<B>The aging brain: Act now so you don’t lose your mind</B> For more than two decades, deaths from heart disease have been decreasing at an impressive clip. Although it has been hotly debated whether the decline stems more from improvements in medical care or preventive steps, both factors flow from better scientific understanding of the disease. There has also been a steady drop in the frequency of strokes over the same period, largely because researchers discovered the connection between strokes and high blood pressure and found better methods of controlling it. Cancer, that other major killer, has been more difficult to bring under control, but years of investigation are beginning to pay off. Between 1990 and 2000, cancer death rates fell almost five percent the first measured decline in human history. Not all the news about disease is that good, but overall, scientific developments are helping us live a lot longer.

In <!–BPLINK=0553109448–><B>Saving Your Brain: The Revolutionary Plan to Boost Brain Power, Improve Memory, and Protect Yourself Against Aging and Alzheimer’s</B><!–ENDBPLINK–>, Dr. Jeff Victoroff points out the ironic threat posed by this longer life people are living long enough to be vulnerable to ARN that is, aging-related neurodegeneration.

Aging-related brain degenerations are now the fourth most common cause of death, and rising fast. Dr. Gary Small notes in <B>The Memory Bible: An Innovative Strategy for Keeping Your Brain Young</B> that the rate of new Alzheimer’s cases doubles every five years between ages 65 and 90, and people are increasingly living into their 80s and 90s.

As foreboding as this sounds, the central tone of each author is extremely hopeful. Knowledge of how the brain ages has expanded at an extraordinary pace since the beginning of the 1990s. Just as better understanding of heart disease, stroke and cancer led to effective methods of prevention and treatment, a vigorous defense against deterioration of the aging brain can now be mounted. Each book provides a rich source of measures aimed at saving your brain. It’s not surprising that Small, a renowned neuroscientist who directs both the UCLA Memory Clinic and UCLA’s Center on Aging, places enormous emphasis on improving memory as an integral part of any program to slow aging of the brain. He quickly gets down to business, describing his LOOK (actively observe), SNAP (create a vivid image), CONNECT (visualize a link) method, which he guarantees will immediately improve memory, and supplementing this system with a sequence of mental aerobics to stimulate the brain. Small goes beyond the basics to skills that both slow aging of the brain and enrich everyday life. In a similar beneficial manner, his program provides guidelines for optimizing other influences on brain health, such as diet and lifestyle, that will also improve health more broadly.

Victoroff, a Harvard-trained neurologist and neuropsychiatrist, covers similar topics in a strikingly different manner. Whereas Small lays out his program to keep the brain young after a brief survey of the underlying science, Victoroff describes the fascinating science at greater length. His presentation is by no means dry, precisely because the science is fascinating. And whereas Small’s recipe for saving the brain requires less than 12 compact chapters, Victoroff’s occupies a dozen-and-a-half wide-ranging chapters, with more extensive discussion; medical digressions on topics such as the effects of the workplace on brain health; more elaborate diagrams and figures; and even a brain-saving food pyramid that he constructed as a more effective alternative to the well-known U.S. Department of Agriculture diet pyramid.

Small has created a memory bible with an effective prescription for keeping that faculty robust. Victoroff has produced a comprehensive guidebook on brain health and its preservation. Which book a reader chooses depending on depth of interest and available time isn’t the central issue. What is? Most of us are headed for a long life that will increasingly be beset by mental deterioration. Get one of these extremely helpful books, follow its wise strategy and save your brain. <I>Al Huebner, a physicist, writes widely on science.</I>

In 1991, John Chappelear’s life fell apart. Within days, he went from being CEO of a multimillion dollar company to financial and emotional ruin. This catastrophic fall, which he dubbed my gift of desperation, woke him mightily. Now a successful life coach, Chappelear discovered that meaning in life comes not from achievements or wealth, but from something that is slowly entwined into life through your daily experiences, personal beliefs, and the way you interact with those around you. Enter The Daily Six: Six Simple Steps to Find the Perfect Balance of Prosperity and Purpose, a commonsense bible based on short, powerful maxims. This is Chappelear’s road map to well-being, his contribution to bettering private and business lives, inspired by mentors who helped him back to wholeness. Dedicated to fostering success with significance, his six-point plan emphasizes the daily practices of willingness, contemplation, love and forgiveness, service, gratitude and action. Chappelear’s approach to change is gentle, almost humble; he uses heartening case studies of others who have met and managed change, but he uses his own life as the primary lesson. This self-proclaimed recovering big shot realizes that My life quest is no longer what can I get?’ but what can I give?’

