So You Want to Live Younger Longer? by Dr Norman Swan

As I read this book I could hear Dr Swan’s calming Scottish brogue. I feel forever grateful for his voice of reason during the COVID years. His writing is conversational, never didactic as he makes the research comprehensible. And there is a lot of research – however, most of it is done on animals, not humans, so all in all, not particularly conclusive.

However, there is still much evidence-based research that is reported in this book. To me, it’s commonsense, and nothing I didn’t already know. But it’s always worth being reminded!

Here are the highlights in no particular order:

• Positive people appear to live longer and this seems to rub off onto those who live with them. So, be social and socially active.
• Red, orange & purple vegetables, cooked in extra virgin olive oil, provide vital antioxidants that aid metabolism. Cooking them releases more bioactives than eating them raw.
• Exercise as intensively as you’re able to, as many days of the week as you can.
• Don’t be afraid to feel hungry – limit your calorie intake, but don’t bother with fasting.
• Eat more plants, less meat and only stuff that your granny would recognise as food.
• Avoid high temperature cooking which causes a lot of browning & caramelisation (barbecues, high temp grilling etc) which can produce pro-ageing compounds.
• Skip meat, fish and diary two days a week, every Monday and Thursday for example.
• Low fat, high fibre diets are associated with more diverse, healthier microbiomes in the gut. Healthy microbiomes are linked with lower levels of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cognitive impairment and frailty.
• Follow a (mostly) Mediterranean diet; high in fruit & vegetables, more protein from legumes and fish and less from red meat, use olive oil and less saturated fat.
• Don’t smoke.
• Enjoy the occasional drink but no more. If you are obese, you will have excess fat in your liver, putting you on the path to serious liver damage. Every drink you have has a significantly increased risk of accelerating that damage, which could lead to cirrhosis.
• Focus on your waist: visceral fat is toxic. For women from a western background, aim for a waist circumference of 80cm or less, men 94cm or less.
• Watch your salt: remember the hidden salt in bread etc. Salt raises blood pressure. Keep your sodium intake to 2g a day, which is about 5g of salt (about a teaspoon).
• Obesity & smoking swamp a lot else in terms of shortening lives and living longer sicker. For every year you’re obese you increase the risk of dying younger than you otherwise would by 1.5 per cent.
• Screens at night disrupt our natural circadian rhythm. Don’t bring a device to bed.
• Keep the little grey cells hard at work: learn a new language or a musical instrument.

Dr Swan finishes by saying…

‘So you want to live younger longer? We know how. Just gotta do it. And never forget, when prevention works, bad stuff doesn’t happen.
Don’t let the bastards get you down. I don’t.’

Reviewed by Gaby Meares
Murder on a Monday Reading Group