The body is the most fascinating machine ever created, and nobody talks about it in ways that are as illuminating and compelling as Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Most people think of the aging of our bodies the same way we think of the aging of our cars: the older we get, the more inevitable it is that we're going to break down. Most of us believe that at age 40 or so, we begin the slow and steady decline of our minds, our eyes, our ears, our joints, our arteries, our libido, and every other system that affects the quality of life (and how long we live it). But according to Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz, that's a mistake.
Aging isn't a decline in our systems. It's actually very purposeful. The very systems and biological processes that age us are designed to help us when we're a little bit younger. So what's our role as part of the aging population? To learn how those systems work so we can reprogram them to work the way they did when we were younger. Your goal should be: die young at any age. That means you live a high quality of life (with everything from working joints to working genitals) until the day you die.
At the core of this landmark book are the Major Agers -- 14 biological processes that control your rate of aging. Some you've heard of, some you haven't, and some you never knew contributed to the aging process. Some speed decline, others inhibit your repair mechanisms. These Major Agers are everything from short telomeres and inefficient mitochondria to stem cells and wacky hormones. The doctors explain the principles of longevity and many of the causes of aging and how to fight the effects. The climax of the book is a 14-day plan to help you along your path to staying young. The doctors want you to be able to integrate important processes into your daily life in order to make staying young routine, but first you'll need to measure your real age and health right now. Staying young encompasses your emotions and mental health as well as your exercise habits, eating habits, personal hygiene, and genes, among other things.
Wouldn't you like to know how to prevent your body from aging badly? The original YOU book showed how bodies work in general, and YOU: On a Diet explained how bodies lose weight and stay fit. Now in YOU: Staying Young, Drs. Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz illuminate the mysterious mechanisms with a lively metaphor -- the modern city. What differentiates a vibrant and thriving city that ages gracefully from one that is worn down and rusted out? Despite genetic differences, which are like the geography upon which the city is built, cities age differently because of the way residents treat their education system (stem cells), power plants (mitochondria), electrical grids (brains), transportation routes (blood vessels), and landfills (fat). You -- as mayor, resident, and street cleaner -- have the power to balance your biological budget to ensure a life that's both long and strong. Thankfully, just as cities can invest in renewal and improving their repair processes, so can you.
YOU: Staying Young is filled with signature YOU Tools, including YOU Tests, YOU Tips, and visual and verbal metaphors to bring the science to life.
For the first time in our history, scientists are uncovering astounding medical evidence about dieting -- and why so many of us struggle with our weight and the size of our waists. Now researchers are unraveling biological secrets about such things as why you crave chocolate or gorge at buffets or store so much fat.
Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, America's most trusted doctor team and authors of the bestselling YOU series, are now translating this cutting-edge information to help you shave inches off your waist. They're going to do it by giving you the best weapon against fat: knowledge. By understanding how your body's fat-storing and fat-burning systems work, you're going to learn how to crack the code on true and lifelong waist management.
Roizen and Oz will invigorate you with equal parts information, motivation, and change-your-life action to show you how your brain, stomach, hormones, muscles, heart, genetics, and stress levels all interact biologically to determine if your body is the size of a baseball bat or of a baseball stadium. In YOU: On a Diet, Roizen and Oz will redefine what a healthy figure is, then take you through an under-theskin tour of the organs that influence your body's size and its health. You'll even be convinced that the key number to fixate on is not your weight, but your waist size, which best indicates the medical risks of storing too much fat.
Because the world has almost as many diet plans as it has e-mail spammers, you'd think that just about all of us would know everything there is to know about dieting, about fat, and about the reasons why our bellies have grown so large. YOU: On a Diet is much more than a diet plan or a series of instructions and guidelines or a faddish berries-only eating plan. It's a complete manual for waist management. It will show you how to achieve and maintain an ideal and healthy body size by providing a lexicon according to which any weight-loss system can be explained. YOU: On a Diet will serve as the operating system that facilitates future evolution in our dieting software. After you learn about the biology of your body and the biology and psychology of fat, you'll be given the YOU Diet and YOU Workout. Both are easy to learn, follow, and maintain. Following a two-week rebooting program will help you lose up to two inches from your waist right from the start.
With Roizen and Oz's signature accessibility, wit, and humor, YOU: On a Diet -- The Owner's Manual for Waist Management will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the food you consume, so that you'll diet smart, not hard. Welcome to your body on a diet.
