Saturday, February 12, 2005

Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S Lodge

I enjoyed this book immensely. Well to be honest only about 1/3 of this book - but that 1/3 is well worth reading. The chapters by Henry Lodge are those that I would recommend that you read. You can skip the others frankly. The key takeaways from this book are that exercise helps set your mode from winter to spring, and diet based upon sugar and fat fool your digestion that you are eating a massive meal. These two keys lead to huge ramifications on your health and well-being. Lodge gives his theories an evolutionary background, and all of the studies he cites (and I've read them!) are all congruent with what he proposes.

Publisher's Weekly: Believing they have a unique approach for improving men's lives, Crowley, a former litigator, and Lodge, a board-certified internist, collaborated to write this "evolutionary" health program. The authors base their plan on the idea that instead of looking forward to decades of pain as the body slowly deteriorates, it's possible to live as if you were 50, maybe even younger, for the rest of your life. Yet with the exception of "Harry's First Rule"—exercise at least six days a week—there isn't much that's new or groundbreaking in their agenda. Most recommendations fall under the "common sense" umbrella, though these suggestions may be news to many men, who aren't as steeped in the world of health and fitness as most women are (they may find the chapters dealing with nutrition and biology particularly informative). The authors' method of proffering their philosophy is rather trite, however, and their cavalier demeanor belies the significance of what they have to say. More than one-third of the book is devoted to how and why they came up with this program based on their own lives, with special attention to 70-year-old Crowley's impressive abilities (he says he can ski better now than he could 20 years ago). All told, this manual for healthy living offers sound, if unoriginal, advice with some hackneyed padding.