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In new memoir, senior aging researcher Doug Seals chronicles the work of science when conditions aren’t ideal

Imagine a biomedical research laboratory. Chances are, visions of gleaming equipment, climate-controlled rooms, and the hum of precision instruments come to mind.��

But what if that lab was really a century-old gymnasium plagued by electrical outages, noise and temperatures that swing with the seasons? Those are just some of the challenges Doug Seals faced while establishing one of the most productive aging research programs in the country.��

Seals, a distinguished professor in the �鶹��Ѱ����� Department of Integrative Physiology, recently published a memoir chronicling more than four decades in biomedical research. In his own words, the book isn’t all about the science; it’s also about what it takes to succeed when conditions aren’t in your favor.��

Doug Seals, a distinguished professor in the �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder Department of Integrative Physiology, recently published a memoir chronicling more than four decades in biomedical research.��

An unlikely scientist

Seals grew up in an under-educated family, his parents having only elementary school educations, and was the first in his extended family to attend college. As an undergraduate, he majored in education and business administration hoping to coach football.��

A research career wasn’t on his radar.��

“However, the program had a mandatory requirement to perform a research thesis, and I discovered that I really liked the research process,” Seals says.��

That discovery set him on the path to where he is today.��

Seals went on to earn his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then completed his postdoctoral training at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and at the University of Iowa before landing his first faculty position. He would eventually join �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder’s Department of Integrative Physiology (the Department of Kinesiology at the time) in 1992.��

“Each stop along the journey provides a learning opportunity, and you take the new tool and add it to your toolbox,” he reflects.��

Seals’ new memoir details the unique trajectory of his career and how little of it was the byproduct of elite circumstances.��

“I had no conventional mentoring in graduate school (I did not belong to a ‘laboratory’), so I learned how to work on my own, independently,” he says, “which turned out to be helpful later.”��

Bringing science to the gym

The title of Seals’ memoir, A Life of Science—In Gyms, isn’t a metaphor. For 30 years, Seals and a small group of colleagues ran NIH -funded research programs out of on the �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder campus before moving out in 2020. The building, constructed in the 1920s, was never designed with biomedical research in mind.��

Yet Seals and the other faculty found a way to make it work.

His idea for the book grew out of a period of reflection during the pandemic.��

“As I was writing a series of personal commentaries during and post-pandemic, I began to think about penning a memoir of my unusual life of science in gyms,” he says.��

He started by authoring a historical scientific article about the Carlson years, then realized the story was bigger than could be told in a journal piece.��

“I decided to expand that story to include my earlier life and more details about the challenges I have overcome, which necessitated the longer narrative format of a memoir.”��

The stories he chose to include during the writing process are, by his own account, the ones readers may find most compelling, particularly how Seals and his colleagues built a top academic research department at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder.��

“For example, I share how I obtained the funds to start the first research seminar series in the department . . . the challenges we faced performing NIH-funded research in an old gym designed for sport and how I eventually took matters into my own hands to upgrade our research facilities when the campus did not do so,” he says.��

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In his memoir, Doug Seals details the "challenges we faced performing NIH-funded research in an old gym designed for sport."

Despite the conditions, his lab secured continuous NIH funding, produced more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and trained more than 300 scientists across career stages from undergraduate to junior faculty.��

Living long and living well

Woven through the memoir’s recap of institutional challenges is the science Seals has dedicated his career to. His lab’s central focus is the concept of extending “healthspan”—not just how long we live, but how long we live well.��

“In biomedical aging research, ‘healthspan’ generally refers to the period of life that you retain good physical and cognitive function and are free of serious disease, whereas ‘lifespan’ is the entire period of life,” Seals explains.��

He notes the two don’t always align. A long life shadowed by disability or chronic disease is a far different proposition than one that stays healthy into its final decades.��

Seals has spent 40 years researching what tips the scale in favor of the latter.��

Seals has clear advice for those seeking to improve their healthspan: “If I could recommend that people do only one thing, it would be to exercise regularly—to be physically active. No other strategy comes close to exerting the health benefits of regular exercise on physical and cognitive function and prevention of chronic diseases,” he says.��

Diet, not smoking, and other factors matter.��

“But the effects of regular exercise cannot be fully mimicked by any other lifestyle behavior or pill,” Seals adds.��

In control of your fate

One of the more challenging aspects of writing the memoir, Seals admits, was choosing what to talk about.��

“The most difficult challenge was trying to make the book compelling to both scientists and non-scientists. I wanted to provide a lot of ‘insider insight’ for the layperson, while not boring academics reading the story,” he says.��

Through his careful curation of stories, the message he hopes to land is straightforward.��

“The main message of the memoir is that you don’t need to come from the most educated family background, attend the most elite institutes of higher education, join the faculty of a top-ranked department or have the best research facilities to achieve and sustain success in your profession,” he says.��

“You are the ‘master of your fate,’ not your environment. Your determination, creativity and resilience are much more important to the outcome than external factors,” Seals adds.��

Seals lived this lesson before ever writing it down. Sitting atop the resume of a 41-year career built, improbably, in a gymnasium, he fears the perspective that has carried him through it all is going out of fashion.��

“I worry that more recent generations may not fully understand this simple point of view,” he says.��

The memoir is his attempt to make sure they do.��

For anyone who has ever felt that the odds are stacked against them, Seals offers one last reminder: “Your personal agency is much more important in achieving your life goals than your immediate environment.”��

A preview of A Life of Science—In Gyms! can be��.��

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