I have to be honest, this book changed my life. As a college student with a pretty sedentary lifestyle, I wasn’t doing anything to help my health even though for years
I’ve been telling myself to diet and exercise, but I just never had to motivation till now. TRANSCEND is an amazing book which is a mnemonic for
Talk with your doctor
Relaxation
Assessment
Nutrition
Supplementation
Calorie reduction
Exercise
New technologies
Detoxification
I read several books about health but this is the first (next to Fantastic Voyage) that compiles everything together to provide a serious life extension regime. Plus the fact it was written by the most renowned transhumanist was all that I needed to know to read it.
The book was written in mind for adults 45+; though it could easily be applied to anyone over 18.
Overall, to make this review sort, the book covers every base in maintaining a healthy life style imo. However there was only one thing I wanted to address, that I think Ray went a little overboard.
We all know Ray is a big fan of supplements and takes up 250 pills a day to "reprogram his biochemistry", even though Aubrey de Grey doesn’t take any. Thus the problem arises when Ray and Terry recommend dozens of supplements without much discussion of how much to take and whether actual conclusive medical studies have shown any pros or cons of taking that many supplements in the long run. They don’t address questions like “would alpha-lipoic-acid or CoQ10 be good for ME”, “would high doses of grape seed extract really slow down the aging process?”, etc. They present support to advocate the consumption of particular supplements sold from their website, but don’t present all the evidence behind it. Oh one more thing. In “new technologies”, they talk about genomics, collecting stem cells, etc, but they don’t talk about cryonics which I think was disappointing (even though it's not a new techonology, still cryonics imo is very important).
Still, I loved this book and recommend it to everyone! It’s almost like a bible for what to do with existing resources to live as long as possible.