Honest Aging – by Dr. Roseanne Leipzig

This book is mostly about what happens for most people between the ages of 60 and 80. Of course, individual experiences may vary, but broadly speaking, there’s usually a big difference (or rather, numerous big differences) between 60 and 80, so it can be worthwhile knowing about such, when a lot of medical advice out there is limited to “under the age of 65” vs “over the age of 65”.

Two quick notes the formatting:

• If you get the Kindle edition, be aware that the tables do not display very well
• If you get the print edition, be aware that the print is very small, which is an astonishing choice for the publisher to have made for a book aimed at 60–80-year-olds with a chapter about eyesight difficulties

You may be wondering: how “honest” is Honest Aging?

If you’ve ever noticed that people who pride themselves on being “brutally honest” are often more focused on delivering brutality than honesty, there’s a little bit of that at play here.

Dr. Leipzig delivers a rather comprehensive guide to the woes of aging, what to expect, and how to deal with the many new challenges that will come with older age. And the perspective of this book is certainly that it is a matter of “will”, not “may”. Every single part of age-related declined, we are told, is inevitable, so we might as well get used to it.

While a lot of books about aging advocate for various strategies to remain biologically younger, this one’s more about what to do once we’re not.

For example,

• it won’t tell you how to keep a youthful spring in your step, but
• it will tell you how to calculate the correct length cane to use to help you walk

…and so on, for many other age-related issues.

Bottom line: the information in this book will be useful when and if you or a loved one suffer various parts of age-related decline. Until that happens, though, we recommend other books to help avoid that outcome. Meanwhile…

Click here to check out Honest Aging, and be prepared!