From the book
Most diets promise commonsense solutions to tight-pants problems: Eat less, and you?ll weigh less. Keep your mouth closed, and you?ll keep the pounds off. Sweat like a sauna-dwelling sumo wrestler, and you?ll wind up skinnier than a sheet of paper. Straightforward enough. But if it really worked that way, our bodies wouldn?t be large enough to be spotted by Google Earth. If it really worked that way, then most diets wouldn?t fail. If it really worked that way, then we all must be a bunch of rebellious hellions with mayo-covered lips and belt-busting bellies who don?t feel like following a few simple instructions.
Or it could be that most diets have it all wrong.
We believe it?s the latter.
You know why? Because most diets instruct you to take on the corn chips, meatball specials, and dessert trays with brute force. It?s you versus food in a lifetime heavyweight fight. But in that scenario, the fight is always fixed?and not in your favor. That?s because the battle against extra pounds isn?t won with force, with sweat, with trying to diet. It?s won with elegance, with smarts, and with healthy choices that become as automatic as a Simon Cowell barb.
When it comes to dieting, trying to whip fat with our weapon of willpower is the food equivalent of holding your breath underwater. You can do it for a while, but no matter how psyched up you get, at some point your body?your biology?forces you to the surface gasping for air. And with most diets, your body forces you to gasp (or gulp) for food. No matter how hard you try not to eat, some hidden force deep inside is always prying your mouth back open, making it impossible for willpower to win. Instead of sparring with your waistline, it?s time you made your body an ally in the fight against fat.
Our process is to look at our overweight bodies the way scientists would: Identify the underlying biology of the problem, then find the cures. Why? Because we?re lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time?a time when the scientific world has just now started to unlock the biological mysteries that have caused us to store fat and gain weight. For the first time in our history, the scientific community is uncovering the medical evidence about food, appetite, and satiety that will allow you to tackle weight problems with the real weapon against fat: knowledge. By making this knowledge simple and accessible, we?re going to give you tools and actions to crack the code of true and lifelong waist management. In fact, our plan will help you avoid the dangerous yo-yo cycle of weight gain and weight loss. We?re going to help you reprogram your body so that you can keep off the weight you lose forever.
Through the years, many of us have been led to believe that our weight problem is about two things: calorie counting and mental toughness. While some of us may say that the weight problem is too much of the twelve-cheese lasagna, the real problem is that most of us have as much of a clue about how our bodies work as we have about how our cars do. Sure, we know the major parts and generally what they?re supposed to do. The real danger of thinking we have most of the answers is that we stop asking the questions. If we look under our hood, do we really understand the systems that make our bodies...
Most people think that beauty revolves around such things as lipstick, sweet eyes, or skinny jeans -- all those things that we can see (and obsess over) in the mirror. But the fact is that beauty isn't some superficial pursuit, and it's not some random act that you can thank (or curse) your ancestors for.
There are, in fact, scientific standards to beauty. Beauty is purposeful, because it's how humans have historically communicated who we are to potential mates. Beauty, in fact, is really about your health and happiness.
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Michael F. Roizen and Dr. Mehmet C. Oz bust the myths and stereotypes about the way we view ourselves -- and how we define beauty. In these pages, you'll find out why beauty isn't as much about your vanity as it is about your humanity. The doctors take a scientific, informative, and entertaining look at the three levels of beauty and explain how they all work together to form a complete and authentic YOU. Those three levels of beauty are:
You'll start off by taking the ultra-revealing and validated YOU-Q Test to help you assess where you are on your own beauty scale and where you want to be. Take the test, see how well you do; then use the book to help you improve your score.
With their usual candor and honesty, Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz break down the mechanics of beauty and explain how little adjustments in your routine can help you become a happier, healthier person. You will learn about the biology of beauty, take YOU Tests to determine where you are on the beauty scale, get tons of YOU Tips to help you improve your life, as well as learn the secrets of the Ultimate Beautiful Day.
From hair to toenails, Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz go through every part of your body to explain how different foods, vitamins, creams, gels, and injections can really boost your looks. They scrutinize the beauty myths that bombard us every day and offer an unbiased perspective on which ones cause more harm than good. You will be able to revamp your beauty regimen (or start a new one from scratch). They'll also take a close look at chronic pain, mood swings, low energy, and financial stresses. And they'll dive into the science of building relationships, finding happiness, and using spirituality to help you define your own levels of true beauty.
Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz act as tour guides navigating the tricky but exciting terrain of today's beauty industry. YOU: Being Beautiful is your all-inclusive ticket into the world -- the real world -- of beauty.
For those of you who think beauty is about mirrors, makeup, and how many pudding packs you have to sacrifice to fit into your skinny jeans, then pull up a chair, postpone your top-of-the-hour Botox appointment, and hear this.
