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Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being (Hardcover)
by Andrew Weil, M.D.
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Life, Health |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
A must read for the average person who is trying to gain insight on healthy living from diet, herbal supplements, stress reduction and exercise. |
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Author: Andrew Weil, M.D.
Publisher: Knopf
Pub. in: October, 2005
ISBN: 0375407553
Pages: 304
Measurements: 9.7 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00483
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- MSL Picks -
What's realistic about this book is that it's based upon realistic concepts. Many of the old and recent "aging" books are re-hashed bombardments that focus on the perpetually futile attempt to "turn back the clock." We know this can't be done. Same now, as Ponce De Leon.
Dr. Weil calmly and convincingly gravitates toward acceptance and realization, rather than denial. Botox injections and wrinkle creams may help those who use it. It's their choice, and it's fine as long as it's realized that these are cosmetic band-aids. Using food (nutrition), and the physical & mental, can provide ourselves with better quality years as we age. Better lifestyles, less ailments, less pain, lower medical bills, and more longevity.
Convincingly, Weil notes basic nutrition, macro-nutrients, EFA Omegas 3 & 6, vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidents, and the G.I. Index and Load. Essential information for attaining a quality of life after the early and mid-sixties, when the body begins to reveal the natural effects of aging more significantly. Reducing stress levels via meditation, Yoga, and breathing exercises can be done at home and for free.
Natural Ingredients and activities also act as an insurace policy. These Items and actions need not be expensive. And, they ward-off the negative consequences of neglecting ourselves.
Dr. Andrew Weil advocates avoiding animal fats (saturated fats) and processed foods. (The food coloring chemical Tartrazine is in over 85% of processed food in the United States.) Hydrongenated oils (often in breads) are bad for us, and there is an explanation in laymens' terms of specifically, why.
He did cite reasearch from areas of the world that have a high percentage of older populations.
The author has a very pleasant and comforting writing style.
Those with the basic nutritional and supplement knowledge may know many of the concepts and facts discussed, but there are lots of additional pieces of information and facts that can prove beneficial.
(From quoting K. Johnson, USA)
Target readers:
General readers
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Andrew Weil, M.D. is the author of ten previous books, including Spontaneous Healing, Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, Eating Well for Optimum Health, and, with Rosie Daley, The Healthy Kitchen. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he is clinical professor of medicine and director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. He writes Self Healing, a monthly newsletter, and maintains the Web site DrWeil.com. More of his work on aging can be found at www.healthyaging. com. He lives in Arizona.
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From the Publisher:
Spontaneous Healing… Eight Weeks to Optimum Health… Eating Well for Optimum Health… The Healthy Kitchen – in each of his widely acclaimed, best-selling books, Dr. Andrew Weil has been an authoritative and companionable guide through a uniquely effective combination of traditional and nontraditional approaches to health and healthy living. Now he gives us a book about aging that is unlike any other in the breadth and depth of its information and understanding. Hugely informative, practical, and uplifting, it is infused with the engaging candor and common sense that have been the hallmarks of all his books.
At the heart of Healthy Aging is Dr. Weil’s belief that although aging is an irreversible process, there are myriad things we can do to keep our minds and bodies in good working order through all phases of life. To that end, he draws on the new science of biogerentology (the biology of aging) as well as on the secrets of healthy longevity – diet, activity, and attitude – that he has gathered firsthand from cultures around the world. In Part One – “The Science and Philosophy of Healthy Aging” – he explains how the body ages, and he explores the impact of gender, genes, environ- ment, and lifestyle on an individual’s experience and perception of the process of aging. He describes the various would-be elixirs of life extension – herbs, hormones, and antiaging “medicines” – separating myth from fact and clearly delineating the difference between the spurious notions of preventing or reversing the process of aging and the real possibilities of inhibiting or delaying the onset of diseases that become more likely as we age. He writes movingly about the ways in which an acceptance of aging can be a significant part of doing it well, and of recognizing and appreciating the great rewards of growing older: depth and richness of experience, complexity of being, serenity, wisdom, and its own kind of power and grace.
In Part Two – “How to Age Gracefully” – Weil details an easy-to- implement Anti-inflammatory Diet that will protect the immune system and aid your body in resisting and adapting to the changes that time brings. And he provides extensive practical advice on exercise; preventive health care; stress management; physical, mental, and emotional flexibility; and spiritual enhancement – all of which can help you achieve and maintain the best health throughout the lifelong process of aging.
