Healthy Aging By Andrew Weil, M.D.               Knopf 2005 Most people recognize Andrew Weil by his distinctive large, white beard and warm smile as a frequent guest on the Larry King Show.  He is a Harvard-trained doctor who has explored many other forms of healing and has written extensively about them.  I discovered Dr. Weil in 1995 when I read his book Spontaneous Healing.  He is both physician and philosopher with an open and questing mind.  He’s taught me a lot. His latest book, Healthy Aging, talks about a very timely subject, with the boomer generation moving toward their senior years.    This book has two parts.   Part One addresses “The Science and Philosophy of Healthy Aging.”  An example of the science is his discussion about the relationship between longevity and cell division.   There is a limit to the number of times that cells can divide in order to replace themselves.  It’s called “the Hayflick limit”. Humans are the longest-living mammals with a Hayflick limit of about 50 cell divisions.  This is the genetic determinant of our life expectancy.    One of Dr. Weil’s main philosophical messages is that the antiaging movement (which tries to deny or reverse the reality of aging through plastic surgery, youth elixirs and tonics, botox injections, etc.) “impedes many people from coming to a healthy and positive acceptance of both aging and mortality.”  It also opens the door to a lot of hucksters flogging questionable products on a gullible public. There are no effective antiaging medicines to turn back the clock, but there are many ways to reduce the effects of age-related diseases so that people can live healthy lives for as long as possible before the inevitable (hopefully short period of) decline that we all face.  This concept is known as “compression of morbidity” and is a goal that we can all pursue – as opposed to living many of our senior years suffering from chronic illness or infirmity. The second part of the book is about “How to Age Gracefully”.   Dr. Weil discusses diet, vitamins and supplements, exercise and physical activity, rest and sleep, touch and sex, stress, emotions and attitudes, memory, spirituality and the legacy that we’d like to leave behind us.  There’s a tremendous amount of specific and scientific information in this section.  My favorite take-away related to caffeine in tea.  Tea contains polyphenols (antioxidants) with white and green teas delivering more antioxidant activity than black tea.  Tea also contains caffeine.   It turns out that caffeine is very soluble in water whereas tea polyphenols are not.  So Dr. Weil suggests that you can remove most of the caffeine by steeping the tea leaves in hot water for 30 seconds, draining off the water and then steeping the leaves again.  Thus you get the antioxidant benefits without the stimulant effect of caffeine.    It is this kind of specific and practical  information that makes this book so valuable.  It’s filled with science but easy to read.  That’s one of Andrew Weil’s strengths.  This is an excellent book which I highly recommend.