The Longevity Prescription: The 8 Proven Keys to a Long, Healthy Life [Hardcover]

Robert N. Butler M.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 27, 2010

The internationally revered, Pulitzer Prize-winning father of geriatric medicine offers a revitalizing plan for reaping the rich rewards of the final third of life.

Dr. Robert N. Butler's name is synonymous with healthy aging. As the founder of the first department of geriatric medicine in the country at Mount Sinai and the National Institute on Aging within the National Institutes of Health, he is widely regarded as the father of geriatric medicine. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a frequent adviser to the World Health Organization, and the founder of the International Longevity Center, whose mission is to champion research and policy focused on helping our senior population age well and live vibrant lives.

In The Longevity Prescription, Butler outlines eight essential facets of longevity: exercise, nutrition, mental vitality, sleep, relaxation, love and intimacy, community connections, and medical care. With each chapter providing specific, prescriptive advice, that has been proven to delay or eliminate chronic illness and promote health, The Longevity Prescription outlines a step-by-step plan for maintaining optimum wellness and offers eye-opening statistics and research-based information. You may be surprised to learn:

?A good marriage at fifty-not a low cholesterol level at that age-is a better predictor of good health at eighty.

?Stress reduction and a good night's sleep are wellness strategies just as essential as exercise and diet are.

?Why honing a center of balance is a key to physical health.

?How the brain can be trained to regain lost function and ensure continued clarity.

?Why starting a second career in retirement can lead to contentment, and more.

With guidance for formulating an action plan and adopting new habits and strategies, The Longevity Prescription offers the latest information on special health challenges, such as diabetes and cancer.

A baby boomer turns sixty every 7.6 seconds, but many of America's graying millions approach the later years of life with fear and trepidation. Emphasizing clear-cut research findings that balance physical health with emotional well­being, Butler and his colleagues offer a definitive path to whole-life happiness.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this wonderful book, Dr. Robert Butler, one of the world''s great figures in the study of aging...offers a rare distillation of the principles for a long and healthy life."
-Stanley Prusiner, M.D., Nobel laureate in medicine, or physiology, University of California, San Francisco"

"Dr. Butler has given us a practical and important strategy for successful aging."
-Jane Fonda

"Written by the world''s foremost expert in the field, Dr. Butler''s how-to guide can lead to your own more enjoyable and productive senior years."
-Senator John Glenn

"In The Longevity Prescription, Dr. Robert Butler distills an enormous literature on aging into eight principles for long life, masterfully providing readers with the real secrets to long and healthy lives."
-Laura L. Carstensen, Ph.D., director of Stanford Center on Longevity

"This wonderful book will inspire, educate and help millions of baby boomers to understand how we can take simple actions that will greatly improve our chances not only to live longer, but more important, to make old age the best time of our lives."
-James P. Firman, Ed.D., president and CEO of National Council of Aging

"Dr. Butler, the preeminent authority on aging and longevity, does a wonderful job of presenting a wealth of current, science-based knowledge on what we can all do to increase our chances of enjoying long, healthy, active and happy lives. He writes beautifully, as befits a Pulitzer Prize winner, and is enormously persuasive."
-Humphrey Taylor, chair of Harris Interactive

About the Author

Robert N. Butler, M.D., is the president and CEO of the International Longevity Center – USA and a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. The author of the Pultizer Prize-winning Why Survive? Being Old in America and chair of the Council on Aging of the World Economic Forum (Davos), he is a frequent adviser to international agencies, including the World Health Organization, and served as medical editor-in-chief of Geriatrics for more than a decade. He lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Avery (May 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583333886
• ISBN-13: 978-1583333884
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #831,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wise and Valuable Book for Any Age, September 7, 2010

By 

Mama Leche (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Longevity Prescription: The 8 Proven Keys to a Long, Healthy Life (Hardcover)

I read "The Longevity Prescription" while on a summer trip with my family. As we made the rounds of the East Coast, we stayed with friends and family of many different ages - the youngest adults being in their mid-twenties and the eldest being 91! Everyone was interested in the book I was reading (Probably because I wouldn't stop talking about it!) because it offers information and advice that is relevant to any age, including children.

The Longevity Prescription: The 8 Proven Keys to a Long, Healthy Life outlines very clearly a number of simple and important lifestyles adjustments any person can make that will help them to have increased health and longevity. If you feel overwhelmed by how many new ideas seem to be promoted and pushed (magic berries! eat eggs! don't eat eggs!) by corporations who have crafted products to suit the latest fad, this is the book for you. The lifestyle adjustments are achievable and simple and the data that supports them is poignant and compelling. This work benefits from the culmination of Dr. Butler's career - spanning more than 45 years of research and expertise in the field of healthy aging.

The Longevity Prescription makes a wonderful companion to The Longevity Revolution: The Benefits and Challenges of Living a Long Life, which is a more dense and policy-oriented book that focuses more on the macro level of longevity than the personal, micro one. If you're interested in the topic of longevity, but mostly from a "what's in it for me and those I care about" rather than "how do we change the world" perspective, than the "Longevity Prescription" is the better, lighter book by far!

The book itself was fun and easy to read with many interesting insights and gave me lots of fodder for conversations with people of every age on our trip. This will be the main gift we're handing out this holiday season!

2.0 out of 5 stars Unreferenced assertions, February 22, 2012

By 

Tom Evison (New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Longevity Prescription: The 8 Proven Keys to a Long, Healthy Life (Mass Market Paperback)

This book claims to provide proven advice yet it contains no references. It has pages full of assertions yet no-where
we can check their origin or veracity. Some of the advice is odd, for example "Self-stimulation (masturbation) is healthy." Some is plain wrong, for example "The fats found in ... flax and fish oils contain monounsaturated fats...".In fact flax oil contains polyunsaturated alpha linolenic, while fish oils contain polyunsaturated eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic. Having spotted such errors it becomes essential to have references to check for more. I would not recommend this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best things you can do for yourself, August 30, 2011

By 

John Ellis (Aldie, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Longevity Prescription: The 8 Proven Keys to a Long, Healthy Life (Hardcover)

Reading "The Longevity Perscription" is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
As you start to read "The Longevity Perscription" you are now starting on a better path to taking better care of yourself.

After reading the book, I was better able to focus on the 8 keys ( maintain mental vitality, essentail sleep, set stress aside, nuture you relationships, connect with your community, nutrition, exercise and prevention). By becoming a practicioner of those 8 keys, I am able to have a better quality of mental and physical health.

This book is promoting the awarness of the 8 key and to become a practioner of those key. This book in not promoting to be a fanatic.

Dr. Butler, I would like to "Thank you," for providing this very helpful information and for showing each reader of your book, there is a better way to secure a better quality of life and hopefully a longer life.

Each of these 8 keys are linked together and by improving one key, you will want to help improving the remaing 7 keys.

You have so much to gain from reading this book and process the very helpful information of concepts and ideas found in the "The Longevity Perscription."

Savor what you learn and apply from this book!

Enjoy.