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Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives

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Well, if we must grow old, and each of us will, we might as well do it with "grace." This book brings to our attention some valid facts based on scientific research which will, indeed, cause us to contemplate the ageing process. The title of this book caught my eye and brought recollections of my days as a street counsellor. I will forever remember a nun by the name of Sister Gabriella from Spain who had more spunk, energy and zest for life than anyone I have ever known. At 93 years of age, she was a source of inspiration not only to the people of the street, but to anyone who crossed her path. She did not know the meaning of fear, from the days of her youth she remembered more about martial arts than Bruce Lee, she did not look a day over 60, and the only sickness she had ever known was the common cold and a case of chicken pox at the age of six. She proclaimed she did not have time to "get sick;" there was always too much work to be done. If you asked her a question, she had the extraordinary ability to make you look inside yourself for the answer. This book is living proof that there is great mysterious wonder and truth to the ageing process and the monastic life that nuns, like Sister Gabriella, live. She attributed her long life to sunshine, nature, spiritual healing, living with a kind heart, and almost as an afterthought, she added diet and exercise in moderation. Sister Gabriella passed away many years ago in a mission outside of San Francisco in her 104th year.

This intriguing book brings many of those same factors to light and reveals that growing old, can also mean a time of renewed energy and vitality, expanded intellectual knowledge, spiritual growth, active participation, and emotional and physical well being. The book is extremely well researched and well written. Regardless of age, there is a lot to be learned here that we can all put to good use in a quest for a long, happy, healthy and fulfilling life.

Most books about science operate mostly from the head. This book also has a heart, and gives you a close human connection with the people being examined. 678 elderly nuns from the order, School Sisters of Notre Dame, are being studied to understand what factors helps explain their long life, and ability to remain mentally and physically active at advanced ages. The results of this work will undoubtedly focus future scientific research into the most productive areas for extending and improving the quality of human life.

Professor Snowdon is an epidmiologist who has had great success with studying religious communities. Because of the similar environments and habits involved, these communities can more clearly demonstrate the factors that favor or disfavor disease. He has also done work with Seventh Day Adventists and diet, for example.

The School Sisters of Notre Dame is a teaching order, and its members are highly educated. For example, of the elderly nuns studied 85 percent held bachelor's degrees and 45 percent master's degrees. This is in sharp contrast with the rarity of these degrees in the general population among women of similar ages. Obviously, they have also led a life of strenuous service to God and to teaching others.

The study benefits from many other unique qualities. Each nun also wrote an autobiography when she was young, and just joining the order. As a result, it is possible to go back and study those writings. The sisters have also generously agreed to donate their brains for research when they die. This means that the physical brains can be compared to the results of cognitive and physical tests to see what the causes of mental and physical dysfunctions might be.

Early in the study, Professor Snowdon also gained another advantage. He was encouraged to develop a relationship with the sisters, rather than just to study them. The book's many examples reflect his personal connection and observation of their aging experiences.

Although the study is continuing, it has already yielded some remarkable insights. In the area of Alzheimer's disease, the research has shown that higher education and better vocabulary and reading comprehension skills when young help prevent or delay the disease. In brains equally ridden with distortions of the disease, functionality of the person varies a lot due to those factors. You are advised to read to your children as a way to help them avoid Alzheimer's disease when they are older. Brains of those with Alzheimer's disease show plaques and tangles. The study suggests that the tangles are important, and the plaques less so. Keeping blood pressure under control to avoid stroke also helps to stave off Alzheimer's disease.

Interestingly, more education and greater mental capacity when young are also predictive of longevity.

The book also looks at the genetic impacts on Alzheimer's and seems to suggest that these can be overcome to some extent by education and mental development.

There are also diet suggestions, like getting plenty of folic acid (found particularly in cooked tomatoes).

The stories of the individual nuns will stay with you for a long time. These are very admirable people, and I learned a lot from reading about their lives. If you are like me, you will be saddened to think about the sister who had Alzheimer's who feared that she would forget God. You will also be saddened by the sister who was incorrectly diagnosed as having Alzheimer's and lived four very unpleasant years with this misapprehension.

There's good news here if you do live a long time. "The older you get the healthier you've been." So after around 85, many sources of health risk don't seem to get any worse. The stories of active minds and bodies over 100 will inspire you.

