle mass should be considered a new vital sign because it gives you youth and energy and strength. It makes you look better. It makes you feel better. Whether you’re a man or woman, increasing muscle mass is within your reach, no matter how old you are.”

“If you’re looking for a straightforward, inexpensive, yet highly effective program for building strength, here’s what Billy recommends. He suggests focusing on a minimum of four exercises—squats, lunges, push-ups, and planks—that are guaranteed to increase your muscle power if you perform them with the correct form and consistently try to do more each time.”

“Remember that you want the right dosage of exercise for the greatest result. Otherwise, you don’t get results and you’ll just burn out from waste of time. Your challenge is to create a sense of demand on your body and its muscles, as simple as just ten or fifteen minutes of demand at least a few times a week.”

CHAPTER 15 – Beauty: Enhancing Your Visible Health & Vitality

“The point is, your external appearance isn’t superficial, after all. It’s a reflection of your inner health and vitality.”

“A better reason to care about how you look is that it can strongly affect how you feel about yourself. You radiate confidence when you look and feel your best. That sense of physical well-being is the serotonin of self-esteem. I’m not arguing that you should obsess about your appearance, since there are so many things that matter more. But why wouldn’t you want to look your best as much as possible, so you can relish that vibrant sense of well-being on every level, both inside and out?”

“When you have cells from a newborn—those very, very young growth factors—that’s as youthful and good as it gets,” says Holtz. “It can be used in regenerative joint and tissue repair. But there are also opportunities to use those growth factors in facial rejuvenation, hair restoration, overall skin rejuvenation.”

“For the cosmetics industry, one attraction of AI is that it can be used to analyze mind-bending quantities of data in order to provide customized product recommendations.”

CHAPTER 16 – Women’s Health: The Cycle Of Life

“Studies suggest that women possess a genetic advantage over men that partly accounts for a longer lifespan, but differences in sex hormones and social factors also play a role.”

“For women, aging is closely tied to reproductive aging. Why? Because studies show evidence that menopause accelerates the aging process in a woman’s body.”

“So taking birth control pills does nothing to slow the rate of ovarian aging. In addition, there is emerging data on the side effects of long-term hormonal birth control use, so it’s important to speak with your doctor and educate yourself about all of your options and what’s best for you.”

“We know ovarian aging can be accelerated by many factors including environmental stressors, the food we eat or don’t eat, exercise, sleep, toxin load, medically induced agents like chemotherapy or radiation, and a myriad of other conditions.”

“Be kind to your body. Appreciate its gifts. Sleep. Move. Don’t consume overly processed foods. Eat your greens. Choose organic when you can. Rest and digest.”

CHAPTER 17 – How To Mend A Broken Heart

“The heart will continue to do its critical work, dependably delivering this life force to us over and over, beating about 35 million times each year, until finally, one day, it stops.”

“You have the power to influence your heart health through factors that you—yes, YOU!—can control. That includes choosing the right foods to eat and avoid, maintaining a healthy body weight, limiting your alcohol intake, not smoking, getting sufficient sleep, and exercising regularly.”

“It’s hugely empowering to realize that even the most basic shifts in your behavior can save, extend, and invigorate your life.”

“As you probably know by now, regenerative medicine is different than other types of therapies because its goal is to cure or reverse underlying injuries, instead of merely treating the symptoms temporarily.”

“Remember that regenerative medicine is critical for the heart because heart cells don’t divide. Heart cells lost to a heart attack are gone forever. There’s little room for failure. “The heart is one organ that really has to work perfectly when you put it in,” says Taylor. “You don’t have two hearts like you have two kidneys or two lungs or multiple liver lobes.”

“I can’t emphasize enough the little things you can do that can keep you from needing most of these therapies in the first place. So please take this entire book in for your benefit and for those you love. If you’ll take care of yourself today and encourage those you love—mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, dear friends, family, extended family—to do the same.”

CHAPTER 18 – Your Brain: Treating Strokes

“The key to boosting the chances of recovering from a stroke caused by a clot is something called tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA. It’s the only FDA-approved treatment for strokes caused by clots, and it gets busy dissolving the clot. But small communities and rural hospitals don’t always have a stroke team to quickly evaluate a patient and decide to administer the drug.”

“Of course, prevention is king, with stroke and all kinds of degenerative disease. So make sure to exercise regularly, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, avoid smoking, and maintain a healthy weight to maximize your body’s circulation.”

“How stroke impacts survivors depends on which part of the brain has died. Stroke, after all, results in oxygen starvation of a piece of brain tissue and brain death. One of the biggest challenges that stroke survivors must overcome is that their body no longer does what they want it to do. What do I mean by that? I mean that joints may flex involuntarily; a hand might grab a cup but be unable to release it due to increased muscle tightness.”

“The brain can change itself,” says Dr. Seim, now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. “So there’s a lot of potential for recovery.”

“The severity of a stroke can be mediated by the exosomes, which is really exciting to see. This is telling us that there is hope for people who have really bad strokes.”