Beauty isn't some vapid and superficial pursuit that exists solely to sell products, wag tongues, and produce drool. Beauty is actually precisely perceived, purposeful, and rooted more in hard science than in abstract and random opinion. From the time we started prancing around the world with our body-hair parkas and leafy lingerie, evolution has pushed us to be more beautiful. And that's why beauty serves as the foundation for our feelings, our happiness, and our existence. In fact, beauty doesn't reflect our vanity as much as it does our humanity.
Beauty -- dear appearance-obsessed friend -- is health.
We already know that beauty is always on your mind, because it's on everyone's minds. You can't help but think about it or suppress it -- consciously or not -- every time you step in the shower or in front of the mirror. It drives many of the decisions you make about exercise and eating, and it determines how you choose between the black dress and the white pants.
This kind of traditional beauty -- the outer kind -- really isn't just about looking good. Outer beauty serves as a proxy of how healthy you are; it's the message you send to others about your health. Way back when -- before we could decode your genome, use fertility tests to see when you're ovulating, and order MRIs to see what was going on with your liver -- people used beauty as the serious assessment of the potential health of a partner. Beauty was the best way to figure it out (and in a tenth of a second, mind you). Now, if you take the concept of beauty a few steps deeper, you realize that inner beauty -- the idea of feeling good and being happy -- also has tremendous health implications in every aspect of your life.But for so long, we've had it all wrong. We've thought of beauty as nonessential and superficial. Just look at our most popular beauty-based clichés:
The logic behind all these myths argues that external beauty is unimportant, most likely misleading, and at best relevant only until more useful information becomes available. But we have three words for these three clichés: wrong, wrong, wrong. Scientific study after study shows that these popular principles are more myth than reality.
In fact, research shows that human beings have evolved universal standards of beauty, both within and across cultures. Research also shows that attractive people are judged more positively than unattractive people -- even when there's other information available about them. The data show that more attractive people are judged to be better liked, more competent, and more exciting (all by about a two-to-one margin). Research also indicates that external beauty is linked to personality and behavior.
Though...
The bestselling author of RealAge has more ways to turn back the clock and get a new lease on life.
Thousands of Americans are younger today than they were five years ago. How? By following the specific recommendations that reverse aging in the bestselling book RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be? People who were previously much 'older' than their chronological age have taken 10, 15, up to 24 years off of their biological age. It's been called The RealAge Makeover.
Almost daily, there are news items about ageing or age-related disease. One food is found to increase the risk of heart disease, while another has been found to decrease it. In The RealAge Makeover, Dr Roizen makes sense of recent critical medical findings. Plus he offers steps that will reduce or even prevent 80% of the diseases that make you feel or be older. Roizen believes that if you are well informed, you can control your genes to a very large degree. For example, just eating the right chocolate or drinking a little coffee can help you reduce inflammation dramatically and preserve your arteries, joints, and memory. But the wrong choice can lead to needless aging and loss of energy. The RealAge Makeover tells you how much (in years) each such choice is worth. Why not live at 60 feeling like you did at 35?
For that extra inspiration, readers' personal success stories are interwoven throughout the book. They followed the RealAge program and became younger biologically and are now living happier, healthier lives.
o Aimed at those getting older and those who want to preserve their youth.o The RealAge Makeover unifies all aspects of ageing, explaining the relative impact of the behaviours that age us and providing a numerical guide for age reduction. The basis of the RealAge program is that certain foods and behaviours can make you older or younger, and it offers a range of age-busting strategies for a healthier, younger body.
Thousands of Americans are younger today than they were five years ago. How is that possible? They have joined the RealAge Revolution. They have given themselves a makeover from the inside out. By following the specific age-reversing recommendations in my book RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be?, people who were previously much older physiologically than their calendar age have now taken ten, fifteen, up to forty years off their biologic age. (Men can be twenty-five years younger and women, twenty-nine years younger than their calendar age.) This is what we call giving yourself a RealAge Makeover: you can significantly transform your health, looks, and life.
And it can be so easy. For example, just developing the habit of calling friends in times of stress can actually make a real difference in your health and longevity. As word about the RealAge concept spread, and Americans started to see firsthand how small but simple -- and often fun! -- changes in their daily lives could transform their health, so many people have gotten the RealAge bandwagon that it's become a kind of revolution -- a revolution back to great health. And nobody has been more thrilled to see it happen than I.