After you finish reading this book, I suggest that you locate some elderly people (ideally over 90) and get them to tell you about their lives. In that connection, you will also receive much inspiration for the potential you have yet to fulfill, and help make someone's life more meaningful, too.

May you become more filled with grace, as you age!

That's what one 92-year old nun said when asked to take part in "The Nun Study," an ongoing effort by author Snowdon and others to learn more about how we age and why some folks retain their mental and physical abilities into their nineties and beyond, while others fail much earlier.

I picked up this book because my great-great-aunt, Sister Matthia Gores, is one of the nuns "featured" in it. (She died a couple years back, just shy of her 105th birthday.)

I found the science interesting; but the book does not offer a blueprint to growing older without losing mental faculties or growing frail. It turns out the science is giving a more complicated picture of aging than that.

But what really appeals to me about this story is the desire of these women to keep growing their minds right up to the ends of their lives. (One nun got a masters in theology when she was 71; one began missionary service in Africa only when she reached her 70s.) It is this faith that we can continue to expand our own human potential while serving God and our fellow humans that makes this book such a delightful read.

I don't care if I live to 105, but I hope I can be as brave about seizing opportunities to grow as these wonderful women have been.

I have a family member with Alzheimer's and recently read two popular science books on Alzheimer's disease. I just finished "Aging with Grace" and enjoyed it's compelling humanitarian edge - -the stories about the nuns and their interactions with Snowdon are just delightful--one can really envision these people.

On the other hand, there is not a lot of information on the causes of Alzheimer's in the book--there's a little on free radicals and some of the Alzheimer genes. For that type information I would recommend an excellent book titled "Decoding Darkness" by Tanzi and Parson -- it provided a very clear presentation of what we know about the causes of Alzheimer's especially the genes involved.

I have read over the customer reviews, and agree with those who find this account of the "Nun Study" inspirational, uplifting and wonderful to read. Although the information about Alzheimer's is the reason the study got so much publicity, I think there's another reason for why the book is so powerful: reading about these elderly nuns is a visit to a way of life and an era of women's religion which is now slipping away. With the deaths of these participants and women like them, it will be gone forever. This group is almost the last generation of nuns for whom becoming and remaining a nun was a popular option for idealistic young women. There are no younger cohorts of nuns to take the places of these marvelous elderly ladies; perhaps one reason so many of the latter kept very active up through their 80s and even 90s is because there were few replacements for them in religious orders. To celebrate their lives before they die seems to be an underlying theme of the book, quite apart from the medical information about aging.

The story of the nun study will hit home to scores of millions of Americans, for most of us have aging parents or grandparents, or we have reached advanced years ourselves. Snowdon tells the story of his research into Alzheimer's and related illnesses with both clarity and compassion. He tells their story both personal and biological. In these pages, many of us will read our own futures.

In "Aging with Grace," Snowdon walks the lay-reader through the steps and stages that made his now-famous "nun study" possible. You may have caught bits of this study in Time Magazine, The Donohue Show, or many other popular media. This is the story behind the story. It is the story of the nuns themselves. Snowdon uses the nun's own words to describe where they came from, what they aspired to as young initiates, and where they are going as they move on into their advanced years.

The book isn't all drama. Snowdon provides useful background on Alzheimer's disease, its symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. He goes on to draw both firm and tentative conclusions. In short, he sprinkles in advice based on sound, careful, peer-reviewed, scientific research. You'll learn what parents can do for their children, what children can do for their aging parents, and what various factors may contribute to or exacerbate senile dementia.

Lastly, this book stands in sharp contrast to the fraud so frequently perpetuated on a desperate and uninformed public by various "alternative" medical practices. Snowdon's work provides an excellent example of how medical research is done. I've been very comfortable sharing this book with friends who desperately need reliable information in a forthright yet compassionate form, and they have assured me that my recommendation really helped fill a need and made them feel less helpless.

I found this book soberly informative, compassionate, personal, and spiritual - a rare combination in any reliable medical book. I encourage all medical researches to hold this book up as their model for successfully communicating with a non-medical audience. ~Robert

Aging With Grace puts a compassionate face on Alzheimers through the personal stories of the aging nuns of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. Throughout his "science," the author never loses touch with the human and humane side of what can be a devasting disease. A wonderful tale that touches both the reader's head and heart, Aging With Grace is a final lesson given by the nuns. It leaves you with both a tear and a smile.

