YOU Staying Young:

The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty

Reviewed by Liz Milner

Longevity for Dummies
At first glance, YOU Staying Young: The Owner’s Manual for Extending Your Warranty, by Michael F. Roizen MD and Mehmet C. Oz MD, looks as though it should be titled Longevity for Dummies. It has all the hallmarks of the Dummies series of self-help books: the ubiquitous call-outs, the graphic icons, a cartoon every couple of pages, the breezy informal style. Whether you learn anything from this book depends in large part on how you handle large doses of cuteness. Almost every sentence contains an outrageous metaphor. My body was compared to a car, a city, Swiss cheese, and a “rust belt factory,” among other things. The cartoons, by genius Gary Hallgren, are also rich in puns: the "Gaul [sic] Bladder," for example, is depicted as an uncooperative Frenchman.

In addition to their somewhat cloying quality, the metaphors often distracted me from the text—if my body is a city, is it Paris, France, or Camden, New Jersey? The comparisons are also visual. Free radicals are represented as beret-wearing, bomb-toting, black-garbed beatniks, a stereotype that put me in mind of Boris Badenov's cri de coeur: "Unfair to Local 12, Villains, Thieves, and Scoundrels Union."

Cuteness aside, the book is very useful. It presents a slightly different spin on aging. Most such books I've seen fall into one of two camps: Either they promote "an amazing miracle program that will cause your aging process to reverse itself and the years to drop away like excess flab at a fat farm," or they are second cousins to horror novels, describing every age-related pain and indignity in obsessive detail and explaining how to cope with your inevitable decreptitude.

YOU refreshingly and realistically encourages you to prolong youth by ensuring that your body is properly maintained. "After all," Roizen and Oz write," aging may be inevitable, but the rate of aging is certainly not." The book teaches strategies to slow the rate of aging that are based on established medical findings. (We take the reputable Roizen and Oz’s word for these; references are not cited.) Rather than offer a grab bag of good advice, the authors present their YOU-nified theory of aging. "The real secret to longevity," they explain, "isn’t whether or not you break; it's how well you recover and repair when you do . . . living longer shouldn't be about ‘taking longer to die,’ . . . It should be about enjoying every moment of a longer life." They sum up their perspective with the pithy observation, "Genetics loads the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger."

Using YOU: Staying Young
Each chapter contains the following:

• A spotlight on a "major ager," such as bad genes, toxins, viruses, excess glucose, and hormonal fluctuations.
• YOU Tests that assess where you are on the aging scale.
• YOU Tips—strategies that you can use to keep your body young.

Scattered throughout the book are YOU tools—programs to get control over a wide range of life's challenges. The list of YOU tools, which is unaccountably buried on page 9, includes
• Anger-management plan
• Quit smoking plan
• Deep sleep plan
• Medical tests you need
• Ultimate workup
• Deep breathing and meditation
• Stress management
• Vital vitamins and supplements
• De-tox plan
• The YOU-2 workout
• Chi-gong workout

At the end of the book (Part II, which begins on p. 307) is the YOU Extended Warranty Plan, a 14-day super-program. This regimen is an action plan based on information about slowing the aging process that was introduced in Part I. Tips, quizzes, shopping lists, action steps, a daily “YOU-do” list, and exercise routines are all integrated into the plan. The authors maintain they created a 14-day program because research suggests that behaviors become habits in 14 days.

I was especially impressed by the section on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which gives the clearest explanation of HRT that I've ever encountered. The authors aren't afraid to offer their opinion—a guarded yes—on this controversial issue.

To supplement the content of the book, the authors offer their Real Age Web Site. Visitors to the site can take the Real Age Test, which will generate a personalized care plan. The site also offers tips, brain games, recipes, shopping lists, videos, workouts, and links.

A Helpful Tool
This book holds few surprises. It is full of tested, sensible advice that you have probably gathered piecemeal from your doctor, your WeightWatchers group, or your trainer, or from magazine and newspaper articles. What makes this book useful is that like an automobile owner's manual, it presents in one place all the information you need to run your body properly. Where else can you find a one-stop source for such essential info as every vitamin and supplement you should take, every inoculation and medical test you should have, basic yoga and chi-gong exercises, and even instructions on how to fall safely? And, which of your possessions would benefit from an extended warranty more than your own body?