Younger Next Year for Women or Spark

Younger Next Year for Women: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy--Until You're 80 and Beyond

Author: Chris Crowley

Co-written by one of the country's most prominent internists, Dr. Henry "Harry" Lodge, and his star patient, the 73-year-old Chris Crowley, Younger Next Year for Women is a book of hope, a guide to aging without fear or anxiety. This is a book of hope, a guide to aging without fear or anxiety. Using the same inspired structure of alternating voices, Chris and Harry have recast material specifically for women, who already live longer and take better care of themselves than men. New material covers menopause and post-menopause, as well as cardiac disease, osteoporosis, sexuality, and more.

This is the book that can show us how to turn back our biological clocks—how to put off 70% of the normal problems of aging (weakness, sore joints, bad balance) and eliminate 50% of serious illness and injury. The key to the program is found in Harry's Rules: Exercise six days a week. Don't eat crap. Connect and commit to others. There are seven rules all together, based on the latest findings in cell physiology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and experimental psychology. Dr. Lodge explains how and why they work—and Chris Crowley, who is living proof of their effectiveness (skiing better today, for example, than he did twenty years ago), gives the just-as-essential motivation.

Both men and women can become functionally younger every year for the next five to ten years, then continue to live with newfound vitality and pleasure deep into our 80s and beyond.

Publishers Weekly

Crowley and Lodge rework their bestselling Younger Next Year (which targeted men) to address health and aging concerns for women. Former attorney Crowley's chatty voice alternates with internist-gerontologist Lodge's straightforward medical perspective. The authors promise that major lifestyle changes, including a six-days-a-week exercise regime, and a positive view of aging will make the "next third" of life-the stage after menopause-the most fulfilling. Because women live longer, are highly motivated for change and fear aging less than men do, the authors contend, they will reap great benefits from the program. Crowley and Lodge put their own spin on commonsense health essentials, with Lodge adding information on the latest antiaging breakthroughs. A variety of activities (biking, skiing, sailing, yoga) will likely make the intensive exercise plan more enjoyable. Although there is little new material, women may find the 71-year-old Crowley's cheerleading appealing-the old buddy tone of the previous edition is exchanged for that of a male "girlfriend"-and a great motivator not only for making lifestyle changes but for equating health with how one feels, not how one looks. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

“I loved the book! But why wait until you’re fifty? Younger Next Year for Women should be read by women from their twenties and beyond. It’s got all the tools that women need to achieve longer, sexier and more passionate lives.”
— Hilda Hutcherson, M.D., Codirector, New York Center for Women’s Sexual Health

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments: ix
Foreword by Gail Sheehy: xiii
Introduction: xxvii
PART ONE: TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR BODY

1. The Next Forty Years: 3
2. Lunch with Captain Midnight: 19
3. The New Science of Aging: 29
4. Swimming Against the Tide: 51
5. The Biology of Growth and Decay: Things That Go Bump in the Night: 70
6. Life Is an Endurance Event: Train for It: 89
7. The Biology of Exercise: 108
8. The Heart of the Matter: Aerobics: 127
9. The Kedging Trick: 147
10. A World of Pain: Strength Training: 168
11. The Biology of Strength Training: 182
12. “So, How Do I Look?”: 202
13. Chasing the Iron Bunny: 218
14. Don’t You Lose a Goddamn Pound!: 225
15. The Biology of Nutrition: Thinner Next Year: 244
16. The Drink: 261
17. Menopause: The Natural Transition: 268
    PART TWO: TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE
18. “Teddy Doesn’t Care!”: 287
19. The Limbic Brain and the Biology of Emotion: 294
20. Connect and Commit: 329
21. Relentless Optimism: 348
    APPENDIX
    Harry’s Rules: 361
    Author Notes: 363
    The Younger Next Year One-Size-Fits-All Exercise Program: 381

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

Author: John J Ratey

A groundbreaking and fascinating investigation into the transformative effects of exercise on the brain, from the bestselling author and renowned psychiatrist John J. Ratey, MD.

Did you know you can beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat? The evidence is incontrovertible: Aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance.

In SPARK, John J. Ratey, M.D., embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the way you think about your morning run---or, for that matter, simply the way you think

James Swanton - Library Journal

Ratey (psychiatry, Harvard Medical Sch.; A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain) presents much of the hard science documenting how the brain works and how exercise stimulates and strengthens neurochemical brain functions. Ratey aims to "deliver in plain English the inspiring science connecting exercise and the brain and demonstrate how it plays out in the lives of real people." He intersperses some lackluster, brief personal narratives with the latest brain research supporting the thesis that exercise throughout one's life stimulates neurogenesis, or the formation of new brain cells. Exercise, in addition to maintaining muscle tone and cardiovascular health, is thus "simply one of the best treatments we have for most psychiatric problems," helping to beat stress, panic attacks, and anxiety; sharpen intellect and cognitive skills; and combat the effects of aging and such related mental disorders as Alzheimer's. The book is especially useful as a layperson's guide to the brain and its neurochemistry; recommended for consumer health collections. (Glossary not seen.) [See Prepub Alert, LJ9/15/07.]