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Sue Armstrong

Borrowed Time

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As featured on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week

'A rich, timely study for the era of “global ageing”' Nature

The ageing of the world population is one of the most important issues facing humanity in the 21st century — up there with climate change in its potential global impact. Sometime before 2020, the number of people over 65 worldwide will, for the first time, be greater than the number of 0–4 year olds, and it will keep on rising. The strains this is causing on society are already evident as health and social services everywhere struggle to cope with the care needs of the elderly.
But why and how do we age? Scientists have been asking this question for centuries, yet there is still no agreement. There are a myriad competing theories, from the idea that our bodies simply wear out with the rough and tumble of living, like well-worn shoes or a rusting car, to the belief that ageing and death are genetically programmed and controlled.
In Borrowed Time, Sue Armstrong tells the story of science's quest to understand ageing and to prevent or delay the crippling conditions so often associated with old age. She focusses inward — on what is going on in our bodies at the most basic level of the cells and genes as the years pass — to look for answers to why and how our skin wrinkles with age, our wounds take much longer to heal than they did when we were kids, and why words escape us at crucial moments in conversation.This book explores these questions and many others through interviews with key scientists in the field of gerontology and with people who have interesting and important stories to tell about their personal experiences of ageing.
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300 printed pages
Publication year
2019
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Quotes

  • Veena Rohinhas quoted4 years ago
    Over three days in the lab they subjected the recruits to a battery of fitness tests, measuring everything from heart, lung, cognitive and immune function to muscle mass, bone density and blood flow to the brain. While muscle and bone showed little sign of ageing, heart and lung function did decline somewhat with age. But the effect of this tough regular exercise on the adaptive immune system was remarkable.
  • Veena Rohinhas quoted4 years ago
    ody. One of the biggest sources of these little messengers is skeletal muscle tissue, simply because there is so much of it in our bodies, and here there's a balance to be struck, says Lord. Inactive muscle pumps out pro-inflammatory cytokines, while moving muscle makes anti-inflammatory cytokines to maintain equilibrium. ‘That's why exercise is so good for you – and why it's bad to sit for any length of time. There are now independent studies that show that how much time you spend sedentary is an independent risk factor for ill health. So you can go out, as I do, for my morning run. But if I then sit for 10 hours, I might as well not have bothered. It wipes the benefits of my morning exercise out.’
  • Veena Rohinhas quoted4 years ago
    Many cells in our bodies can produce cytokines, tiny signalling molecules that carry messages back and forth as part of the ongoing chatter between them. Inflammatory cytokines communicate between the immune system and the rest of the b

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