Walter M. Bortz II M.D.

Is it right to read your last book at age 22 and then live eight more decades without any formal effort to rev up your brain?

Too much faith in the power of technology to cure has seduced us into unsound health practices.

In just such a way, natural life expectancy should conform to a bell-shaped curve, the extreme end of which is 120 years. If 120 is the far edge of the curve, where is the center? The answer is 100, meaning that 100 years of age is the median.

You need to ensure that each minute of your life is crowded with active participation. It is simply the way nature works, and you need the guts to reach for your natural capacity.

William James wrote: “Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. It is only by risking your person from one hour to another that you live at all. Your faith beforehand in an uncertified result will make the result come true.

But where in nature is there another species in which those in late midlife retire to the treetop, coral ledge, or prairie bunker, tended by the young in reward for services rendered? Retirement, in nature’s terms, is an unnatural act.

It is not an exaggeration to assert that almost everything we have been taught about aging has been wrong.

Of all your resources, your health is your most precious—more precious than your money, your house, your friends.

Remember, you can’t move mountains if you can’t move yourself.

An adequate physical exercise program requires no more than 3 hours out of 168, only 2 percent of the week’s time. Three hours of life can be gained for every hour spent exercising—a good bargain, no?

There is now a sufficient fund of data and experience to allow baby boomers—and, of course, younger generations—to plan their 100th birthday party with calm assurance, prepare the guest list, and muster enough respiratory reserve to blow out all those candles.

Most of the changes commonly associated with old people are really not dependent on the passage of time; they result mostly from disuse.