Bottom line: I found this book to be a real pleasure to read… and absorb. The title is a bit misleading: this is a book, yes, about telomeres and their pivotal role in the aging process, but it is far more than that – this book is also about improving one’s health and vitality in a number of ways.

Chapters 4-9 cover a variety of health topics (breath, mind, sleep, exercise, diet and supplements), and along the way the author discusses how these aspects of behavior affect telomere length. I found the breath and sleep chapters to be especially valuable for me: I had thought I knew a lot on these topics, but I learned some important and useful facts and, as a result, have made some dramatic improvements in these areas! (And have been helping my friends do the same.) Dr. Park has done his homework here, and his explanations are clear and convincing. He also mixes in humor, like when he told the story of “the first (and last) time I ever took a Bikram Yoga class…” because the “rather militant instructor singled me out—in front of 40 other participants—by shouting over the loudspeaker: ‘No, Ed! Bad!! You’re breathing through the wrong holes!’”

The chapter on “Your Mind” contains excellent descriptions of the autonomic nervous system and also contains lots of practical advice for calming stress. But it also was a bit spiritual for me, like being transported back to how I felt when I first read Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now.” Reading from this chapter, I sat on the couch and felt peaceful as I pondered sentences such as: “I am part of life” (when the author was writing about “What is ego?”). He quotes the Sufi poet Rumi: “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the ocean in a drop.”

I differ with the author on some of his diet and supplement recommendations, but nonetheless found his different perspective on these issues to be of interest to me… so I won’t quibble on these points.

Having said all that, this book is also an excellent primer on the science underpinning telomeres, cell biology and aging. The glossary at the end of the book is reason enough for me to keep this book on the coffee table (thus easily accessible) and off the bookshelf.