Over the past century, numerous advances in health care and medicine have led to longer, healthier lives for many. However, one question has remained: How can we slow and reverse aging’s relentless advance?
To answer this question, physicians T. Barry and Arlene B. Levine recently published a book entitled, “Say NO to Aging,” which uses stories and examples to guide readers through human bodies at the cellular level, showing how lifestyle choices affect the biochemistry of disease and aging.
Say NO to Aging
The authors first explain how “Mitochondria, telomeres, longevity genes, adult stem cells, and cell protection mechanisms all play a role in keeping us young and healthy for many decades.” However, people take them for granted and consider them infinitely renewable. They are not. They are all exquisitely sensitive and vulnerable.
“Say No to Aging” explains how our cells become “old” when these resources stop functioning. That’s when the diseases of aging set in, we start showing our age, our body tissues ultimately fail, and we die.
To address the issue of aging, the authors introduce readers to nitric oxide (NO) – a tiny, but immensely important molecule that replenishes our non-renewable life resources and rejuvenates the blood vessels, heart, metabolism, and brain.
“Say NO to Aging” explains how people can delay aging with easy, yet powerful, lifestyle changes. Specifically, Drs. Levine provide detailed recommendations on food choices, diets, exercise, and stress reduction practices. They explain how these changes slow the aging process—and protect us against many chronic and lethal diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The authors show how modern science has incorporated ancient wisdom that first posited an active life lived in harmony and moderation is the healthiest possible choice that says NOto aging.
“Say NO to Aging”provides answers for two questions: “Why do we age? and “How do we defy aging?” What takes such a toll of our cells?
“Say NO to Aging”has a surprising explanation: mundane things like overeating, overweight, stress, toxins, injuries, infection, inflammation, inactivity, and poor sleep. The book reviews examples of chronic diseases of aging:
- How coronary risk factors (cholesterol, smoking, etc.) pave the way to early high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, and heart attacks
- Why obesity often leads to diabetes
- Why heart failure develops
- Why smoking often leads to emphysema or early lung cancer
- How a knee injury can cause premature arthritis in that knee
Consequently, the book also focuses on how“industrialized societies are increasingly plagued with overweight and obesity and how this is a modern phenomenon, since our gene pool clearly has not changed over the last century.” Accordingly, the authors note that, “excessive energy (caloric) intake coupled with insufficient energy expenditure (we eat too much and move too little) has impacted our energy equation.
About the Authors
Dr. Barry Levine is the Chief Medical Officer, A.B.L.E. Medical Consulting. He is Professor of Medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, PA. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease. Dr. Levine has been the principal investigator of and has participated in numerous clinical trials. He has authored many articles (139), and has created a variety of media presentations on coronary heart disease, heart failure, hypertension, dyslipidemia, arrhythmias, the metabolic syndrome, diabetes, sleep disorders, and pulmonary hypertension.
Dr. Arlene Bradley Levine, is CEO, A.B.L.E. Medical Consulting. She is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Diseases. She has worked and done research as a physical chemist, an interventional cardiologist, and as a heart failure and transplant cardiologist. She has a strong interest in preventive cardiology and exercise physiology.