If your idea of nuns is none having fun, get ready for a surprise. Dr. Snowden made a study of 678 nuns, called The Nun Study. Many signed up to donate their brains to science, once having shed the mortal coil, for a study of alzheimer's disease. How thoughtful of the good sisters, one thinks, who, of course, in the dark, dank, life denying precincts of cloistered religion, of course all succumbed to this sad, mind- ravaging disease, after having soldiered on for so long, denied even life's smallest pleasures.

All true to form, except that's not what happened. The surprise is how many didn't get alzheimers, how many might be said to have cartwheeled rather than trudged on beyond a century, how many given unto helping the poor and AIDS patients retained their mental acuity and, if I may say, lust for life, and went dancing, as it were, towards the grave.

Contrast this with the absolutely opposite view of so many aging Baby Boomers (of whom I am one), who absolutely fear death, in the sense of trying to drag out existence as long as possible, who absolutely fear existence in the sense of trying to jazz it up and jam it full of diversions and amusements as much as possible, who having fearlessly announced that we are alone in the universe, absolutely fear being alone and, being in denial and avoidance of making any sort of plans for the sunset years, as well as having an aversion to any sort of community, continually pile psychic burdens on the tiny nuclear families of Generations X and beyond whom they expect to devote their modest resources to the full- time allaying of these fears.

The good doctor writes a lot about his relations with the Sisters in a likeable, chatty style, which is probably the main reason to read this book. But he sometimes gets rather technical about the research side, and you can't help hoping to seize on the magic formula for a long and healthy life. While the results are dramatic, his tone is tentative, but the helpers are pretty much what you thought: tomatoes (especially cooked ones), pink grapefruit, watermelon, spinach and dark green leafy vegetables (Popeye was right), carrots, nuts and beans. Pretty much the diet most Baby Boomers have switched to. Readers will like the next part. As they always suspected, a somewhat high "idea" quotient is good for something. The young, active brain likely grows into, no surprise, the mature active brain. Those of you not in the 40 percent who actively read books may want to start with this one. This recent paperback edition is a great deal; it used to be a $25 hardback.

David Snowdon's Aging with Grace is the first book on a clinical topic I have been unable to put down. It quickly became one of those books you find every opportunity you can to read on (the "Oh, I can read it while I'm eating my oatmeal" almost made me late to work).

The book has the feel of memoir - as we learn the stories of the Sisters involved. However, there is also deep clinical value. Snowdon (and the women who generously become subjects) has made a major contribution to the field of Alzheimer's reasearch with this study. The conclusions should intrigue professionals. The writing is accessible enough that non-professionals can also draw a lot from it.

I would recommend this highly to both colleagues and family members and individuals affected by Alzheimers. I would also recommend it to anyone who is interested in monastic life. Sort of an Olver Sacks (Awakenings) meets Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) - with beautiful results.

A book about very old Catholic nuns and their experiences with the dementia of Alzheimers disease--now THAT sounds like a downer, wouldn't you say? Which goes to show once again that we can't judge a book by its, well, by its subject matter alone. AGING WITH GRACE is distinctly UPBEAT, indeed inspiring: I read it from cover to cover in about a day and a half because I couldn't put it down for long.

David Snowden designed and now directs the research project which focuses on an order of Catholic nuns, The School Sisters of Notre Dame. The purpose of the research is to find answers to the maddening mysteries of Alzheimers disease, the sword of Damocles that hangs over so many of us, whether we talk about it or not. But who knew that a shy epidemiologist could WRITE so well?

Snowden gives us quite a load of fairly detailed information in the course of his book, but he sandwiches that in between such warm and charming portraits and anecdotes of his research subjects that we are willing to sit still for the science. We get to know a dozen or so of the sisters, from 85 years old to 106, and through them, come to understand a little more of the challenge of this dreaded disease. For example, can someone have fairly advanced Alzheimers yet appear free of dementia? Can the brief written autobiography of a teen-aged girl foretell Alzheimers sixty years later? David Snowden's keen mind and painstaking research may unlock crucial mysteries; but it is his warm heart and delightful, grace-filled subjects that make this book a must read.