CHAPTER 19 – How To Win The War On Cancer

“It’s when our immune system fails us that cancer takes hold, so it makes sense that a high-performing immune system is one of the most important ways to defend against cancer, and virtually all diseases.”

“If you want to stay healthy and head off trouble, there’s no better diagnostic tool than the newest forms of whole-body MRI.”

“As Dr. Bill Kapp says, “The whole-body MRI is the most useful test right now to find any aberration. Of course, you can also find abnormalities in your genome sequencing and your blood chemistry. But the majority of all the immediate and emergent life-threatening diseases are found in your MRI scans.”

“We can do an amazing job of keeping you alive and can even help patients recover from Stage 3 or Stage 4 cancer,” explains Dr. Kapp. “But wouldn’t it be wonderful if you knew you were going to get cancer before it happened?”

“Once you know what’s going on inside your body, you have the option of making smart adjustments to optimize your health and vitality. For example, the diagnostic tests we use at Fountain Life give you a clear picture of how much inflammation there is in your body. Why does that matter? Because scientists regard inflammation as a key culprit in aging and specifically in cancer.”

“As you age, you lose the ability to stimulate the immune system as robustly as when you were a child. We use peptides to boost immunity by boosting T cells. T cells and their progeny, natural killer cells—which are also known as NK cells—circulate looking for tumor cells.”

“The fact is, muscle is the largest endocrine organ in the body, and people with enough muscle mass have a significantly lower incidence of cancer (and other illnesses). “The higher the muscle mass, the higher the immune function, the longer you live.”

“By clearing a path for T cells to attack cancer, immunotherapies like these make it possible to survive cancers that used to be a surefire death sentence. But for reasons that aren’t yet clear, checkpoint inhibitors cure only about a quarter of the patients who receive them.”

CHAPTER 20 – Conquering Inflamation And Autoimmune Disease: Bringing Peace To The Body

“In Crohn’s disease, the immune system mauls the cells of the large or small intestines. In rheumatoid arthritis, it wrecks the membranes that line our fingers and toes, ankles and wrists. In type 1 diabetes, it destroys the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. In multiple sclerosis, it shorts out the wiring of our central nervous system. In lupus, the invasion is global, tearing into kidneys, lungs, skin, heart, and brain.”

“There are two main types of inflammation: acute and chronic. Acute inflammation is painful but generally positive, because it starts the healing process. In the first few minutes after an injury, the damaged tissue sends off an SOS alarm throughout your entire body. By making your blood vessels leaky (hence the swelling), acute inflammation enables immune cells to quickly enter the affected area and start immediate repairs.”

“The beauty of bioelectronics is that it takes aim at a specific bundle of nerve fibers. It targets the tissues or organs where the immune system has run amok, but nowhere else. The therapy calms inflammation by depressing cytokine levels across the board, but stops short of wiping out any one of them. The immune system stays intact to fight another day: gain without pain.”

“As our stem cell army gets exhausted, Itescu explained, there comes “a tipping point where the immune disease is rip-roaring away and you don’t have enough of your own stem cells to control the immune response.” Mesoblast’s solution is to replenish the body. A highly concentrated dose of stem cells goes to just the right spots, whether it’s the bloodstream or the knees or the heart muscle.”

“When the injected stem cells sniff out signals from injured tissue, they go into action mode and release a first wave of anti-inflammatory cytokines.”

CHAPTER 21 – Diabetes And Obesity: Defeating A Double Threat

“Diabetes and obesity are dangerous twins that are combining to produce one of the worst epidemics the world has ever seen. The “diabesity” epidemic is running rampant in wealthier parts of the world and has also begun to infect many developing nations as they adopt aspects of our unhealthy Western lifestyle.”

“To give you a sense of how important your weight can be, let’s just take COVID-19 as an example. The number one factor for someone dying from COVID in 2020–2021 was age (the average age was 80). The second biggest factor was obesity. Studies have shown that 78 percent of those who died from COVID were overweight or obese.1 Obesity stresses your immune system and your heart, and it leads to diabetes, so it’s no surprise that obesity radically increases the risk of dying from COVID.”

“Overall, obesity is the second leading risk factor of premature death in North America and Europe, second only to smoking, according to the WHO.”

“And finally, obesity has direct associations with many types of cancer, including cancers of the breast, uterus, gallbladder, colon, esophagus, pancreas, liver, thyroid, and kidney.”

“Specifically, losing weight rejuvenates critical insulin-producing cells in the pancreas known as beta cells. And regenerating those cells can actually put type 2 diabetes into remission.”

“The food environment is a powerful predictor of how we eat,” says Scott Kahan, MD, director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness. “And in America, the unhealthiest foods are the tastiest foods, the cheapest foods, the largest-portion foods, the most available foods, the most fun foods.”

“I encourage you to create a habit that I adopted in my early 20s—no more soda. Try drinking water with lemon. It’s one of the simplest things you can do to transform your health. And after a while, you don’t even miss it.”

“It turns out that losing weight—even amounts that may seem relatively trivial—can dramatically benefit overweight people with insulin resistance or prediabetes.”

