Book review: An essential roadmap to ageing well that's full of good sense and optimism

Prof Rose Anne Kenny provides the answers about why some people have a lower biological age than chronological age and the role played by food, genetics, sex, physical exercise, cold water, and much more

Prof Rose Anne Kenny, Picture: Julien Behal

Mark Twain lamented: “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and then gradually approach 18.” Too true.

Human ageing and life expectancy has been a preoccupation throughout the centuries. When some of us look back, remembering our own grandparents through the mists of time, we have a picture in our mind’s eye of frail, dependent relatives we loved dearly, yet ruing the day that we would grow old, immobile, and without much of a future ahead.