Reading Super Agers (1)

Over the years, I've read quite a few books about longevity.

Most of them, once finished, just reconfirmed common knowledge I already had.

But with Super Agers, which came out in Chinese only in March 2026, I stopped halfway through.

Because it quietly dismantles two "truths" we've been taught since childhood:

First, longevity comes down to genes — if your parents lived long, chances are you will too;

Second, master a healthy lifestyle — eat well, exercise regularly, get regular check-ups, take a few supplements — and you'll live longer.

This book says: longevity has little to do with your genes.

And a large part of the so-called healthy lifestyle, such as check-ups and supplements, may not help you live longer either.

As someone who has taken NMN regularly for years, I paused when I read this.

First, the author. Eric Topol is a leading American cardiologist, a professor of molecular medicine, and one of the ten most-cited researchers in medicine worldwide.

Not a wellness blogger — a frontline scientist.

To write this book, he spent six years following 1,400 people over the age of 80 with no chronic disease.

Below are my notes on the first part, along with some personal reflections — enjoy:

1. Three billion base pairs sequenced, and no "longevity gene" found

In 2008, Topol launched a project called the "Wellderly," dedicated to finding people who were at least 80, had never been seriously ill, and had no chronic diseases.

How strict was that standard?

It took them nearly six years to find 1,400 people.

They then sequenced all 3 billion base pairs of these people's genomes, hoping to find the "longevity code" hidden in their DNA.

The result: they found nothing.

There was no magic "longevity gene" in these super-healthy elders' genes. Their genetic risk markers for Alzheimer's and heart disease were almost no different from those of ordinary people.

2. Their genes had nothing in common — but their way of living did

The real finding lay outside the genes.

These people, with an average age of 84, had a few things in common:

• They were noticeably leaner — on average about 13 kilograms lighter than their peers. "Being lean in old age is worth more than gold," as the old Chinese saying goes; the ancients did not deceive us;
• They exercised more;
• They were better educated;
• They were very optimistic and deeply engaged socially — bridge clubs, dancing, circles of friends, and many were community volunteers.

There's a detail in the book I love:

Some of them were still so busy in their nineties that the researchers had a hard time booking them in to take part in the study.

In your nineties, and still needed by life —

That's probably the best picture of growing old I've ever read.

Notice: lean, active, optimistic, sociable.

Not one of these four things is written in your genes.

All of them can be cultivated.

3. Three parts fate, seven parts effort

So do genes not matter at all? Not quite.

The figures Topol gives are: genes account for roughly 25-30% of the influence on lifespan; lifestyle and environmental factors account for 70-75%.

"Three parts fate, seven parts effort" — it turns out the old saying has literature to back it up.

Even if we didn't draw a "longevity gene," we can still significantly extend our healthspan through lifestyle.

4. Healthspan ≠ Lifespan

This is the most important distinction in the whole book.

Topol is talking about "healthspan," not "lifespan."

Lifespan is how many years you live;

Healthspan is the number of years you live in optimal health — free of disease or disability.

Ten more years in a hospital bed and ten more years in your study, in the mountains, and beside your family are two completely different things.

What we should really be tending was never the total number, but the stretch within it when we're clear-headed, free, and strong enough to love.

5. Topol himself is the evidence

Topol is frank that he "inherited bad genes":

His father went blind from diabetes at 49;

His mother died of cancer in her early fifties.

But he didn't bow to his genes. He is 72 this year and still doing frontline research, and in 2025 he was named one of 25 people in the US who have made major contributions in fields such as business, education and public health.

Many people write about longevity.

Few have made their own lives the evidence.

6. An experiment on himself: ultra-processed food

What shook me most in the first part was a cautionary example — from Topol's friend, the British researcher Chris van Tulleken.

He wanted to test one question: just how much damage does an unhealthy lifestyle do to your health?

The "unhealthy lifestyle" he chose had only one element: eating more ultra-processed food day to day.

What is ultra-processed food? Take the potato as an example:

A potato dug out of the ground — unprocessed food;

Shredded in the kitchen, with salt, vinegar, soy sauce and chilli added, and stir-fried into a plate of hot-and-sour potato strips — processed food;

Mashed in a factory, rapidly dehydrated, mixed with emulsifiers, fried in hydrogenated oil, flavoured with artificial flavourings, and made into vacuum-packed crisps — ultra-processed food.

In a nutshell: industrially produced, the original ingredients barely recognisable, with industrial ingredients and additives you'd never use in a home kitchen.

Van Tulleken pushed the share of ultra-processed food in his daily diet straight up to 80%.

After one month, unsurprisingly, he had gained 14 jin (7 kg).

But gaining weight was the least noteworthy side effect of the experiment.

What was truly frightening was the data from the in-depth medical tests that followed.

His brain had been rewired.

An MRI scan showed that between the area at the back of the cerebellum responsible for "unconscious habits" and the area of the limbic system responsible for "addiction," an extremely active high-speed connection had been forcibly built.

This meant that when he reached for crisps, it had long since stopped being because he was hungry —

It had become a compulsive, mechanical action, like not being able to stop scrolling your phone in the middle of the night.

The precise formulations of industrial food had directly hijacked his neural circuits.

His body, too, had gone into systemic abnormality.

Hunger-related hormones soared, and C-reactive protein, a marker of whole-body inflammation, doubled outright.

In effect, he had made himself spend an entire month hungry, craving, and inflamed all over.

7. Identical twins: the same genes, outcomes 40 jin apart

The experiment had a second half.

Van Tulleken brought in his identical twin brother to take part as well.

In theory, with identical genes and both eating 80% ultra-processed food, they should have gained roughly the same amount of weight.

In the end, his brother gained 54 jin in a month — a full 40 jin (20 kg) more than van Tulleken himself.

The reason was that the brother had layered other bad habits on top.

The same genes, a different way of living, one month — a 40-jin difference.

Genes aren't everything; lifestyle matters more —

It's hard to find a cleaner proof than that.

Final Thoughts

Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations: you have only a limited time, and if you do not use it to clear the clouds from your soul, it will pass, and you will pass, never to return.

After finishing this part, I thought: genes are probably the share that fate allots us —

But how we live always remains within our own power.

Be a little leaner, get moving, stay optimistic, stay connected to people.

None of these four things is expensive, but all of them need to start today, to be built up slowly.

As for the truth about check-ups and supplements, that's in the later chapters of the book.

When I've finished reading, I'll report back.

To be continued.