''Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever'' (

Rodale Books Rodale, Inc. (), was an American publisher of health and wellness magazines, books, and digital properties headquartered in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, with a satellite office in New York City. The company was founded in 1930. In 2017, it was acquired ...

, ) is a book authored by

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist, and inventor. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), speech synthesis, text-to-speech synthesis, spee ...

and Terry Grossman published in 2004. The basic premise of the book is that if

middle age Middle age (or middle adulthood) is the age range of the years halfway between childhood and old age. The exact range is subject to public debate, but the term is commonly used to denote the age range from 45 to 65 years. Overall This time span ...

d people can live long enough, until approximately 120 years, they will be able to live forever—as humanity overcomes all

disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function (biology), function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical condi ...

s and

old age Old age is the range of ages for people nearing and surpassing life expectancy. People who are of old age are also referred to as: old people, elderly, elders, senior citizens, seniors or older adults. Old age is not a definite biological sta ...

itself. This might also be considered a

break-even Break-even (or break even), often abbreviated as B/E in finance (sometimes called point of equilibrium), is the point of balance making neither a Profit (economics), profit nor a loss. It involves a situation when a business makes just enough reve ...

scenario where developments made during a year increase

life expectancy Human life expectancy is a statistical measure of the estimate of the average remaining years of life at a given age. The most commonly used measure is ''life expectancy at birth'' (LEB, or in demographic notation ''e''0, where '' ...

by more than one year. Biogerontologist

Aubrey de Grey Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey (; born 20 April 1963) is an English biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of ''The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging'' (1999) and co-author of '' Ending Aging'' (2007). De Grey is known for ...

called this the "

Longevity escape velocity In the life extension movement, longevity escape velocity (LEV), actuarial escape velocity or biological escape velocity is a hypothetical situation in which one's remaining life expectancy (not ''life expectancy at birth'') is extended longer t ...

" in a 2005

TED talk TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...

. The book focuses primarily on health topics such as

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. CVDs constitute a class of diseases that includes: coronary artery diseases (e.g. angina pectoris, angina, myocardial infarction, heart attack), heart failure, ...

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

, and

type 2 diabetes Type 2 diabetes (T2D), formerly known as adult-onset diabetes, is a form of diabetes mellitus that is characterized by high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and relative lack of insulin. Common symptoms include increased thirst, frequent ...

. It promotes lifestyle changes such as a low

glycemic index The glycemic (glycaemic) index (GI; ) is a number from 0 to 100 assigned to a food, with pure glucose arbitrarily given the value of 100, which represents the relative rise in the blood glucose level two hours after consuming that food. The GI of ...

diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

calorie restriction Calorie restriction (CR, also known as caloric restriction or energy restriction) is a dietary regimen that reduces the energy intake from foods and beverages without incurring malnutrition. The possible effect of calorie restriction on body w ...

exercise Exercise or workout is physical activity that enhances or maintains fitness and overall health. It is performed for various reasons, including weight loss or maintenance, to aid growth and improve strength, develop muscles and the cardio ...

, drinking

green tea Green tea is a type of tea made from the leaves and buds of the '' Camellia sinensis'' that have not undergone the withering and oxidation process that creates oolong teas and black teas. Green tea originated in China in the late 1st millenn ...

and alkalinized water, and other changes to daily living. They also promote aggressive supplementation to make up for nutrient deficiencies they believe are common in

Western society Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, refers to the Cultural heritage, internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompas ...

. In contrast to his previous book '' The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life'', in which he recommended a diet with 10% of calories from

fat In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

, in this book, Kurzweil recommends consuming less than one third of calories from

carbohydrate A carbohydrate () is a biomolecule composed of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms. The typical hydrogen-to-oxygen atomic ratio is 2:1, analogous to that of water, and is represented by the empirical formula (where ''m'' and ''n'' ...

s (and less than one sixth of calories in his low-carbohydrate diet) and consuming 25% of calories from fat. The book states that the purpose of these changes is to obtain and maintain idyllic health so that an individual can extend his or her life as long as possible. The authors believe that within the next 20 to 50 years technology will advance to the point where much of the aging process will be conquered, and degenerative diseases eliminated. The book is peppered with side notes on these futuristic topics, showing how current research is leading us toward

life extension Life extension is the concept of extending the human lifespan, either modestly through improvements in medicine or dramatically by increasing the maximum lifespan beyond its generally-settled biological limit of around 125 years. Several resea ...

, and explaining how future technologies such as

nanotechnology Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ...

and

bioengineering Biological engineering or bioengineering is the application of principles of biology and the tools of engineering to create usable, tangible, economically viable products. Biological engineering employs knowledge and expertise from a number ...

might change the way humans live their lives. Ray Kurzweil discusses these topics at further length in his 2005 book ''

The Singularity Is Near ''The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology'' is a 2005 non-fiction book about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. A sequel book, '' The Singularity Is Nearer'', was released on J ...

''. A follow-up on ''Fantastic Voyage'', ''Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever'', was released on April 28, 2009.

Organization

*Chapter 1: You can live long enough to live forever *Chapter 2: The bridges to come *Chapter 3: Our personal journeys *Chapter 4: Food and water *Chapter 5: Carbohydrates and the glycemic load *Chapter 6: Fat and protein *Chapter 7: You are what you digest *Chapter 8: Change your weight for life in one day *Chapter 9: The problem with sugar (and insulin) *Chapter 10: Ray's personal program *Chapter 11: The promise of genomics *Chapter 12: Inflammation—the latest "smoking gun" *Chapter 13: Methylation—critically important to your health *Chapter 14: Cleaning up the mess: Toxins and detoxification *Chapter 15: The real cause of heart disease and how to prevent it *Chapter 16: The prevention and early detection of cancer *Chapter 17: Terry's personal program *Chapter 18: Your brain: The power of thinking...and of ideas *Chapter 19: Hormones and aging, hormones of youth *Chapter 20: Other hormones of youth: Sex hormones *Chapter 21: Aggressive supplementation *Chapter 22: Keep moving: The power of exercise *Chapter 23: Stress and balance *Epilogue

Criticisms

One claim in the book has been called pseudoscientific. Dr. Stephen Lower, retired Professor of Chemistry at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a Public university, public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It maintains three campuses in Greater Vancouver, respectively located in Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, British Columbia, Surrey, and ...

, disputes some of the book's statements about alkaline water, claiming that "Ionized water" is nothing more than sales fiction; the term is meaningless to chemists." Kurzweil and Grossman counter this specific criticism directly in their Reader Q&A.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough To Live Forever 2004 non-fiction books Biogerontology Biomedical engineering Books about life extension Books by Ray Kurzweil Medical books Rodale, Inc. books Technology books

Organization

Criticisms

See also

References

External links