Winning Strategies for Successful Aging

The most touching and effective scene in Pfeiffer's (psychiatry, emeritus, Univ. of South Florida; The Art of Caregiving in Alzheimer's Disease) book on healthy aging involves an elderly couple's walks. Rain or shine, twice a day for ten years they walked briskly hand-in-hand—if pausing often to chat with neighbors. The scene illustrates, in a nutshell, the book's thesis: it is important for elderly people to exercise often, nurture relationships, interact with the community, and dream about what to be "when they grow up." Pfeiffer suggests daily vitamins and notes the possible benefit of limited hormone use for the recently menopausal, bypassing floods of studies on types and doses of both. Still, his counsel is always careful and caring. The writing reflects the humor he advises readers to retain, as when he discusses doctors embarrassed to prescribe sex to patients old enough to be their grandparents, despite its health benefits. "Educate your doctors about sex," he says wryly. Some fledgling doctors may think it is just for the young but "you and I know better."