Healthy Aging – a book for people of all ages – is Andrew Weil’s most important and far-reaching book yet.
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Immortality
Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever. (Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA Contest)
Our attitudes toward aging and our responses to the changes in appearance that aging brings are totally colored by our knowledge that we are moving inexorably toward death. It is not my intention to write about death or the fear of dying in this book, but I find it impossible to avoid mentioning them as the source of our negative feelings about aging, which are entirely based in fear.
Some species age more slowly than we do, others more rapidly. I have lived with dogs for many years and have watched several canine companions grow up, grow old, and die. As I write, I am looking at a photograph from several years ago of two of my Rhodesian ridgebacks on the front step of my house in southern Arizona. One is a young male, Jambo, who could not be more than a year old in the photo. He is standing—sleek, handsome, with all the vitality of youth. The other, B.T., must have been fifteen, very old for such a large breed. She is lying down, her face completely white. Soon she was unable to get up. I helped her through her decline but finally had to euthanize her a day before her sixteenth birthday.
Jambo is now eight years old, still in his prime, still sleek, handsome, and vital, with a deep, soulful personality that makes him an ideal companion animal. Most people who meet him comment on how good-looking he is, the perfect combination of strength and beauty. Sometimes if I am reading in bed at night, I invite him to come up and sit beside me for a few minutes. If I rub his chest in a certain way, he looks up toward the ceiling, extending his neck in a posture of noble contentment that I find very appealing. But when he is in this position, I cannot avoid noticing the first white hairs on his otherwise black chin. And whenever I see them, I also cannot avoid noticing that there are more than the last time I looked.
I know from experience that this dusting of white heralds the changes to come, that one day he, too, will be frosted with the white of old age; and when I see those signs of aging on his strong chin, I think about the disappearance of black from my own facial hair, about the unalterable passage of time, the relentless change of physical bodies as we decline. I think about the pain of the loss of previous companions, about separation from beings I love and who love me, about my own fear of the end and the sadness that is never separable from the joy of human experience. And all of this has come from the observation of a few white hairs on the chin of my dog.
We all sense the finiteness of life, and we all fantasize about living forever. Is it any wonder, then, that we put so much effort into denying the fact of our aging with cosmetics, plastic surgery, and verbal deceits (“You look so much younger!”), and why we are so enthralled by proponents of antiaging medicine who tell us that we can stop or even turn back the clock?
Immortality is an alluring concept, but I wonder how many of us have thought through its meaning and implications, which turn out not to be so simple. If you lived beyond the normal human life span, what would your life be like? I invite you to look at immortality with me through the lens of biology. Apart from framing this discussion of healthy aging, it will give you a chance to become acquainted with the latest findings of scientists who are studying the aging process. All of the practical advice I have to give you in Part Two of this book is based on this scientific evidence* and grounded in a philosophy that rejects immortality and eternal youthfulness as unworthy goals.
A tension between mortality and immortality is played out on all levels of our being, from our cells to our psyches. Understanding it will help you accept the fact of aging and motivate you to learn to do it as gracefully as possible.
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Let’s start with immortality on the cellular level. Until 1961, researchers believed that, in theory at least, normal cells, taken from the body and grown in laboratories, should be able to grow and divide forever if their needs were met: if they were provided with a constant supply of food and if their waste products were removed. In that year, Leonard Hayflick and Paul Moorhead at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia demonstrated that this was not so, that all normal cells have a fixed limit on the number of times they can divide in order to replace themselves. This number is now known as the Hayflick limit. Hayflick, currently a professor of anatomy at the School of Medicine, at the University of California, San Francisco, is one of the foremost biogerontologists. His book How and Why We Age, first published in 1994, is the best I have found on the subject. I recommend it highly.
It turns out that the Hayflick limit varies from species to species and often correlates with life span. With a Hayflick limit of about 50 cell divisions, humans are the longest-lived mammals. Mice, which live about three years, have a limit of 15 divisions; for chickens, with an average life span of twelve years, the number is about 25. At the extreme of longevity, the Galápagos tortoise, which can live for 175 years, has a Hayflick limit of 110.
HeLa cells, however, can divide indefinitely. They do not senesce. They continue to grow and divide as long as they have nutrients, oxygen, space, and means of getting rid of their wastes. HeLa cells were the first human cells to be successfully cultured outside the body in large numbers. Given their longevity, they revolutionized biological and medical research and quickly established themselves in laboratories around the world. HeLa cells ignore the Hayflick limit for human cells. In a sense, they are immortal.
