Feel like you’re getting old? You’re in good company. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2050, the number of Americans aged 65 and older will reach 83.7 million, or about 20% of the population, up from 14% in 2012.
As the population ages, readers increasingly seek information on caring for loved ones and themselves. Many of this season’s health and wellness titles address these issues.
Several books focus on the neurological effects of aging, and the ways people can delay or mitigate them. The Mindspan Diet by Preston Estep III (Ballantine, May) looks at what the author calls the “mindspan” elite—populations whose members, in part because of their diets, tend to enjoy long-term cognitive health. Examples include people in parts of France, southern Italy, Japan, and South America.
Estep, who is the director of gerontology at the Human Genome Project, argues that some ingredients we assume are good for us, such as iron, “can become toxic to an over-40 brain,” says Marnie Cochran, an executive editor at Ballantine Bantam Dell who worked on the book. Estep also contends, contrary to widespread belief, that processed grains may be healthier than whole grains for the over-40 population. For evidence he points to France, with its baguettes, and Japan, with its white sushi rice.
“There’s been a whole slew of books that has convinced us diet impacts brain health,” Cochran says. “What Estep is doing is upending old information.”
Not everyone is ready to embrace processed grains, however. Several forthcoming titles that focus on nutrition’s impact on aging promote the MIND diet, a hybrid of the Mediterranean and DASH diets (see “Alphabet Soup for Health,” below).
In The Memory Diet (New Page, May), twin sisters Judi Zucker and Shari Zucker, who have coauthored several titles, including The Ultimate Allergy-Free Cookbook (Square One, 2014), offer more than 150 recipes based on the MIND diet.
Other forthcoming titles include The MIND Diet by nutritionist Maggie Moon (Ulysses, Nov.), and The Everything Guide to the MIND Diet by Christy Ellingsworth and Murdoc Khaleghi (Adams Media, Oct. 18), whose The Everything DASH Diet Cookbook (Adams Media, 2012) has sold 12,000 print copies, per Nielsen BookScan.
Cognitive decline also presents challenges to emotional health and lifestyle—not just for those suffering from it, but for caregivers, too. In June, Greystone is publishing When Someone You Know Has Dementia by June Andrews, who directs the Dementia Services Development Center at the University of Stirling, in Scotland. She offers advice on caring for people suffering from memory loss and other symptoms of dementia, which, according to a 2015 report from Alzheimer’s Disease International, affects more than 46 million people worldwide.
Nancy Flight, associate publisher at Greystone, says the book offers guidance for caregivers based on feedback from patients. “There is a lot of information from people who have dementia: what their fears are, what they want and need, how they want to be treated,” she says. Andrews discusses the importance of exercise, which can help reduce symptoms, as well as the neurological benefits of listening to music.
Challenges for Women
Several forthcoming books home in on aging issues more common among or specific to women. In May Oxmoor will publish The Menopause Solution by Stephanie S. Faubion, who directs the Women’s Health Clinic in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. The book addresses issues including weight control, sleep, and sexual health.
Menopause Confidential (HarperOne, Sept. 20) by gynecologist Tara Allmen covers similar ground; it also offers tips on navigating the often conflicting advice doctors and health resources provide.
Osteoporosis features in at least two forthcoming books. While the condition may affect anyone, it’s far more common among women: according to International Osteoporosis Foundation, it affects some 200 million women worldwide. The books include Beat Osteoporosis with Exercise by senior-fitness expert Karl Knopf (Ulysses, Apr.) and The Healthy Bones Nutrition Plan and Cookbook (Chelsea Green, July) by Laura Kelly, a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, and her mother, Helen Bryman Kelly, a research writer and editor.
Other books addressing the pains and aches of aging—for men as well as women—include natural-medicine practitioner Michelle Schoffro Cook’s Arthritis-Proof Your Life (Humanix, Sept.) and osteopathic physician Joseph Tieri’s End Everyday Pain for 50+ (Ulysses, Oct.).
Broader Perspectives
Some forthcoming titles look beyond specific issues and examine aging in all its facets.
Cracking the Aging Code (Flatiron, June) by theoretical biologist Josh Mitteldorf and ecological philosopher and theorist Dorion Sagan, son of astronomer Carl Sagan, brings an evolutionary lens to the topic of aging, arguing that aging can “stabilize populations and ecosystems” and “support the ‘greater good’ ” of the human species, according to the publisher.
Other books offer big-picture advice that can be applied to a range of wellness issues. Your Health, Your Decisions by internist and oncologist Robert Alan McNutt (Univ. of North Carolina, Sept.) offers a guide to becoming an active participant in one’s health treatment, challenging the “physician-directed, medical-expertise model of making medical decisions,” according to the publisher.
In The Big Five (Thomas Dunne, May), Sanjiv Chopra, a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, enumerates a handful of surprisingly specific practices—such as drinking coffee and adding nuts to one’s diet—that, according to the author, support longevity and overall health.
In August, the University of North Carolina Press will publish The Art and Science of Aging Well by Mark E. Williams, a professor of medicine at UNC. Joseph Parsons, a senior editor at the press, says Williams “places the influence of aging on our biological and mental processes within a rich cultural context that defines roles and expectations for us as we age,” and argues that “while aging is inevitable, it is not necessarily something to be suffered.”
Building his advice on five core principles—such as stimulating one’s intellect and managing one’s emotions—Williams prioritizes aging gracefully over the presumably impossible task of staving off the process altogether, according to Parsons. “For the first time in human history, each of us has a realistic 50-50 chance of living beyond the age of 80,” Parsons says, “and modern medical science confirms that we have considerable choice in the quality of our own old age.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article gave an incorrect location for the University of Stirling. It is in Scotland, not England.
Alphabet Soup for Health
DASH: Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. Promoted by the NIH’s National Heart, Blood, and Lung Institute.
MIND diet: Mediterranean Intervention Neurodegenerative Delay. Developed by nutritional epidemiologist Martha Clare Morris, it combines the portions of the DASH diet and the Mediterranean diet that are most conducive to brain health.
