 McMillan Audio presents Cracking the Aging Code, the New Science of Growing Old, and what it means for staying young, by Josh Middledorf and Dorian Sagan. Read for you by Stephen McLaughlin. Go over the heads of the scientists, she said. Take your case directly to the people. That's what Darwin did. To my mother, Harriet Middledorf, born 1922, J. J. M. "'Tis not that dying hurts us so, tis living hurts us more, but dying is a different way, a kind behind the door." Emily Dickinson Now, flip-flop and fly, I don't care if I die. Big Joe Turner, a Kansas City blues crooner and founder of rock and roll. Over my dead body, George S. Kaufman, suggesting his epitaph. Preface What this book is about. What is aging? Scientists sometimes use the word senescence. The common meaning is a deterioration in many body functions that comes with age. Sometimes we will use the demographer's definition and increased risk of death with passing time. It is a common belief that aging is inevitable and universal, not on your life. During the 20th century, medical technology took enormous strides toward the conquest of infectious disease and recovery from trauma. With hygiene and sanitation, then antibiotics in the 1930s, and an ever-expanding arsenal of vaccines, many plagues of the past have been banished. Tuberculosis, polio, syphilis, whooping cough, diphtheria, and cholera were once feared as a death sentence, and now they are footnotes in the mortality statistics. The diseases that remain are all associated with aging. Diabetes, arthritis, and osteoporosis are growing, and the big three killers are cardiovascular disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent on medical research over several decades trying to conquer these three diseases with the same approach that succeeded so well for infectious disease. That approach has been to work with the body, to stimulate the body's growth and inborn strength, to buttress its natural defenses. Even the reductionist tradition of Western allopathic medicine has been influenced by the philosophy of natural medicine, working with the body instead of attempting to overpower it with technology or drugs. But what the doctors do not yet realize is that they are not yet fully recovered. Ready to continue?