Life Extension

When a former member of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Science Fiction Society, comic book author, and technical advisor for a science fiction film claimed that he and his partner knew the secret to decelerating the effects of aging on the human body, it was bound to raise a few eyebrows. But without Durk Pearson, life extension might not have been as popularly studied, pondered, and accepted (by some) as it is today.

Despite his love of science fiction, Durk Pearson, an MIT graduate who majored in the fields of biology, psychology, and physics, seems to have the credentials for a life extension scientist and researcher of the capacity of the human mind. His partner Sandy Shaw likewise studied science (chemistry and zoology) at UCLA.

It is Pearson and Shaw's self-proclaimed love of reading scientific and medical journals and keeping up with the latest trends in diet-related and medical discoveries that led them to outline their own causes for aging in the human body. With these results in mind, Pearson and Shaw designed a supplement-based diet to combat deterioration and degeneration in cells.

Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw's impact on the community of life extension began after Pearson and Shaw's 1982 book Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach. Life Extension is widely credited as bringing the concepts and aims of the life extension movement-to one day find a "cure" to aging and to delay "natural" death so that humans live hundreds of healthy, young, active years-to the forefront of the public mind.

Life Extension is the bible of the Sandy Shaw and Durk Pearson Life Extension supplement diet. In Life Extension, Pearson and Shaw outline six cause of aging, most of which had to do with free radicals, unstable parts of molecules in the body that are formed when weak molecular bonds are split. This is most often due to outside factors such as pollution, cigarette smoke, and radiation.

While free radicals can occur in the body in low doses and only slowly contribute to deterioration, the main idea behind the Sandy Shaw and Durk Pearson Life Extension supplement diet is that in excess, free radicals bring about the effects of aging far more quickly.

It is thanks to Life Extension and the Sandy Shaw and Durk Pearson Life Extension supplement diet that the public first became aware of antioxidants and how taking antioxidants in supplemental form can slow down the destruction of free radicals in the body.

Life Extension not only introduced the world to the Sandy Shaw and Durk Pearson Life Extension supplement diet, but it gave tips on living well, living healthy, and living longer, covering everything from exercise to eating to sexual habits. Shaw and Pearson's subsequent books The Life Extension Companion (1984) and The Life Extension Weight Loss Manual (1987) enhanced the first Life Extension book's mantra of living well.

Perhaps the greatest effect of the Sandy Shaw and Durk Pearson Life Extension supplement diet and Shaw and Pearson's mission to spread their life extension message is their court battles with the FDA, which began in 1992. After years of battling with the FDA about the FDA's regulations on health claims in regards to supplements, Shaw and Pearson won the case for the Sandy Shaw and Durk Pearson Life Extension supplement diet in 1999.

Shaw and Pearson continue to try and get the FDA to allow more freedoms for the study of life extension and the promotion of supplement usage. For more information on the Sandy Shaw and Durk Pearson Life Extension supplement diet, visit the Life Extension Foundation at lef.org.