Quick Reads: “Spring Chicken” by Bill Gifford


Spring Chicken

By Bill Gifford

GRAND CENTRAL

You’ve got to be a tad loony to think you can defy death, and so it is with Bill Gifford’s cast of anti-aging researchers and obsessives, whose strategies range from testosterone shots to self-starvation. But nothing seems to beat sheer will: People who thrive with age—take the 75-year-old woman who runs a sub-seven-minute mile—don’t get there with magic pills, hormones, or even red wine. What they do is move around like crazy—”use it or lose it,” Gifford explains. In one chapter, he introduces us to Okinawa, home to the world’s highest concentration of centenarians, who’ve discovered the best longevity method of all: ikigai, a reason to get up in the morning.

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