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Informationen zum Autor Walter M. II MD Bortz Klappentext "Here is a book on health that puts it all together-a book that gives you the feeling that a personal friend is sharing things of great value with you."-Norman Cousins! author of Anatomy of an Illness Do you expect to live to be 100-and remain healthy and active throughout your very long life? Walter M. Bortz! M.D.! a leading authority on aging! former co-chairman of the AMA-ANA Task Force on Aging! and faculty member at Stanford University! says you should. Drawing on a fascinating range of research into the human life span! he shows that America's thousands of centenarians are simply living out the healthy! active! natural life the human body was designed to achieve: one million hours! or 120 years. In this groundbreaking work! Dr. Bortz sets out the essential! controllable elements of longevity and spells out effective! dynamic strategies to help you prevent premature death and add decades of active! satisfying life. He outlines the basic practices you can start today-no matter what your age. And his program of eight simple directives includes both physical and psychological goals that feed the human spirit . . . and allow you to enjoy life fully for more years than you ever thought possible. PREFACE This is a book about aging. It will challenge everything you ever thought about the subject. First, We Live Too Short and Die Too Long will challenge the boundaries you probably place on the human life span. Exactly how long do you expect to live? The life insurance industry bets that for most of us it will be 75 years. But you’re an optimist, right? So you’ll plan on beating the odds and reaching your nineties. I contend, as do other scientists who have studied the dynamics of human life, that both of those estimates are far short. Several lines of evidence clearly place the human life span at a remarkable 120 years. I will detail my case in the chapters that follow; but for now, the most convincing facts may be those which are the most simple. Newspapers in Oakland, California, recently reported the death of local resident Arthur Reed, age 124. In Asan, Japan, Shigechiyo Isumi died on February 21, 1986, in his 121st year. Such longevity provides an inescapable inference—what is possible for one is possible for others. That’s quite a leap from the time of the first Caesar, when human life expectancy was 25 years; or from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the average American lived to the age of 49. Traditionally, this increase in life span has been explained by factors such as decreased infant mortality, eradication of communicable disease, and improvements in both nutrition and public hygiene. These most certainly are significant developments, but they only skirt the periphery of a more fundamental fact. We live longer because we are designed to live longer. And when we control anomalies such as disease, trauma, behavioral maladaptation, and self-destruction, the natural order of our lives prevails. Expanding our definition of longevity means expansion of terms such as middle age and old age. For example, if you are now 40 and a member of that bold, exceptional generation known as the baby boomers, you’ve been told by much of the media that you are reaching midlife. I challenge this contention. With prudence of prevention and health maintenance, you should think of yourself at a much younger life stage—capable of living far longer, and in a far more healthy status, than did your forebears. In essence, the opportunity to experience these additional years can be thought of as a “gift of found lifetime. Still, some may fear this gift because of misconceptions regarding the physical nature of the aging human body. This is the second and perhaps the most important way in which my book will challenge you. Imagine now that you have reached the magic ...
