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Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives | 
 enlarge | Author: David Snowdon
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $0.15
You Save: $24.80 (99%)
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Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 533013
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 6.4 x 1
ISBN: 0553801635
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.260973
EAN: 9780553801637
ASIN: 0553801635
Publication Date: May 8, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Standard used condition.
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Product Description
In 1986 epidemiologist Dr. David Snowdon embarked on a revolutionary scientific study that would forever change the way we view aging and old age. Dubbed the "Nun Study" because it involves a unique population of 678 Catholic sisters, this remarkable long-term research project remains today at the forefront of some of the world's most significant research on aging.
This remarkable book by one of the world's leading experts on Alzheimer's disease combines fascinating high-tech research on the brain with the heartfelt story of the aging nuns who are teaching scientists how we grow old — and how we can do so with grace. The Nun Study's findings are already helping scientists unlock the secrets to living a longer, healthier life.
Yet Aging With Grace is more than a groundbreaking health and hard-science book. It is the story of an altar boy who grew up to be a scientist studying the effects of aging on nuns. It is the poignant and inspiring stories of the nuns themselves. Ranging in age from 75 to 104, these remarkable women have allowed Dr. Snowdon access to their medical and personal records — and they have agreed to donate their brains upon death.
In Aging With Grace, we accompany Dr. Snowdon on his loving visits to nuns like Sister Clarissa, who at the age of 90 drives around the convent in a motorized cart she calls her "Chevy" and knows as much about baseball as any die-hard fan a third her age.
Then there is 104-year-old Sister Matthia, who until her death in 1998 knitted two pairs of mittens a day and prayed every evening for each of the four thousand students she taught over the years. These bright, articulate, and altruistic women have much to teach us about how faith, wisdom, and spirituality can influence the length and quality of our lives.
We also follow Dr. Snowdon into the lab as he and his colleagues race to decode one of the most devastating diseases known to humanity. We discover:
* Why high linguistic ability in early life seems to protect against Alzheimer's
* Which ordinary foods in the diet defend the brain against aging
* Why preventing strokes and depression is key to avoiding dementia
* Why it's never too late to start an exercise program
* What role heredity plays, and how lifestyle can increase our chances for a mentally vital old age
* How intangibles like community and faith help us age with grace
Both cutting-edge science and a personal prescription for hope, Aging With Grace shows how old age doesn't have to mean an inevitable slide into illness and disability; rather, it can be a time of promise and productivity, intellectual and spiritual vigor, and continuing freedom from disease.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Alzheimer February 15, 2008
Silvia Chavarria (Costa Rica)
My mother, grand mother and great grandmother have had Alzheimer. This book has helped me a lot to understand the sickness and given me good ideas of what to do with the rest of my life. Thanks
Not what I thought.... September 29, 2007
C. Woodruff (Tulsa, OK USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really thought this would be a dry scientific book about results, showing graphs, etc, but it was not at all! The nuns told him he could only study them if he promised to get to know them, and he followed their wishes completely. I'm trying to make my sentences as long as possible and if you read the book, you'll know why and think I'm hopeless! The author has a wonderful way of weaving their lives into what he has discovered, as he leaves each little pause in the chapters with a sentence to make you want to read the next to see what they discovered about it. I learned a lot about what we have a little influence over in our own physical lives and what we might not. It's a very easy read. Oops! Short sentence. My bad!
Very Inspirational for young researchers July 23, 2007
Fernando Coto-Yglesias (Costa Rica)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a young geriatrist and researcher I found Dr Snowdon's scientific experience told in such a personal way very inspirational, puts into perpective and unwraps much of what aging and clinical research is about.
I found also amazing his ability to read details in each of the nuns lives named in the book to make conclusions related to how to become old in a "longer, healthier and more meaningful" way.
A "must read" book for everyone interested in gerontology...perhaps all of us: the aging people.
Great read for many reasons January 23, 2007
kelly a kelly
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Ordered for a class related to epidemiology and nursing. Turns out i would have loved it regardless. A scientist collects data from a unique nun population in search of data which leads him on a extensive journey related to Alzheimer's disease. Personal and subjective. Informative and endearing. Would and have recommended to many. Easy read.
The Nuns Have It January 20, 2007
Gord Wilson (Bellingham, WA USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
If your idea of nuns is none having fun, get ready for a surprise. Dr. Snowden made a study of 678 nuns, called The Nun Study. Many signed up to donate their brains to science, once having shed the mortal coil, for a study of alzheimer's disease. How thoughtful of the good sisters, one thinks, who, of course, in the dark, dank, life denying precincts of cloistered religion, of course all succumbed to this sad, mind- ravaging disease, after having soldiered on for so long, denied even life's smallest pleasures.
All true to form, except that's not what happened. The surprise is how many didn't get alzheimers, how many might be said to have cartwheeled rather than trudged on beyond a century, how many given unto helping the poor and AIDS patients retained their mental acuity and, if I may say, lust for life, and went dancing, as it were, towards the grave.
Contrast this with the absolutely opposite view of so many aging Baby Boomers (of whom I am one), who absolutely fear death, in the sense of trying to drag out existence as long as possible, who absolutely fear existence in the sense of trying to jazz it up and jam it full of diversions and amusements as much as possible, who having fearlessly announced that we are alone in the universe, absolutely fear being alone and, being in denial and avoidance of making any sort of plans for the sunset years, as well as having an aversion to any sort of community, continually pile psychic burdens on the tiny nuclear families of Generations X and beyond whom they expect to devote their modest resources to the full- time allaying of these fears.
The good doctor writes a lot about his relations with the Sisters in a likeable, chatty style, which is probably the main reason to read this book. But he sometimes gets rather technical about the research side, and you can't help hoping to seize on the magic formula for a long and healthy life. While the results are dramatic, his tone is tentative, but the helpers are pretty much what you thought: tomatoes (especially cooked ones), pink grapefruit, watermelon, spinach and dark green leafy vegetables (Popeye was right), carrots, nuts and beans. Pretty much the diet most Baby Boomers have switched to. Readers will like the next part. As they always suspected, a somewhat high "idea" quotient is good for something. The young, active brain likely grows into, no surprise, the mature active brain. Those of you not in the 40 percent who actively read books may want to start with this one. This recent paperback edition is a great deal; it used to be a $25 hardback.
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