Dr. D's Handbook for Men Over 40

Peter Dorsen

Description

"Dr. Dorsen gives us a much-needed, practical guide to feeling good and maximizing the joys of life after 40.… Should be required reading for every active, youthful spirit entering their mature years."
—Geoffrey Tabin, M.D., author of Blind Corners

"A stimulating and valuable read."
—Stanley S. Bergen, Jr., M.D., President, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

Dr. D’s Handbook for Men Over 40 is a practical, down-to-earth plan that will show you how to continue to lead an exciting life and maintain a positive attitude as you grow older. With solid information and clear advice to help you stay strong, energetic, and confident, your best years are yet to come. This lighthearted yet reassuring book will help you overcome the fear of growing older, adjust to the physiological and neurological changes that occur at midlife, maintain or regain fitness through exercise and proper nutrition, build healthy relationships, and more. Plus, it includes real-life stories about men whose healthy habits in later years have added to their lives—and how they do it.
The Fear of Growing Older: Facts and Myths About Our Bodies.

Physical Changes That Affect Physical Ability.

What to Expect From Your Nerves.

On Slowing Down: It's the Master's, Not the Olympics.

The Psychology of Aging: Midlife Opportunity.

Aging Can Be Good: Stretch, Aerobicize, and Pump Iron.

Recent History and Theory of Exercising: What, Why, and How.

Practical Techniques: Stretching, Strength, and Aerobics.

Nutrition: To Eat or Not to Eat.

Ways to Avoid Going Out of Your Mind: The Life Review and Other Tricks.

The Hazards of Being 40: Overuse and Abuse.

Spirituality: Try It, You'll Like It.

Glossary.

Index.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Santé du quotidien
• Santé au quotidien
• Santé au quotidien
• Fitness
• Health
• Living
• Men's Health
• Cuarto de estar

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 21 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470311592
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Dr. D s Handbook
for Men Over 40
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 1999 by Peter Dorsen, M.D. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, [phone], fax [phone], E-Mail: [e-mail] .
The information contained in this book is not intended to serve as a replacement for professional medical advice. Any use of the information in this book is at the reader s discretion. The author and the publisher specifically disclaim any and all liability arising directly or indirectly from the use or application of any information contained in this book. A health care professional should be consulted regarding your specific situation.
ISBN: 0-471-34787-6
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dr. D s Handbook
for Men Over 40
A Guide to Health, Fitness, Living ,
and Loving in the Prime of Life
Peter Dorsen, M.D.

