On this Web site we have posted numerous articles advising people how to keep healthy as they age. We've concentrated largely on the physical aspects -- how to reduce your likelihood of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis, and so on -- without covering the mental and emotional viewpoints. "Defy Aging", by Michael Brickey PhD, goes a long way to redress the balance. His book is a 'How To' manual for people who are planning to live to 150.

Dr Brickey has collected together the well-known arguments for positive mental attitudes towards the problems of aging and illness (e.g. those of Martin Seligman, Norman Cousins, Deepak Chopra), which can be amplified by the universal mantra "use it or lose it". He begins with a self-administered test of mental longevity that the reader can use as a baseline for looking at the effectiveness of planned changes in attitudes and beliefs.

There follows a list of 36 beliefs that Dr Brickey considers foster longevity, based on researches into centenarians' characteristics. (This list appears again - twice - so it's clearly a key feature of defying aging). Strategies for changing your beliefs, or adapting new ones, are given, along with a set of 12 mental exercises to help you achieve this. Four important attitudes come next, along with techniques and exercises to help you move away from pessimistic towards optimistic outlooks.

Chapters dealing with death, grieving, outliving family and friends, and handling change contain much useful advice and further exercises. These are some of the best in the book, allowing people of all beliefs and creeds to find help in painful situations.

Not surprisingly in a book covering mental longevity, Dr Brickey's chapters on nutrition, exercise, marriage, sex, financial planning, and so on, are less comprehensive, though obviously necessary for completeness' sake. I have some minor quibbles: repetitions abound (e.g. was it necessary to mention Robert Dilts' mother's remission three times?); many quotes are from famous but non-expert people e.g. Joan Rivers, Clark Gable, Ruth Gordon. And there are extensive examples culled from US movies and TV programs; these can help clarify situations to movie buffs, but they leave the rest of us out in the cold.

In spite of these minor shortcomings, I can recommend this book, either as a workbook for those planning their lives to 100 and beyond, or as something to refer to from time to time, when faced with a specific problem. In particular, I see its value in helping people change their attitudes and beliefs regarding the apparent inevitability of the aging process.

Source

Brickey M. Defy Aging. 1st edition. New Resources Press, Columbus, Ohio. 2000

Links

• The Longevity Dialogues
• Mind and Body: Turning Connection into Advantage
• Worrying in Later Life: Ways to Identify and Treat Generalized Anxiety

Defy Aging by Michael P. Brickey