Since publication of the first book, we've learned more about the process of aging. While our team has been hard at work interpreting data from the latest clinical trails to keep the RealAge program on the cutting edge, readers of RealAge have been hard at work getting younger. For example:
• Katherine M., a forty-eight-year-old nurse with a busy schedule and a RealAge of fifty-five, knew she wasn't getting healthy nutrition. So she started taking calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, and folate supplements. In addition, she added lycopene to her diet by having spaghetti with marinara sauce once a week. As a result, even though she now has a calendar age of fifty-one, her RealAge is forty-five. She has an added bounce in her step and feels the ten years younger she has become. (She made her RealAge ten years younger as she went from a RealAge of 55 to one of 45.)• Kenny T., a high-powered attorney of fifty-eight with a RealAge of sixty-six, started a stress-reduction program that included yoga and meditation. In addition, he began walking and paying more attention to safety issues such as wearing a seat belt while driving and a helmet when bicycling. These combined factors made his RealAge six years younger.• I am most proud of Betty G., who works in my old department. Betty had a three-pack-a-day smoking habit that made her RealAge eight years older than her calender age of thirty-nine. She felt more than fifteen years older, and looked it, too. No one thought she could quit. She'd frequently be seen outside on a smoke break with cigarettes in both hands. Betty eventually got fed up with feeling so old and tired, and decided to give herself a makeover. She started a walking program; then she quit smoking. It wasn't easy, but she did it with the method described in Chapter 6. After five years completely smoke-free, she is well on her way to shedding seven of the eight years she had originally aged due to smoking. She now looks twenty years younger than she did. In fact, her RealAge is fourteen years younger than it was just three years ago (she did more than just quit smoking). She has literally made herself over. Friends who have not seen her in three years have asked how she was able to afford plastic surgery. She is proud to tell them she hasn't had any surgery; instead, she has changed her appearance from the...
• Kenny T., a high-powered attorney of fifty-eight with a RealAge of sixty-six, started a stress-reduction program that included yoga and meditation. In addition, he began walking and paying more attention to safety issues such as wearing a seat belt while driving and a helmet when bicycling. These combined factors made his RealAge six years younger.
• I am most proud of Betty G., who works in my old department. Betty had a three-pack-a-day smoking habit that made her RealAge eight years older than her calender age of thirty-nine. She felt more than fifteen years older, and looked it, too. No one thought she could quit. She'd frequently be seen outside on a smoke break with cigarettes in both hands. Betty eventually got fed up with feeling so old and tired, and decided to give herself a makeover. She started a walking program; then she quit smoking. It wasn't easy, but she did it with the method described in Chapter 6. After five years completely smoke-free, she is well on her way to shedding seven of the eight years she had originally aged due to smoking. She now looks twenty years younger than she did. In fact, her RealAge is fourteen years younger than it was just three years ago (she did more than just quit smoking). She has literally made herself over. Friends who have not seen her in three years have asked how she was able to afford plastic surgery. She is proud to tell them she hasn't had any surgery; instead, she has changed her appearance from the...
America's favorite doctors Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz cover pregnancy from conception to birth.
Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen, two powerhouse doctors in both the medical profession and in the media, have made a virtual cottage industry around the YOU series. They team up once again to bring us this updated edition of YOU: The Owner's Manual --the audio you should listen to before you listen to any other audio book. The doctors have included a new chapter on the Liver and Pancreas, which will finally demystify the most exotic part of our bodies, a new workout chapter, and a Q & A.
Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title!
Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title!
Few life experiences feature the extreme emotional swings as pregnancy does -- it's a monumental mix of both intense excitement and skip-a-beat anxiety. If you're like most, you scour web sites, read books, browse blogs, and pick the brains of every friend, family member, and store clerk who's ever had a baby. You talk about the ups and downs, the cravings and the nausea, the maternity clothes and the stretch marks. During this 280-or-so day journey, this sometimes-scattered mindset is perfectly natural -- and healthy. But sometimes you need help cutting through the clutter.
Acting as mythbusters for the hundreds of questions surrounding pregnancy with the same scientific, informative, and entertaining ways that have made them America's Doctors, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen will help ease your tension by teaching you not only about what you can do, but also why you should do it. They'll explore the biology of your body with amazing insights about a cutting-edge new field called epigenetics, which gives you the power to change the genetic destiny of your child. And they'll give you all the ins and outs of nutrition, exercise, hormones, fetal development, and many more pregnancy-related issues. There's even a section for dads.
Using their signature wit and wisdom, they'll test your knowledge, give you oodles of tools you can use, and reassure you that your maternal instincts are usually pretty darn good. After all, the doctors want the exact same thing as you do during this journey -- a healthy baby (and a healthy mom).
Introduction
Hey, You! Having a Baby?
Stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and your body rockets into sensory overload. Your eyes widen, your jaw drops, and your neurons spit out more adjectives than a novice novelist. Majestic, awe inspiring, glorious, astonishing, so myâ??oh-my beautiful that you want to fall to your knees and bow to the deity that created this masterpiece.
Then you freak out.
That, in essence, is pregnancy: On one hand, it's the most breathtaking thing you've ever experienced. On the other, it's a looooong way to the bottom of the canyon, just as it is a looooong way from conception to birth -- so you can't help but have some anxiety about taking a wrong step along the way. There's no doubt that pregnancy evokes a similar diversity of emotional and physiological responses as do such natural wonders: laughing, crying, screaming, dry mouth, dry skin, dry heaves (and that's just the first day). What we're here to do is help you manage both extremes of the emotional spectrum, so you can appreciate such a miraculous process and conquer the anxiety and tension through a very powerful weapon: knowledge.
Whether this is your first pregnancy or your fourth, or you're trying so hard that you're spending more time on your bed than a throw pillow, you probably think you know a thing or two about being pregnant. Either you've gone through it before or you've had friends, sisters, and sixteen trillion baby bloggers to give you the inside-the-womb scoop.
However, we'd ask that you hold on one diaper-changing minute. We're here to bust myths, challenge your brain, and prepare your body for the greatest journey that any human can ever take -- from the moment two cells become one to the second that your little squirt makes its first appearance outside the comforting shell of your belly.
To whet your appetite, we'd bet a case of Gerber bananas that you didn't know things like:
The whole notion of nature versus nurture is as wrong as a three-legged crib. That's because a cutting-edge field called epigenetics has shown us that you have control over how the genes of your baby will express themselves.
What happens during these 280 days on the inside actually teaches your child about how his body should act on the outside. He's actually forecasting his future -- and that teaches him how healthy or unhealthy he will be years down the road.
While most people assume that a mom's biological cocoon supports the child unconditionally, the truth is that your body is actually engaged in a very delicate dance to balance the often competing needs of mom and child.
There's a biological reason why your areolas are dark, why your feet swell, and why one minute you gag at the thought of eating a cracker and the next minute you can't wait to get your hands on a salsa-smothered cantaloupe.
The good news is that we're here to help by teaching you crazy-cool things about your body and giving you the tools to maximize your experience and get the result you want: a healthy and happy baby.
Now, if you're like most women, we're guessing that you've already spent a lot of time thinking about what's in store. You've probably spent all-nighters scouring pregnancy websites and parked yourself in cushy bookstore chairs with thigh-high stacks of mom-to-be manuals. Maybe you haven't been this nervous since your...
Wouldn't you like to know how to prevent your body from aging badly? Most of us believe that at age 40 or so, we begin the slow and steady decline of our minds and bodies. According to Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz, that's a mistake. Aging isn't a decline in our systems. It's actually very purposeful. The very systems and biological processes that age us are designed to help us when we're a little bit younger. Our role is to learn how those systems function so we can reprogram them to work the way they did when we were younger. Your goal should be: die young at any age. That means you live a high quality of life (with everything from working joints to working genitals) until the day you die.
At the core of YOU: Staying Young are the Major Agers -- 14 biological processes that control your rate of aging. Doctors Roizen and Oz explain the principles of longevity and many of the causes of aging and how to fight their effects. Also included in a printable PDF file is a 14-day plan to help you integrate important processes into your daily life in order to make staying young routine.
YOU: Staying Young is filled with signature YOU Tools, including YOU tips and memorable metaphors to bring the science alive and help you understand the most fascinating machine ever created: the human body.
Everyone needs to become a smart patient. In fact, in the worst cases, your life may even depend on it. Number one bestselling authors and doctors Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz have written this indispensable handbook to help everyone to get the best health care possible -- by making everyone into their own medical detective.
Witty, playful, at times offbeat, but always authoritative, You: The Smart Patient shows you how to become your own medical sleuth, tracing your medical family tree and wending your way through the pitfalls of any health care situation. Written in conjunction with the health care community's leading oversight group, The Joint Commission, the book shows readers in clear, easy steps how to take control of their own health care and deal with all matters that may come up when facing a medical case: from choosing the right doctor, hospital, and insurance company to navigating prescription drugs, specialists, treatment options, alternative medicine, pain management, or any problem that might arise.
Accessible, humorous, and filled with information that you need, You: The Smart Patient is a book for every patient and all those dealing with a loved one's medical issues.