CHAPTER 22 – Alzheimer’s Disease: Eradicating The Beast

“It destroys language and memory and logical thought. It robs people of their very identity, of all they are and everything they’ve been. If we lose our capacity to think clearly, who are we?”

“All of us can take concrete steps today, from simple lifestyle changes to cognitive training, to greatly improve our odds of staying sharp through the years. We’ll have a much better chance of dodging the gray twilight of Alzheimer’s—for which there is only one recently FDA-approved medicine—as well as the less severe but more common disorder called mild cognitive impairment (MCI).”

“The only Alzheimer’s drugs on the market remove the amyloid plaques in the brain. The catch is that this doesn’t restore your cognition. It’s like putting out a fire that has already destroyed the entire forest.”

“Vaxxinity’s treatment is delivered through a simple intramuscular injection, similar to a flu shot.”

“People in the brain training group reduced their dementia risk by a whopping 45 percent—for an investment of less than twenty hours of their time. Imagine the possibilities if people trained their brains as frequently as they hopped on a treadmill!”

CHAPTER 23 – Longevity And The Power Of Exponential Technologies

“Aging is not just a running down of the system,” said Dr. Collins at the Vatican. “It is a programmed process. Evolution probably had an investment in having the lifespan of a particular species not go on forever. You’ve got to get the old folks out of the way, so the young ones have a chance at the resources.”

“The Human Genome Project, backed by the NIH, took thirteen years and $3 billion to sequence the first genome—all 3.2 billion letters of your life. Today, it’s under $1,000 per genome and takes less than one day. Within two years, with Illumina’s newest machines, it could cost as little as $100 and be completed in one hour.”

“If we could accurately predict protein structures from an amino acid sequence, it would open the door to an entire new avenue of low-cost and accurate drug development.”

“Bionaut Labs first seeks to revolutionize the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders using these microbots less than a millimeter in diameter, called Bionauts, that are remotely controlled by directed magnetic forces to steer their payload. Once inside the brain tissue, located adjacent to a tumor, for example, the Bionauts are magnetically triggered to release their payload. Their accuracy is on par with surgeons’ accuracy, whose standard deviation falls in the single-millimeter range. Today, Bionauts can deliver biologics and small-molecule therapeutics with unprecedented precision.”

CHAPTER 24 – Creating An Extraordinary Quality Of Life: The Power Of Mindset

“And—most of all—how do we find fulfillment? Here’s the short answer: It’s not the number of years that matters most.”“Either way, it would be up to you. We can’t predict the number of days we’ve got left. But we can absolutely control what we get out of them.”

“Here’s a fascinating example of your mindset at work: the placebo effect. What are placebos? They’re harmless “medicines” or procedures that are used to test a therapy’s effectiveness. But if you thought placebos had no real impact, you’d be mistaken.”

“A positive mindset can reverse the aging process! Remember that saying, You’re only as young as you feel? The science tells us it’s true!”

“We’ve seen that our minds can make us healthy, but they can also make us sick as well. And not only that, they can also create a contagious effect of fear.”

“We are the creators of our own meaning… if we take control. Otherwise we let the external world tell us what is good, bad, terrible, or horrific, and it usually isn’t a positive meaning, is it? In the end, our life is controlled by what we focus on and the meaning we give it.”

“The emotions that grow out of meaning powerfully affect what action we take. If one person is infuriated by an incident at their job, and someone else is inspired by the very same situation, how do you think they’ll respond—the same way, or different ways?”

“No matter what drug you’re prescribed, as long as you’re focused on what’s missing, what you can’t control, and past regrets or anxiety over the future, you’re going to be angry, frustrated, and/or depressed.”

CHAPTER 25 – The Power Of Decision: The Gift Of Living In A Beautiful State

“In spite of people’s beliefs, no matter how smart, attractive, successful in business or financial terms, no matter how good a person you are—everyone will experience extreme stress at some point in their lives. Probably more than once. No one escapes it.”

“Extreme stress is going to be a given in your life. So the real key to have an extraordinary quality of life—life on your terms—is not to hope you get lucky and that nothing happens, but to develop the kind of psychological and emotional strength that makes you resilient enough to use whatever life brings you to create something even greater.”

“We must learn to discipline our disappointment. Some people let disappointment destroy them, while others let it drive them—that’s a choice.”

“And as we discussed, we are the meaning makers. We can decide what to focus on and what things mean, and what we’re going to do as a result.”

“So how do we create an extraordinary quality of life? There are two worlds we need to master: the external world and the internal world. I call these the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment.”

“I’ve decided my spiritual vision for my life—the way I want to live every day—is being committed to living in a beautiful state, no matter what happens!”

“It’s my heartfelt prayer that this book has touched not just your head, but your heart as well. And that as a result you’ll take even better care of yourself and those you love. Perhaps you’ll get those tests in advance, or make a list of the things in this book that are worth making new habits out of. So that when a challenging time comes, you’re already prepared.”

Source: AWAKEN