RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be?

What is aging? Aging is not a mysterious metaphysical phenomenon. Aging happens in the particulars. Your arteries become clogged. Your arthritis flares up. Age is not just a chronological measurement; it's the rate at which the primary internal guardians of health--your cardiovascular and immune systems--decline.

While your chronological age is fixed, your biological age may be years older--or younger--depending on a combination of factors. RealAge offers a revolutionary, systematic program that calculates the aging effect of more than 100 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.

Developed by Dr. Michael F. Roizen, chair of anesthesia and critical care at the University of Chicago and preventive gerontologist, along with four other scientists, the RealAge program is based on cutting-edge scientific research. Dr. Roizen and his team have pored over 25,000 medical studies, evaluating what they tell us about aging and what they tell us about the prevention of aging.In RealAge, they present the complete results of their analysis for the first time.

Each chapter covers a broad health topic--for example, how the right vitamins and supplements, exercise, or diet can be used to control how your genes affect you--and calculates the RealAge advantage you will gain by adopting a specific behavior. Charts, fact sheets, and tests give you specific choices to make and describe benefits to be gained so you can measure your success.

Suggested behavior changes are rated in order of difficulty so you can decide whether the result is worth the effort.

Ultimately, this program is about maintaining your health. The better condition you are in, the better prepared you will be to fight the factors that age you. RealAge demonstrates that you can have more control over the aging process. It makes science simple and its promise is irresistible: You may live as young at seventy as you did at forty-four.

Remeber your high school reunion?

Even though everyone was the same chronological age, people no longer looked the same. Some wore the years well, staying young and exuberant despite the passage of time, whereas others looked as if they had aged ten years more than everyone else--and probably had.

Did you know that:

• Financial stress can make your RealAge two to thirty-two years older?
• The difference between having the ideal blood pressure 115/76--and high blood pressure--higher than 140/90--can make a RealAge difference of more than twenty years?
• A tablet of aspirin a day can make your RealAge 1.9 years younger?
• Flossing daily and seeing a dentist and dental hygienist every six months can make your RealAge 6.4 years younger?