travelin

Yes, it was in a very dusty corner of a Bulgarian bookstore, but shouldn't it be better than this? If I'm going to get conflicting opinions by several GPs, shouldn't it be in a shorter, better edited format? I'd love a chart showing the most agreed-upon preventatives.

I am full of admiration at any qualified attempt to give absolute advice in a short, digestible format. I wish we could find a survey of GPs giving definite dietary guidelines, etc., to reach a consensus.

But these two TV GPs don't appear to agree with each other. Or maybe consensus got lost at the publishing house, which gave this book the name "You Staying Young" and plastered the back with ad copy from the fountain of youth. At best, it contains a few much needed truisms to live longer, which is unfortunately very different from staying young.

I did love the chapter about Glycoslaticin and how excess glucose "gunking up" proteins is the scientific definition of aging. The GPs also seem to agree that you need to restrict your caloric intake by at least 15% and/or take supplements such as reservatol in red wine, which turns on the production of the same anti-aging Sirtuin whhich is produced in a low calorie diet.

It's all too easy to point out recent reports which say caloric restriction did not prolong life in chimps. Or that a long study showed reservatol was not a panacea. Researchers are now apparently taking a closer look at tomatoes.

It's truly not much fun to point out contradictions to simple, direct advice, especially when it appears by authors of the exact same book. All I can say is that neither reservatol nor red wine make it into the chapter "Your Vital Supplements."

Something called Acetyl-L-carnitine does make the list of once-a-days (no reason given), but according to the index, isn't recommended at all for its main claim to fame (brain health, I think), (pg 37). The book contains a long blurb regarding the nutrients in types and sizes of grapes, but later suggests that only Concord grapes are effective for some preventative cases. The advice which isn't California weird is California chemical anyway, with a list of actual medications to take if you have trouble sleeping.

Altogether, the book is the size of a monthly magazine if the font size, line spacing and full-page cartoons were cut from 1/3 of the book. But I'd much rather have caveats and discussions of medical contradictions than a medical book which ends with 32 pages of guidelines to unidentified, yoga-like postures, including, and I'm not making this up, "picking the fruit" and "monkey hears a noise".

In the book A Fan's Notes the author describes receiving insulin-shock treatment from twead and pipe doctors at a private hospital. Not only are they uncertain how or whether their treatment works, their very success in the conventions of medicine make them unable to question. All hail conventionality in medicine. But shouldn't there be more studies demonstrating that a few concrete opinions in preventative medicine are actually true?