Real Age: Are You as Young as You Can Be?: Amazon.co.uk: Michael F. Roizen: Books

Review

..".The book will be a major contribution to the public health of all countries whose people read it..."-- E.M. Papper, M.D., Professor, University of Miami .."."RealAge--Are You as Young as You Could Be?" is a welcome 'how to' guide to doing what we all want, live longer and more healthy lives..." -- J.G. Reeves, M.D., Professor and Chairman of the Dept. of Anesthesiology, Duke University Medical Center..".This is a different method - based on some real science...the program's characteristics provide improved communication to an increasing number of people...I am only sorry that it comes at this late date when so many opportunities to delay my aging have passed me by..."-- William K. Hamilton, M.D., Associate Dean, University of California San Francisco..".I like the "RealAge" concept for what it might do for motivation...the intergration of risks and switch to the positive might make prevention more palatable..."-- Arthur S. Keats, M.D., Section Chief Division of Cardio Anesthesiology, Texas Heart Institute..".Dr. Mike Roizen champions the use of RealAge to encourage each of us to make decisions on our health needs based on the best available scientific evidence...each patient can weigh the benefits to their own well-being and develop a course of action that best suits their lifestyle..."-- Paul G. Barash, M.D., Attending Anesthesiologist, Yale-New Haven Hospital

Product Description

What is aging? Aging is not a mysterious metaphysical phenomenon. Aging happens in the particulars. Your arteries become clogged. Your arthritis flares up. Age is not just a chronological measurement; it's the rate at which the primary internal guardians of health--your cardiovascular and immune systems--decline.

While your chronological age is fixed, your biological age may be years older--or younger--depending on a combination of factors. "RealAge" offers a revolutionary, systematic program that calculates the aging effect of more than 100 different health behaviors--ranging from diet and medication to stress control and chronic smoking--and enables you to assess your own biological age. Most important, it shows you how to design a specific path to improving or reversing your own aging trajectory.

Developed by Dr. Michael F. Roizen, chair of anesthesia and critical care at the University of Chicago and preventive gerontologist, along with four other scientists, the RealAge program is based on cutting-edge scientific research. Dr. Roizen and his team have pored over 25,000 medical studies, evaluating what they tell us about aging and what they tell us about the prevention of aging.In "RealAge," they present the complete results of their analysis for the first time.

Each chapter covers a broad health topic--for example, how the right vitamins and supplements, exercise, or diet can be used to control how your genes affect you--and calculates the RealAge advantage you will gain by adopting a specific behavior. Charts, fact sheets, and tests give you specific choices to make and describe benefits to be gained so you can measure your success.

Suggested behavior changes arerated in order of difficulty so you can decide whether the result is worth the effort.

Ultimately, this program is about maintaining your health. The better condition you are in, the better prepared you will be to fight the factors that age you. "RealAge" demonstrates that you can have more control over the aging process. It makes science simple and its promise is irresistible: You may live as young at seventy as you did at forty-four.

Remeber your high school reunion?

Even though everyone was the same chronological age, people no longer looked the same. Some wore the years well, staying young and exuberant despite the passage of time, whereas others looked as if they had aged ten years more than everyone else--and probably had.

Did you know that:

Financial stress can make your RealAge two to thirty-two years older?

The difference between having the ideal blood pressure 115/76--and high blood pressure--higher than 140/90--can make a RealAge difference of more than twenty years?

A tablet of aspirin a day can make your RealAge 1.9 years younger?

Flossing daily and seeing a dentist and dental hygienist every six months can make your RealAge 6.4 years younger?

In" RealAge" you will discover many other easy-to-institute Age Reduction Strategies that will enable you to live longer and younger.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

STOP "STALLED" THINKING ABOUT HAVING A HEALTHY LONG LIFE 29 May 2004

By Donald Mitchell HALL OF FAME TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

An untapped frontier of medicine is how to have a longer period of good health before we die. Many people actually fear long life, because that may extend pain and disability. Yet we all know disabled people who beam with joy in every breath they take. REAL AGE is a good look at factors that affect longeveity, and allows you to understand how your habits and circumstances are likely to affect your life span.

In doing this, Dr. Roizen helps you overcome your Misconceptions about what is and is not healthy as well as overcome Communication stalls about the latest medical research that you may not know about. Compiling this work also helps you overcome your Procrastination stall by encouraging you to take action now. The book is also good for the Disbelief stall (if we take time to live a healthier life, we will shortchange something else and get even more stress -- wrong!). The book also attacks the Ugly Duckling stall: causing us to look hard at that which we usually ignore -- our most unheatlhy habits. One thing about the book is unclear to me, however, the research seems tied to mortality . . . yet Dr. Roizen claims that we will extend the period of healthy life this way.

My impression of the scientific research is that it normally measures the frequency of disease and mortality. I am a little skeptical that all of these things will increase my period of "healthy life" rather than my longeveity. The statistician in me also suspects that many of the variables are auto-correlated (they are measuring the same phenomena) so that we are double counting. He also seems to understate the benefits of certain factors. For example, if all of your ancestors lived to be over 100 that would seem to add much more to your life expectancy than would the amount that his charts suggest. Further, if these ancestors were hale and hearty to the end versus were in nursing homes for 40 years would also seem pertinent to "youthful long life".

Like any form of new thinking, this book raises good questions, points the way to some better answers, and suggests the need for different research and analysis to get even better answers in the future. I found his understanding of nutrition to be a little light, for example.

Take what you read here without a grain of salt (most agree we get too much) and you will be all right. Take this book too literally and you will run the risk of misleading yourself.

If you feel better, or key health measures improve (such as your blood pressure) after tryng the ideas in the book, go with it. You are probably on the right track.

A way to continue this research would be to increase the number of measures that physicians keep about the quality of life that patients experience who do these things that are recommended. Locate the best practices for extending quality of life (both finding out WHAT to do and HOW to encourage people to do these things). Combine the best practices in new ways to get the best future result. Imagine what the ideal best practices are and approach them (such as reinforcing these good habits with young people, something not discussed in the book), getting the right motivations and support involved, and repeating the process. Then you'll make great strides!

I hope Dr. Roizen continues his research along these lines that I have just outlined. In the meantime, please do read, think about, and apply the lessons here that make sense to you, make you feel better, and show demonstrable impact on the quality of and length of your life.

Good luck and good health to you all!

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A must-read health book. 12 April 1999

By A Customer

With the unfolding development of the internet and its related technologies (still quite crude really), mankind is about to make another giant leap forward thereby making life infinitely more interesting and exciting. So I assume people will somehow like to prolong their stay here on earth. From a broad perspective, this book explains the dynamics of what accelerates or decelerates our aging process. Good health to all!!!