Chapter One: Getting to Know You Let's Discover the Juicy Secrets About the Person Who Controls Your Health: You
Most people think they communicate with their doctors just fine. Better than fine, in fact. Fantastic. Given that most of the communication consists of nodding or a request for antibiotics, there's little to find fault with. That's the problem, of course. Most patients don't do a great job of communicating with their doctors because patients often give us too little pertinent information to go on (remember, just like the detective, we're looking for the facts). At the same time, they may also give us too many distracting or off-topic details. It reminds us a little bit of what a mechanic must think when we try to explain a noise in our car. We're not sure when it started, we're not sure what makes it worse, we think it's a whining sound but aren't sure...We bet this becomes a tedious monologue for those earnest professionals trying to help us.
An almost identical conversation goes on in doctors' offices every day. To be accurate, the parallel exchanges often concern befuddled male patients. There's a reason that women aged thirty to sixty are the prime decision makers about health care in the United States. Most of the guys they love either have no clue about their health needs or wouldn't see a doctor unless they had blood shooting out of both ears.
The goal of this chapter is to make sure you know the details and numbers in your health profile that you really need to know -- those stats and specifics that are crucial to you and your doctor. We always see health books and well-intentioned magazine articles that tell you to compile so much stuff, we get winded just reading the list. The average person would have to take a week off from work and probably hire a bounty hunter to get everything recommended. You don't need to do that, but you do need to assemble a thorough health history so that you'll have a body of evidence to use when working with your doctor. A big part of being a Smart Patient is knowing how to compare new evidence (such as new test results) against the old. Like Sherlock Holmes, even though something may seem elementary to everyone else and not worth asking about, you need to press on with your questions and your investigation.
We'll make compiling your health history simple enough to do, but we won't oversimplify the tasks so you lose accuracy. It's a small time investment that could save your life, so get started right away.
You Love Us? Ditto
The first sign of a Smart Patient is that telltale document they produce during their first visit, or even their fiftieth. It's a portent of a beautiful partnership -- that is, when it's not a form they need signed for their job, or a note asking one of our office assistants about their dinner plans. If we're lucky, it'll be their health profile. It's the sign of a patient who means business, one who will challenge us to be at our absolute best and who won't waste time and money on redundant and unnecessary efforts (which can lead to errors). To create the perfect health profile, circa early twenty-first century, flip ahead to appendix 2, Sample Forms, and find the forms labeled Your Health Journal. Make copies of them, or rip them out if that's handier. The forms are also online at www.jcrinc.com and www.realage.com.
Fill them out.
Finished? Everything? You're done. That is, if you don't have any questions, and you're sure it's all correct. Just...
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of RealAge® and coauthor of You: The Owner's Manual shows you how to cook your way to a younger you.
In his RealAge® books, Dr. Michael F. Roizen proved that incorporating simple changes to your lifestyle can take years off your biological age and leave you looking and feeling younger. In Cooking the RealAge® Way, he and nutritionist and professional chef Dr. John La Puma show you how you can create RealAge-smart and energy-rich meals that are as delicious as they are healthy.
Cooking the RealAge® Way includes more than 80 savory recipes, from asparagus frittata with smoked salmon to a chocolate strawberry sundae, as well as tricks and techniques to help you maintain your RealAge lifestyle, from stocking your pantry to tips on eating out and preparing time-friendly meals. It's the ultimate guide to eating and feeling younger-without sacrificing great taste.
Chapter One
Cooking the RealAge Way
Control Your Genes Simply by the Way You Set Up Your Kitchen
You do not have to feel or be your calendar age. Seventy percent of premature aging is caused by the choices we make. By making some good choices, such as eating well, you can slow down or even reverse the signs of aging. And the best way to eat well is by revising key elements of the most important room in your home—the kitchen.
Just as what you eat makes a big difference in how old you feel and how old you actually are, it also amazingly makes a difference in what proteins your genes produce. As we learn more about genes, we learn how much we can modify their actions. The specific proteins they produce and the ratio of proteins any two genes make is at least partially under your control. This chapter is about how we can stock our kitchens and change what we eat to control our genes, ultimately keeping us and our families energetic and younger.
The response to our first book, RealAge, which provided consistent scientific data that you can control your rate of aging, has been overwhelming. Thousands of e-mails have told me that knowing the effect of a healthy choice—for example, knowing that eating an ounce of nuts a day makes the average 55-year-old man more than 3.3 years younger—was empowering. Such knowledge motivated individuals to make healthier choices. For the first year after that book was published, I received an average of 1,500 e-mails a day from readers. People told me they loved having a way of measuring their rate of aging and, even better, had found some simple steps for slowing that process.
