DR Eric Topol’s new book examines the best approaches based on evidence of longevity and seeks to question the “malarkey” of bio-hacking, opposite and anti-sciences-all of which found a new purchase in American society in the middle of scientific mistrust Stoké during the cocovated pandemic.
“This book is trying to set the record straight, get rid of pseudoscience and paint an incredibly optimistic image of how we are so well placed to prevent the three age -related diseases that compromise our duration of health,” said Topol, director and founder of the Research Translational Institute scripps and a practicing cardiologist.
Topol’s new book, released Tuesday by Simon & Schuster, is called Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity.
“Right now, these are dark moments in medical research,” says Topol. “It’s a book that I think I burn with optimism, and we will get there. I am confident. “
Topol argues that we are at one point to prevent the three major diseases: cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative diseases. This in the middle of the convergence of knowledge on healthy behavior, newly available biometric data and to come and the power to calculate artificial intelligence.
If we stumbled in the mention of Topol of the “duration of health”, it is then that he says that we should seek not only longevity but health in these additional years, or a “duration of health”. The book presents the ideas of Topol on the “property of goods”, a group of people he identified in a close -up study aged 80 years but has no chronic conditions like the majority of the same Much younger Americans.
To illustrate the type of well-being that Topol is considering, he describes one of his patients: Ms. LR, a 98-year-old “young” patient who died in the practice of Topol. Ms. LR did not suffer from a chronic disease, with the exception of edema or swelling of the legs, for which she currently sees Topol.
Topol says that the strength of newly available and coming interventions can help us live in our twilight years more like Mme LR – not forever, but with fewer ailments. To do this, people need medication to help prevent years of manufacturing by creating personalized plans for patients. This philosophy, known as “precision medicine”, has His own detractors.
The long -term health vision of health diverges from other diets attracting attention, such as those of Bryan Johnson billionairewho seeks to challenge the age and to anti-vaccine activists, who can Avoid modern science. Instead, Topol’s point of view is that where successful vaccines and drugs like GLP-1 (such as Wegovy and Ozempic brands) help us in this future primary prevention, because uses potentially extend to Prevent cancer Or Alzheimer’s.
He associates these medical interventions by emphasizing what we know about maintaining health: eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish (sometimes called Mediterranean diet), consumption of caffeine and moderate alcohol, exercise regularly, remain socially active and sleep deeply and regularly.
“Everyone should do all these things now,” says Topol. “Here is the problem: when you have a prescription to do all these things, almost no one does them.”
Personalized and precise medicine, he argues, could conquer the greatest obstacle: human behavior. Diet and exercise habits are notoriously difficult To change, even if the evidence is convincing.
“But when you say specifically:” You have this risk, it’s in good faith. We can confirm it on many different clocks and diapers of data. We have nailed it. This is your thing. This is what you want to avoid in your life, and you can prevent it, “he said.
The factors that we cannot change as individuals but which certainly affect health are environmental exposure to pollution, stressors of stress of poverty and racism, and if we live in healthy neighborhoods, often called social determinants of health. This is the ” +” argument of “lifestyle +” of Topol, and those which are the least discussed by the movements “only for rich people” and bio-hacking movements.
Topol has the warning that this optimistic future has radically changed in recent months, at least in America. Since he finished writing, the Trump administration has successfully confirmed Robert F Kennedy Jr, undoubtedly the country’s main scientific denial, to lead the Department of Health.
Kennedy reject many of the fundamental principles of modern medicine – of the fundamental centenary principle of Germ theoryThe idea that individual pathogens cause a disease (even in people who are in good health), to the principle more modern than health is a human right – see Kennedy confirmationin which he wonders if smokers deserve health care.
The Department of Health is the largest public health agency in the country and the largest health insurer, with a Budget of 1.8 TMD Regularly adjust a fifth of all federal expenses. Who feeds the largest public funder for the world of biomedical and behavioral research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the World Agency for the Approval of Drugs at Food and Drug Administration and Public Insurance Programs Medicaid (covering 78.5 million People) and Medicare (covering 68 million) – to name just a few.
Since taking office, Kennedy has reduced 20,000 people from the health service, or about a quarter of the workforce. He has Canceled hundreds of NIH grants, frozen funds to researchers for diseases such as Alzheimer’sAnd slowed down the new grant spectacularly with 2 billion dollars less injected into science in the first quarter of 2025.
He reduced the programs to the centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); farm Laboratories of sexually transmitted diseases; installed Anti-Vaccininal defenders in power positions; And recovered $ 11 billion in localities public health funds. Scientific experts with Decades of experience were forced to go out. THE list go on.
However, Topol’s point of view is wider than current upheavals in the United States. He mentions the Guardian how European countries have prohibited many unhealthy substances long before the United States took action – only for America to go up later. Which includes things like food additives such as trans fatty (and based on American research) and Ancient poisons like lead.
“It’s really for me, a unique moment, and I hope we will get there now,” says Topol. “Of course, the prospects are not excellent in this country, but many other parts of the world will get there. I’m sure. “