Discover how revolutionary new treatments are transforming the fight against chronic diseases and extending healthy lifespans. This informative, evidence-based guide explores breakthroughs in diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and neurodegeneration, offering hope for a healthier future for you and your loved ones. The book is easy to understand and founded on the latest medical discoveries.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Eric Topol, one of the most prominent physician-scientists in the world and the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, has authored his fourth non-fiction book for lay readers, Super Agers. Super Agers examines current trends in longevity research, specifically focusing on approaches that can extend the healthy periods of people's lives, healthspan, rather than a narrow focus on just extending life itself, lifespan.

Topol introduces a five dimensional approach to medically approaching healthy aging: Lifestyle+ (diet, exercise, sleep, environmental exposures), Cells (especially cells of the immune system), Omics (the molecular information of the whole organism), artificial intelligence (AI), and drugs/vaccines (aka therapeutics). These dimensions are interrelated and interdepending, and Topol has seemingly ranked them according to how he views their importance, Alternatively, these dimensions could be described as prevention, diagnosis and prognosis, and treatment. Despite the early attention to these dimensions, Topol's overall focus throughout is only modestly organized by them. After two early chapters that myopically undersell the importance of genetics and oversell the impact of lifestyle choices and environmental exposures (neither of which are independent of genetic influences), the book adopts a somewhat ad hoc structure, feeding readers a series of loosely connected literature reviews made more understandable to non-experts. This meat of this concerns the four major chronic killers: metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegeneration. Only the final two chapter directly address themselves to tackling aging in a proactive way, providing little in the way of actionable insights and highlighting few exciting innovation on the longevity front.

The anticlimactic nature of Super Agers isn't surprising. Medical science has very little to offer in the way of significant advances in aging at this time. Lifestyle choices are the most accessible levers available to pull for everyday people, but the ability for people to pull those levers concerns forces that are largely out of their control, specifically genetic predispositions and their social niches and resources. This unfortunate constraint is hardly acknowledge by Topol. Even when lifestyle factors are maximized most of these gains will be marginal at best. This doesn't mean they're not worthwhile to some, but many people will simply not care enough to be overly invested in building healthy habits and this is a sensible tradeoff. Ultimately, it is mostly about avoiding the penalty of really damaging behavioral patterns or the dysfunctional physiological states they can induce and seeking proper medical care at the right moments.

There were a number of important bright spots in the book. Topol heartily embraces polygenic risk scores to guide care as well as a number of other emerging precision approaches. He also celebrates the advances observed in the GLP-1 agonist class of drugs. These were great albeit obvious inclusion in my view. The book would have also benefitted from a more urgent tone concerning the need for more rigorous research. I was a bit concerned how eagerly Topol championed findings from observational work or loosely controlled, underpowered clinical studies.

All in all, this is solid work covering some of the latest medical research on conditions that shorten lifespans and provides some insights into the future ways that medical science may tackle aging so as to extend healthspans.

Interesting but I don't think I was the right audience for this. It's filled with data and studies meant to support Topol's theories. This information will be appreciated by those who enjoy details, I found myself leafing (or rather clicking as I was reading on Kindle) through to the more accessible sections and advice. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Over to others.

I’m a sucker for wanting to live a long and healthy life. So, this book is admittedly right up my alley! Dr. Topol summarizes and synthesizes the latest medical research on conditions that influence human health and longevity. The content is presented in a clear, actionable format, with compelling arguments that inspired me to make several life changes. I find myself quoting and referencing relevant passages almost daily.

Who is this book for?
1 The layperson seeking to live their healthiest life.
2 The advocate or caregiver searching for additional guidance.
3 The medical professional or researcher looking to stay informed about the latest data.

Your approach to the book may differ depending on your background. While it contains dense sections of supporting data—a minimum standard in scientific works—these can be skipped by lay readers and caregivers, whereas technical readers will appreciate diving deeper into the weeds.

Last, but most importantly: Can you trust Dr. Topol? My research shows that he is a highly experienced, respected, and ethical medical professional.

Thanks to Eric Topol, Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the Advance Reader Copy (ARC)!

The author of this book is a physician and, although marketed to the general public, this book would be more useful to those in the medical community. He discusses a number of ways to increase lifespan including lifestyle, supplements and drugs. There are numerous research studies summarized with a good number of charts included. The book is organized into chapters that discuss various aspects of the study of aging including genetics, lifestyle, cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegeneration and others. One concluding statement was hopeful: "We are going to see major progress in prevention of age-related diseases and preserving organ-specific health". As a nutritionist and one who believes in the powers of diet, exercise and other lifestyle habits, I agree with one of Topol's conclusions. "We need to maintain our healthy aging, predominately by focusing on lifestyle plus means, so that we can get to the next phase of digital biology deliverables".
If you are interested in a book that gives a rather comprehensive summary of the current research this book would be for you. I received a complementary copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is a detailed account of the latest research into healthy aging. Some of it is very scientific, so a little difficult to understand. But, nonetheless, a fascinating look into what we might expect to come about in the not so distant future.

Super Agers is a very comprehensive, scientific approach to extending health span. It’s probably best for those who want very detailed medical discussions backed by the most recent scientific studies, not those looking for more of a quick overview.

This was an interesting book on how to age well. Very scientific, so may be difficult for the average reader to understand, but nonetheless would be a great library addition.

Super Agers is among a plethora of books published lately on aging and increasing healthspan and not just lifespan. The information is good and timely. If you enjoyed Outlive by Dr. Attia, you'll appreciate Super Agers although you might not learn anything new.