As explained in The RealAge Diet, consistent scientific data show that eating the RealAge way—great-tasting, healthy food that is colorful—can make you younger. The scientific advisory group of RealAge has a strict standard to follow: no food choice (and no other health factor, for that matter) is said to have a RealAge effect (e.g., "Enjoying a half-ounce of dark—cocoa based—chocolate before each meal can make you 1.9 years younger") unless that effect has been shown to occur in at least four studies on humans. In addition, each RealAge food choice should be (and is, as confirmed by taste tests) every bit as satisfying and delicious as the energy-sapping, aging foods so widespread in the American diet. My patients and readers love knowing that simple, easy changes in food choices make a measurable difference in their health.
This is where cooking the RealAge way comes in. Perhaps a patient story helps: Steve I. was a 52-year-old hard-driving executive. His wife, Nancy, cared deeply about him, so when he was home for dinner (he ate out or was away two or three nights every week), Nancy cooked his favorite roasts or steaks. She punctuated every meal with great vegetables and a good salad, but Nancy always had his favorite coffee ice cream (to make him feel like home was a comfortable spot); and on planes or on the road he ate whatever was being served (he traveled in first class often, owing to his frequent flyer status); Mrs. Field's cookies and ice cream for dessert were rewards. And he ate whatever everybody else was eating at meetings. He and his wife exercised two or three times a week when he was at home. But he was getting more tired, enjoying the work less, and his arthritis started to act up. So his wife forced him to see me.
We found his RealAge was thirteen years older than his calendar age; he was really 65, not 52, and he felt it. So he made small changes that made a big difference. Just changing to nuts and...
With his bestselling books, Dr. Michael F. Roizen has helped people reverse their chronological aging by ten, fifteen, and up to twenty-nine years. Now, with The RealAge® Workout, he explains the importance of gradually phasing exercise into your everyday routine, because even the smallest changes in behavior can make you feel, look, and be younger. No matter how busy your schedule, Dr. Michael Roizen will show you how to gain the maximum age-reduction benefits from a minimum amount of time and effort. He'll help you create an exercise program that meets your needs and he'll offer tips on how to actually enjoy—yes, even love—exercise. So get ready to achieve optimal health and be as young as you can be!
"Tell me the truth, Mike. What's the MINIMUM amount of physical activity I must do to produce the MAXIMUM health benefit?" This is a great question I'm often asked by my patients who -- busy with careers or family, with little free time to spare -- still want to safeguard their health and their futures. Perhaps you have wondered this, too. Well, the answer is now in your hands. Whether you want to regain the vigorous health of your youth, stay feeling as good as you do today in the years to come, or get into even better shape than ever while slowing your rate of aging, The RealAge® Workout will show you how.
What is the program based on? The RealAge Scientific Advisory Board has reviewed over 35,000 scientific studies on aging, over 5,000 alone on the effects of exercise on health, and has culled the wheat from the chaff. The kernels have been tested and proven (and reproven time and time again) on my patients, and now I'm going to give them to you. I will help you create a goal of how young you want to be, and design a concrete plan that will help you to achieve your goal.
The wonderful truth is that aging is a process that you can control. There are literally hundreds of steps you can take -- things you can do -- that will enable you to play golf, relish conversations or crossword puzzles, travel to faraway places, dance the night away, and even climb mountains until near the day you die. That, in a nutshell, is what the RealAge concept is all about.
The RealAge system:
Research has demonstrated that lifestyle choices and behavior have a far greater impact on longevity and health than heredity. And choosing to be physically active is one of the most important lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, many people think they don't have enough time to devote to exercise to really make a difference. Luckily, they're wrong. I wrote this book because I want you to benefit from what the hundreds of RealAge–Partnership Medicine patients and the millions of RealAge members taught me about the minimum exercise we need to achieve the maximum health benefit. And the good news is small amounts of time can make a huge difference to your health, your well-being, and your RealAge.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? I thought so, too, until I saw the amazing transformations of patients -- and some strangers -- who followed the RealAge Workout plan, some for only 10 minutes at a time. (Most of the strangers became friends.)
So what is the RealAge Workout, exactly? It's simple -- a program broken into four 30-day phases that build one upon...
Most people think that beauty revolves around all those things that we can see in the mirror. But the fact is that beauty isn't some superficial pursuit. In this groundbreaking work, Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz explain how beauty is really about your health and happiness. Busting the myths about how we view ourselves, they take a scientific, informative, and entertaining look at how the three levels of beauty work together to form a complete, and authentic YOU:
Looking Beautiful: Your appearance influences your health and self-esteem; here, the docs will tell you how you can look the way you want.
Feeling Beautiful: The docs will tell you how to improve your energy levels, beat back your life-altering aches and pains, and help you come to grips with some of life's toughest stresses.