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
New York Chichester Weinheim Brisbane Singapore Toronto
To Bria, Gabriella, Katarina, and Suzy.
This book could not have been done without your joy, questioning, and warmth. For this, I am forever grateful.
All my love, Dad/Peter
Contents
Foreword
Preface
1. The Fear of Growing Older
Facts and Myths About Our Bodies
2. Physical Changes That Affect Physical Ability
3. What to Expect From Your Nerves
4. On Slowing Down
It s the Master s, Not the Olympics
5. The Psychology of Aging
Midlife Opportunity
6. Aging Can Be Good
Stretch, Aerobicize, and Pump Iron
7. Recent History and Theory of Exercising
What, Why, and How
8. Practical Techniques
Stretching, Strength, and Aerobics
9. Nutrition
To Eat or Not to Eat
10. Ways to Avoid Going Out of Your Mind
The Life Review and Other Tricks
11. The Hazards of Being 40
Overuse and Abuse
12. Spirituality
Try It, You ll Like It
Glossary
Index
Many thanks to Leigh Pomeroy, a great friend and a master of understatement and wine, who helped make this book a reality.
This book is the apotheosis of people I have known since childhood. There were Rosie the Runner, Oscar Rand, George Ostler, Dr. Walter Kip Minaert, Al Merrill, Dartmouth Professor Edward Bradley, Seymour and Phyllis Lifschutz, M.D., Sylvan Moolten, M.D., Dr. Herb Brody, and cousin Norman Dorsen, Dan Tartaglia M.D., Paul Sandler, Norm Oakvik, Roy Carlsted, Arvid Krogsven, Andy McGinn, M.D., Arthur Leon, M.D., Michael Sprafka, Ph.D., Bjorn Lasserud, Dan Danielson, Chuck Burton, M.D., Torbjorn Karlsen, and many others.
Refuting a myth I had believed in, the staff at Chronimed Publishing made converting my manuscript into a success an easy process. For this I owe immense thanks to Cheryl Kimball (Director of Publishing), David Enyeart (Production Artist), Lori Asplund (Publicity), and Claire Lewis (Production Manager), who helped me believe what I had produced still continued to have unquestionable merit.
Let us not forget those woods where, on one of my runs, I could make my muscles tighten. After all, most of the time it was just me and The Great Spirit, without whom this all might never have happened.
Foreword
by Jim Chase, editor and publisher of Cross Country Skier magazine.
There is a condition that hits many of us around 40 or so. It s perhaps not as menacing as it sounds, but it can be annoying at the very least. And as they say, it isn t something you catch -it catches you! It s called a variety of things, but I ll simply term it middle age.
Once upon a time, getting older wasn t such a problem. The life expectancy for a man was in his thirties somewhere, which meant that once he lost that half step to the woolly mammoth-well, let s just say that his midlife crisis suddenly became the least of his worries.
It s tempting (and not entirely inaccurate) to suggest that we men aren t living the lives for which we were designed. Though it may be stretching it a bit to sit naked in the woods beating tom-toms in the middle of the night in our search for meaning in our lives, it is true that many of our physical and emotional characteristics may still be somewhere in the middle-to-late Pleistocene. Thus we find that we re having to adapt hunter-gatherer fight-or-flight instincts to the boardroom and bedroom.
Many of the traits we instinctively value-strength, agility, physical endurance, the ability to strive and compete-are no longer directly adaptable to human interaction, in which consensus and accommodation are often the key. Trouble is, implementing such concepts can cause stress or a sense of imbalance when they fly in the face of our inbred instincts.
The Slippery Slope of Decline
The physical side of our lives now has its outlets in sports and other active pursuits. But as any 35-year-old linebacker can confirm, as we approach midlife-through our thirties, and certainly by our forties-the sad fact is we may have lost the vital half step that once kept us from being lunch for something bigger than we were. Now we may be plagued by aches, pains, angst, or other signs of aging. This underlines an inevitable and painful realization that we can no longer do all the things for which we were originally designed. It makes us uneasy.
Fortunately, such skills are no longer so necessary to our lives. Walking into the boss s office and slapping down a bleeding haunch of fresh buffalo just doesn t carry the same clout it once did. Unfortunately this thought is not always comforting. As outdated as hunting skills may be, their loss may cause us some anxiety.
There are other, more immediate pitfalls, as we all know. Remember the first time some 23-year-old lovely called you sir ? Is she talking to me?
Now think of our friend back in the Ice Age, 32 years old and no longer able to compete successfully for the most desirable breeding partners-can t support a family, you see. Weak legs. Might just as well try to arm wrestle a dire wolf.
Racing Against Rats
Not that recent pressures are any kinder. Our 40th birthday may also mark a point at which, traditionally, we are supposed to have made some mark on this world, set our course, and achieved a certain level in our profession and career. We are supposed to have made major steps toward becoming our own bosses, or our own men. Daniel Levinson, in Seasons of a Man s Life , writes that age 40 is the point when many of us feel the need to cut away our trusted mentors and depart on our own life s adventure. Such a transition may not often be so easy. Although not always necessary, the jump can be another of the pressures that our lives put on us.
Now we want to be the ones to call the shots. If a man has not yet successfully achieved sufficient status, he can experience plenty of anxiety. What? we think. Already 40 and still running in the rat race? This is an eighties kind of concept, but it is compelling nonetheless.
So we seek ways of finding our balance, of being given that unmistakable sign that we ve made it. In Iron John , Robert Bly suggests that in modern society, we no longer have the rituals that once punctuated our lives and marked our passage from one phase to another. He (and countless men s group advocates) suggests that we go back to the rituals of our past-to beat the drum as it were-and re-create primitive rites of passage. Thus the notion of sitting naked in the woods. The intent is to give back to our lives the sense of balance that our primitive ancestors presumably enjoyed.
Such a rite of passage is actually not as bizarre as it sounds. The idea is that historically, people s lives-men and women-were delineated by rituals to celebrate passage into the next phase. There were coming-of-age ceremonies, first-kill rituals, leadership investitures, what have you. With few exceptions (weddings or bar mitzvahs come to mind), such benchmarks of life have disappeared. Lacking them, as the theory goes, we constantly feel we re not moving forward. So we revert to old rituals.
The problem is that our world is not going to change back. We are never going to go back to hunting full-time for a living instead of working as a dentist. Similarly, we may have to accept that some of the standards we once held for ourselves must be discarded in favor of a more realistic view of the lives we actually lead. The ability to run nonstop from sunrise to sunset in pursuit of a wounded prey is not very useful to the average businessman. If it were, it would doubtless be included in the MBA curriculum.
Obviously, we should recognize that what we do for a living has changed totally over the years-and especially during the past two decades-and that we shouldn t be trapped into judging ourselves by outdated standards of achievement. That s an easy thing to say until the inevitable moment when real life intrudes on our little fantasy.
That doesn t mean we re advocating forgetting what we were or are. We have to recognize that while the world has changed greatly over 40,000 years, the animal inside us, Homo sapiens , has not. We have to be willing to adapt some pretty archaic personal traits to our modern world, and to accept that some pretty outdated habits, many of which aren t strictly rational, may go a long way toward making us happy anyway. In other words, some accommodation has to be made for the hunter within us. So back we come to na