I was taught that “HeLa” was composed of the initial letters of the name of a woman, Helen Lane, who was said to be the original source of the cells. This turns out not to have been true. The real source was Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American woman from Baltimore, whose story only came out years after her cells were growing in prodigious numbers everywhere.
Lacks was born to a family of tobacco pickers in Virginia, moved to Baltimore in 1943 at the age of twenty-three, married, and had five children in quick succession. Then, early in 1951, she noticed she had abnormal vaginal bleeding. She went to a clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, where a doctor found an ominous-looking, quarter-sized tumor on her uterine cervix. He biopsied it and sent the tissue sample off for diagnosis. It was malignant. Shortly afterward, Lacks returned to the clinic to begin radium treatments, but before the first one, another tissue sample from the tumor was taken and sent, this time to George Gey, head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins.
Gey, with his wife, Margaret, had been trying to find human cells that would grow well outside the body. His greater goal was to study cancer in order to find a cure. Henrietta Lacks’s biopsy gave him exactly what he needed. Her cancer cells grew in test tubes as no other cells had ever grown, vigorously and aggressively. Of course, this did not augur well for their donor. Within months, Lacks’s tumor had metastasized throughout her body, creating tumors in all her organs until she expired painfully in a racially segregated ward of The Johns Hopkins Hospital on October 4, 1951, eight months after diagnosis. On the same day, George Gey went on national television to announce his breakthrough in cancer research. He held up a vial of Lacks’s cells, calling them, for the first time, HeLa cells.
HeLa cells were soon in great demand. The Geys sent vials of them to colleagues, who sent them to other colleagues, and before long Henrietta Lacks’s cancerous cells were multiplying in laboratories throughout the world. They made possible the development of the first polio vaccine, were used to study the effects of drugs and radiation, genetic mechanisms, and many diseases, and were even sent off the planet on a space shuttle to see how cultured human cells would grow in zero gravity. If the HeLa cells worldwide were added up, they would total many, many times the weight of the human being in which they originated.
The saga of Henrietta Lacks raises uncomfortable ethical and social questions, because she never gave informed consent for her cells to be used in this way, neither she nor her family was ever compensated for their use (they did not even find out about all this until twenty-four years after the fact), and none of the scientists who worked with HeLa cells ever acknowledged her contribution. But that is another story.
Why can HeLa cells go on living, perhaps forever, when the human being who produced them is long dead and when most cells senesce after a fixed number of divisions? What determines how many times cells from different organisms can divide? The answers are encoded in DNA, our genetic material. DNA is contained in rodlike structures called chromosomes in the nucleus of every cell. When cells are about to divide in order to reproduce and make more tissue, chromosomes have to replicate themselves, so that each daughter cell will have the same genetic information as its parent cell. The DNA spirals that comprise the chromosomes uncoil so that the genetic code can be copied to make duplicate strands, but each time this process occurs, something is lost: a piece of the end of each strand.
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Gary Weatherspoon (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
This book offers a lot of wise and thoughtful information and perspectives. I like the respect he shows for viewpoints with which he does not agree but treats them respectfully anyway and lets the reader decide what to pursue. The principal flaw in the book is that he operates from a basic point of view that one diet and general health plan fits all. Other books show that a diet fitted to blood type is more appropriate, and there are simply different strokes for different folks. He seems to think that everything that works for him will work for everyone else. But much of what he suggests will be good for many people. His diet information is more suited for blood type As than for blood type Os. And the blood type differentiation of how people differ genetically is just a starting point regarding which I wish more people would pursue to a more sophicsticated level, but it seems that even a complex medical science cannot handle simple individual variation with any degree of accuracy and appropriateness. |
Richardo (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
My wife and I bought three books recently to help re-charge our health and fitness motivation. They were: Slow Burn by Fredrick Hahn, and then two books recommended by a health guru friend, Joe X by Avery Hunicutt, and this book, Healthy Aging by Andrew Weil. To make a long story short we gave thumbs-down to the Slow Burn workout (too painful) and thumbs-up to the Joe X workout(something we enjoy doing). As for Healthy Aging, with some embarrassment, I highly recommend this book. I say with embarrasment because, while I had never read any of Dr. Weil's previous books, I used to think he was some kind of a new-age nut & berry quack. I'm guilty of judging books by their cover; not used to associating a portly, bearded, bald guy with fitness. I was wrong and now publicly appologize for my pig-headedness. He may eat nuts and berries, but he's definitely not a quack, and now I wouldn't be surprised if he out lives all of us.
