Bowden Jonny - The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer, Revised

REVISED EDITION

THE SURPRISING, UNBIASED TRUTH ABOUT WHAT YOU SHOULD DO TO PREVENT DISEASE, FEEL GREAT, AND HAVE OPTIMUM HEALTH AND LONGEVITY

Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
with Beth Traylor, M.D., FAAFP

For Logan Elliot Gilman

Born November 1, 2018, the day this manuscript was being submitted, a few days before my 72nd birthday.

Heres my wish for you:

When you reach 72, may you feel as healthy, lucky in life, madly in love, and looking forward to the future as I do right now.

I love you, Logan!

S o heres the thing thats true of most of my books: They were meant to be used, not read.

Let me explain.

With the possible exception of The Great Cholesterol Myth, none of my books needs to be read sequentially, and this one is no exception. I designed them all to be dipped into, sampled, used as a reference, and studied when needed. If youre browsing through The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth and youre interested in finding out about jicama, theres no need to read about avocados first, you can just jump to the relevant page.

This method has one big advantage and one (small) disadvantage.

The big advantage is that you can read what youre interested in and it will be complete in and of itself. If your immediate challenge is your immune system, jump right to .

The disadvantage is that there is, of necessity, some repetition. For example, omega-3 fats (fish oil) are incredibly important for the brain, the heart, the bones, and the muscles. Theyre also vital for quenching inflammationone of what we call the four Horsemen of aging. So youll read about omega-3s in many different places in the book. In my opinion, this is a small price to pay for having the information you need for any given situation available to you right there without having to read a bunch of stuff youre not interested in.

And for those of you who do like to read through a book from chapter one through the end, Ive tried to make the information sufficiently varied so that youll keep learning something new. And if youre already an expert on any topic thats mentioned multiple times in the book, well then, just skip that section!

Upon entering medical school, every new student hears a variation of the statement, Fifty percent of what we are about to teach you in the next four years is wrongthe problem is, we dont know what 50 percent that is. The same might be said for any book that purports to sum up what we know about any field (except maybe physics). Much of it is going to turn out to be wrong. We just dont know what.

Were pretty sure the same is true with this book.

I wrote the original version of this book alone back in 2008. When I was asked to do a revised and updated edition, I suggested to the publishers that the new version have a medical doctor as a co-author. The person I most wanted for a writing partner on this particular project was Dr. Beth Traylor. Dr. Traylorin addition to being an expert on age-management medicinehappens to be my personal physician and has been for more than a decade. Shes my go-to source for anything having to do with anti-aging. And fortunately for both me and you, she is indeed the co-author on the volume you are now holding.

Together, weve gone over all the stuff that was originally included, removed anything that is no longer relevant, and added much new material to bring the book totally up to date. But we were both pleasantly surprised to find how much of the original was true today and has been confirmed by even more research since the original publication. The finding that saturated fat is not a cause of heart disease is a great example.

Its still as true as it was back in 2008 that five basic lifestyle interventions can prevent about 80 percent of heart disease, but we now know that there are a couple of other interventions that may work just as well. Youll hear about all seven of them many times in this book. Youll also learn what the latest research shows about what we call the eight pillars of longevitygut health, food, supplements, detoxification, exercise, sleep, stress reduction, and social relationshipsand what you can do to maximize each of them. And, of course, youll learn what the dreaded Four Horsemen of Aging are and how to tame them. (Spoiler alertthe Four Horsemen of Aging [inflammation, oxidation, stress, and sugar] are the same four promoters of heart disease we identified in The Great Cholesterol Myth. In fact, those same Four Horsemen of Aging promote, amplify, or make worse just about every degenerative disease ever seen on the planet, including heart disease, Alzheimers, cancer, obesity, and diabetes.)

And one more thing. To make this book as user-friendly as possible, weve included a kind of quick start guide at the end of the book. While were hoping youll read this book in its entirety, we didnt want to make it a prerequisite for improving your health. So the CliffsNotes section is for those of you who just want to get started. If thats you, feel free to jump right to ) and begin implementing the suggestions. If and when you want to know why we recommend, just go back and read the relevant theory and research earlier in the book.

Finally, a word about our recommendations throughout this bookand its a word no one in the scientific community likes to use: guesswork.

The truth of the matter is that while we have terrific science on a lot of things at the molecular level, at some point, you just have to make educated guesses. Its extremely rare that we get a good, randomized, double blinded study on a combination of specific supplements at specific doses. Any good experienced health professional or health consumer is going to have to essentially guess what makes sense to use with what. If I have good evidence that compound A is anti-inflammatory and compound B is anti-inflammatory, it might be an untested leap of faith to assume that using them in combination is a good thing, but its a darn good guess and sometimes thats all we have.

Speaking of recommendations, weve made a lot of them. But theyre not meant to be taken as some kind of orthodoxy. Theyre meant to be starting points. You may not decide its worth it to take all the supplements we recommend for the brain, for example, especially when youve got a bunch of things you want to take for the heart. Thats fine. Look to see what overlaps. Do some research on your own. Try some things and discard otherssee what works for you (and what doesnt seem to).

My motto for all things in life is based on the acronym AIM: Assess, Investigate, and Modify. Assess what youre doing and how its working for you. Investigate what modifications you could make to make it more effective (or simpler). Then, if necessary, modify what youre doing.

Rinse and repeat for life.

Stay engaged, participate, remain curious and open, discover whats really important to you, and then do more of it. Youre only as old as you feel you are, and if you do even 50 percent of what we recommend in this book, you should feel a lot less old after you finish this book than you did before you started reading.