If you seem to be losing your keys with unsettling regularity, Mind Power might be the book for you. Gary Null, who wrote the bestseller Power Aging, is urging Baby Boomers to take control of their mental acuity by understanding and taking better care of their brains. Null encourages regular exercise, spiritual health through meditation and regular social contact and a nutritional plan packed with complex carbohydrates, soy products and organic produce. Null also examines the symptoms of several specific brain conditions, from depression to mental fatigue to Alzheimer’s Disease, and shows how they can be combated. He includes a chapter of Mind Power Meals, or as he calls them, recipes for the mind.

While staying physically fit is important, so too is preserving mental fitness. Two new books explore ways to keep your mind as healthy as your body. In Brainfit: 10 Minutes a Day for a Sharper Mind and Memory, Corinne L. Gediman prescribes daily mental exercises designed to slow age-related mental decline. Good brain exercises challenge the brain to think in new ways and may also include a component of physical exercise and social interaction. The majority of Brainfit is dedicated to dozens of fun, easy memory exercises. For example, to remember all the items on a shopping list, visualize each item, then pair it with the next item on your list. If you need to pick up sand and candles at the hardware store, Gediman advises visualizing a sandcastle at dusk with candles glowing in the windows. Follow her program, and you will soon be bowing to the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne (try remembering that name).

Humans lose up to 30 percent of muscle mass by age 70, and without some work, it goes even further downhill from there. An expert in movement therapy, author D. Cristine Caivano offers a thorough and well-illustrated guide that makes strength training seem (gasp!) fun. Strength Training Over 50 is suitable for men and women, those who are already physically fit as well as those who are out of shape, injured or just plain not motivated. The book is divided into lower- and upper-body exercises some incorporating light weights or an exercise ball and offers concise, detailed instructions for each sequence. Added bonus: the models used in the how-to photos are over 50 themselves and look quite fabulous, providing just the motivation to get started.

Look and feel 10 years younger in 10 weeks. Sound too good to be true? It’s not, and you don’t have to resort to plastic surgery or fad diets to achieve it, says physician Steven Masley in his new book, Ten Years Younger. His sensible, easy-to-follow plan is based on a healthy diet, skin rejuvenation, plenty of exercise and stress reduction. Masley argues that the fast-paced and unhealthy lifestyle many Americans choose leads to accelerated aging. That is, the waistline grows and the memory goes. The solution, he says, is to counteract the one-percent average reduction in overall fitness level each year. Masley breaks his plan down into phases, and includes appropriate meals, exercise, skin and dietary supplements, and relaxation routines for each day. Turning back the clock never sounded so simple.

How’s this for confidence? Authors Chris Crowley and Harry Lodge begin their new volume on helping women age well by declaring, This is a book that can change your life. Turns out, they can back up that claim, as they demonstrated in their 2005 bestseller Younger Next Year. This year, they return with a follow-up that specifically targets feminine concerns about aging, Younger Next Year for Women. By dispensing advice on how to live a fit and healthy life (rather than how to beat the clock and erase the wrinkles), Crowley and Lodge are doing the women of America a big favor. Their basic premise is that women get better and more powerful with age, and they should take care that their bodies do as well. The vibrant advice about the best physical activities for women (biking and swimming rank high) may actually inspire you to dust off that bike helmet, and the common-sense approach to moderation in eating is spot-on. It’s hard to imagine a more fun, smart and compelling book on the subject of women and aging. If implementing the wisdom in Younger Next Year for Women is half as entertaining as reading it, getting older is about to get a lot easier.