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I have now been researching healthy longevity for more than thirty years, studying the links between nutrition and the genes that regulate cellular protection and regeneration. The Longevity Diet collects what I have learned and puts it into a simple program anyone can live by. It is as simple as adopting the daily nutritional regimen I outline and combining it periodically (two to twelve times per year, depending on your general health) with my fasting-mimicking diet (FMD), which is exactly what it sounds like: a diet that mimics a fast, providing the benefits of fasting without the deprivation and hunger. Combining these two elements, I have discovered, can protect, regenerate, and rejuvenate the body to keep us young and healthy longer. This is achieved in part by turning back the biological aging clock, which means that these diets can be adopted by relatively young people to help delay aging and prevent disease, and also by older individuals to help them return to a more youthful state. The FMD is also clinically proven to stimulate the loss of abdominal fat while conserving muscle and bone mass. These benefits are generated by switching on the human body’s own remarkable ability to activate stem cells and regenerate parts of cells, systems, and organs, leading to a reduction of risk factors for many diseases. In the chapters that follow, I will explain first why it works, then how it works.
The Longevity Diet
Valter Longo
The basic elements of American readiness for nuclear war remain today what they were almost sixty years ago: Thousands of nuclear weapons remain on hair-trigger alert, aimed mainly at Russian military targets including command and control, many in or near cities. The declared official rationale for such a system has always been primarily the supposed need to deter—or if necessary respond to—an aggressive Russian nuclear first strike against the United States. That widely believed public rationale is a deliberate deception. Deterring a surprise Soviet nuclear attack—or responding to such an attack—has never been the only or even the primary purpose of our nuclear plans and preparations. The nature, scale, and posture of our strategic nuclear forces has always been shaped by the requirements of quite different purposes: to attempt to limit the damage to the United States from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a U.S. first strike against the USSR or Russia. This capability is, in particular, intended to strengthen the credibility of U.S. threats to initiate limited nuclear attacks, or escalate them—U.S. threats of “first use”—to prevail in regional, initially non-nuclear conflicts involving Soviet or Russian forces or their allies.a The required U.S. strategic capabilities have always been for a first-strike force: not, under any president, for a U.S. surprise attack, unprovoked or “a bolt out of the blue,” but not, either, with an aim of striking “second” under any circumstances, if that can be avoided by preemption. Though officially denied, preemptive “launch on warning” (LOW)—either on tactical warning of an incoming attack or strategic warning that nuclear escalation is probably impending—has always been at the heart of our strategic alert. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump was reported to have asked a foreign policy advisor, about nuclear weapons, “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”16 Correct answer: We do. Contrary to the cliché that “no nuclear weapons have been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” U.S. presidents have used our nuclear weapons dozens of times in “crises,” mostly in secret from the American public (though not from adversaries). They have used them in the precise way that a gun is used when it is pointed at someone in a confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled. To get one’s way without pulling the trigger is a major purpose for owning the gun. (See chapter 20.)
The Doomsday Machine
Daniel Ellsberg
Then she decided to add taking in the good to the other things she was doing to feel better, and something began to shift. “When I went for a run,” she told me later, “I felt good. When I stayed with how this felt, it was like the good feelings were soaking into my mind from the body up.” The same thing happened when she took a hot bath and let the relaxation sink in, or took the extra seconds to enjoy the satisfaction she felt when she finished a project at work. “My sadness and hopelessness began to pass away.” After a few weeks, she said that taking in good feelings a few times each day had played a real role in easing her sense of loss. “I honestly feel it helped me learn to be happy again.” Her story is pretty dramatic, but it’s true. My friend didn’t try to paper over her hurt and sadness with positive thinking. She let her grief be, and slowly, over many months, it let go. Along the way, when she could, she let in positive experiences of vitality, relaxation, satisfaction, and eventually joy.
Hardwiring Happiness
Rick Hanson
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