Being Beautiful: By improving your relationships with your loved ones as well as with others, you'll be well on your way to finding true happiness.
With their usual candor and honesty, Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz break down the mechanics of beauty and explain how little adjustments in your routine can help you become a happier, healthier person. Navigating the tricky but exciting terrain of today's beauty industry, they reveal how different foods, vitamins, creams, gels, and injections can really boost your looks. They'll also take a close look at chronic pain, mood swings, low energy, and financial stresses. And they'll dive into the science of building relationships, finding happiness, and using spirituality to help you define your own levels of true beauty. Also included in a printable PDF file is the YOU-Q TEST, which will help identify ways to become happier and more satisfied with yourself and your life.
Get your diet up and walking with You: On a Walk! As millions of dieters have already discovered, the key to the weight-loss plan outlined in You: On a Diet is the daily thirty-minute walk. Now the bestselling authors of the YOU series, Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, have created an original audio program specifically designed to help you meet your daily walking goal -- and have fun doing it.
You: On a Walk presents two thirty-minute walks, one faster and one slower, set to music that is timed to keep you moving at the pace that is right for you. Along the way, Drs. Roizen and Oz keep you company as you walk -- telling you about the benefits of walking, sharing pointers and health tips for you to think about, and motivating you to keep going for the entire half hour, all in their signature comfortable, encouraging and entertaining style. You'll also hear some important insights on setting and attaining your weight loss goals, and learn some simple stretches to help you get started.
Thirty Minutes a Day -- No Excuses
Walking for thirty minutes a day is doable and maintainable -- and with You: On a Walk, it's easier and more inviting than ever before. In only a half hour a day you can:
Take America's most trusted doctor team along for the walk -- and get the exercise you need for the results you want.
AMERICA'S MOST TRUSTED DOCTOR TEAM CRACKS THE CODE ON WAIST MANAGEMENT
For the first time in our history, scientists are uncovering astounding medical evidence about dieting. Now Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz translate this cutting-edge information to help you shave inches off your waist, by giving you the best weapon against fat: Knowledge. Through their signature entertaining style, Drs Roizen and Oz teach you about your body -- how and why it stores calories, burns fat, and reacts to the foods you test your body with. Ultimately, they give you the Plan and formulas that will help you lose up to two inches from your waist in two weeks on your way to your ideal size.
By following the YOU diet and YOU activity plan, you will...
Equal parts information, motivation, and change-your-life action, YOU: On a Diet will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the food you consume, so that you'll diet smart, not hard. Welcome to your body on a diet.
Feel better, healthier, and more relaxed...with the audiocompanion to the #1 Bestseller You: Staying Young
Nothing is more fundamental to living than breathing. But just because you've been doing it all your life doesn't mean you can't do it better. Breathing well is also central to meditation, relaxation and other practices that slow down the aging process and feel great while you're doing it. Expanding on the life-extending program introduced in YOU: Staying Young, Drs. Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz bring you an audio program designed to help you enjoy all the physical, mental and spiritual benefits that come from truly breathing easy.
On Disc One, Drs. Roizen and Oz tell you how to focus on breathing to make it work for you. You'll learn how your breathing apparatus works, and how the breath of life moves through your body and affects your well-being. You'll explore the science of stress and discover how to identify stressors and reduce their effects. You'll also learn how to improve the significant part of your life you spend sleeping, and why it's so important to your overall health picture.
Disc Two is devoted to tools and practices that will enhance your breathing, help you relax, and de-stress your life. In this remarkable series of exercises and meditations, the Docs and their frequent collaborator and co-host Lisa Oz introduce you to powerful techniques you'll use again and again, including:
We'll also help you open the YOU Toolbox for insights into medical tests, vitamins and supplements and other information vital to the rich, vibrant life of breathing easy.
Whether you're just learning how to meditate or refining your technique, breathing and meditation are among your most powerful tools for repairing your body and fighting the effects of aging. Make healthy breathing a habit for life with YOU: Breathing Easy.
Remember your high school reunion? Even though everyone was the same chronological age, people no longer looked the same. Some stayed young and exuberant, whereas others looked as if they had aged ten years more than everyone else. Did you know that:
RealAge offers a revolutionary program that calculates the aging effect of different health behaviors ranging from diet and medication to stress control and chronic smoking, and enables you to assess your own biological age. Most important, it shows you how to design a specific path to improving or reversing your own aging trajectory, and it's easier than you think. The RealAge program is based on cutting-edge scientific research. Dr. Michael F. Roizen and his team have pored over 25,000 medical studies, evaluating what they tell us about aging and the prevention of aging.