The book is much more grounded on hard science than I expected. And though there is a good amount of science in the book, there is nothing to fear. Dr. Weil has an engaging and polished writing style. He not only makes it easy for the lay person to follow along, but he makes medical research an interesting story, an enjoyable read. I now understand why his books have become so popular: he knows how to communicate. The first hint that my opinion of him was all wet was his discussion of the battle going on behind the scenes between the hard core medical researchers and the "fountain of youth" profiteers (my term, not his). I expected the author to side with those that believed the aging process could at least be suspended if not reversed. To my surprise he did not. In fact the underlying theme of the entire book is that people are making a mistake if they lead their lives as if life extension and age reversing technology are upon us. He makes a strong technical case and almost a desperate plea to not succumb to the snake oil. His recommendation is to forget about anti-aging schemes and avoid obscesing about life extension. Instead he says to focus on preventing or minimizing the impact of age-related disease and how to age gracefully. It may not be the message we want to hear but I suspect it is the more correct choice. In any case, I found Dr. Weil's telling of the political battle taking place fascinating, and it makes it easier to understand what's going on with the sensationalizing headlines and sales pitches I see in the popular press and TV.
I next expected the book to be all generalities with few specifics my wife and I could actually do to help us "age gracefully." I was wrong again. The second half of the book is filled with actionable specifics, much having to do with diet, but many other non-diet matters as well. Some times he would get very specific, e.g. not just any olive oil but what kind of olive oil, that kind of thing. Throughout the book I was impressed by how the author always gave both sides of an argument in seemingly unbiased fashion before giving his recommendation and why. And I learned quite a few things I didn't know. One small example: I've noted how popular press diet doctors have steered folks away from carrots because of their higher glycemic index number. Dr. Weil explains why this doesn't make a lot of sense (better to make choices based on glycemic load number, not glycemic index number).
Finally, there is another underlying theme in this book that I think has a lot of merit: Dr. Weil puts much faith (based on science of course) in the concept of minimizing and managing inflammation in the body. As always he explains what it is, why it happens, the good, the bad, and then why he recommends what he does with regard to diet, medication, and exercise. My wife and I also now understand why our guru friend recommended the two books he did, as they are very complimentary. For all I know we are the last two people that had never read an Andrew Weil book, and all this is old news to you. If not, order yourself a copy or get to the library now.
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
If you have not read one of Dr. Weil's books before, I think you will enjoy his writing style. His tone is very conversational, you feel as though you are talking to a friend while you are reading his books, this one included. Dr. Weil has a gift for taking a dry and complicated subject and explaining it in a manner that anyone can understand. The purpose of this book is NOT to stop aging, but rather to prevent or minimize the impact of age-related disease, to learn how to live long and well, and to age gracefully.
The doctor does a wonderful job of explaining why and how we age. Even without an educational background in the sciences I was able to comprehend advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and how they cross link (form abnormal bonds) to adjacent protein strands leading to inflammatory and autoimmune responses. If you have been reading much about nutrition or health lately you know that inflammation is the new "hot topic" in medicine linked to almost everything. According to Cardiologists inflammation is more important in determining heart health than cholesterol. After reading Dr. Weil's explanation of inflammatory response this concept now makes much more sense to me.
Dr. Weil explains in great detail which nutrients the body requires to function properly and how to incorporate them into your life. He also goes into much detail about dietary suggestions. These are pretty much what you would expect, but he does a thorough job of explaining why he is making these recommendations, which I personally find very helpful.
The doctor also goes into great detail regarding his recommendations for physical activity and how this should change as we age. The concept of a pool disinfected without chlorine was new to me, and one that I was very happy to know is an option.
If you want to age gracefully, but feel as though you need more information, this is a wonderful book on the subject. I highly recommend this book to baby boomers looking for information on how to minimize or eliminate the impact of disease in our lives as we grow older. |
Barbara Best (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
Dr. Andrew Weil's new book Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being certainly lives up to its name. Written in an easy to read format with many helpful references, Dr. Weil covers all aspects of aging thoroughly. His expertise comes to us in a friendly, caring manner. I read this book from cover to cover upon receipt and find myself referring to it practically every day for help with all questions related to the maintenance of my health as I do my best to age in the best way possible. |
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