Author(s): David Snowdon

Popular Science

This text reveals research that has transformed scientists' understanding of healthy ageing and shows what everyone can do to help prevent Alzheimer's disease. One of the world's leading experts on Alzheimer's disease, David Snowdon, is the director of the "Nun Study", a long term research project involving 678 nuns. Ranging in age from 75 to 106, these women have allowed Snowdon access to their medical and personal records and they have agreed to donate their brains upon death. The study's findings are already helping scientists unlock the secrets to living a longer, healthier life. With one of the largest brain donor studies in the world, Dr Snowdon and his colleagues are at the forefront of some of the most fascinating and useful research on aging today. This book combines cutting-edge research on the brain with the poignant and inspiring stories of the ageing nuns who are teaching scientists how we grow old.
We meet nuns like Sister Clarissa, who at the age of 90 drives around the convent in a motorized cart she calls her "Chevy" and knows as much about baseball as any die-hard fan a third her age, and "The Magnificent Seven", centenarians from a single convent who remain active and healthy in advanced age. These bright, articulate and altruistic women have much to teach us about how faith, wisdom and spirituality can influence the length and quality of our lives. Snowdon takes us into the lab to see the race to decode this devastating disease and reveals what we can do to prevent it. "Aging with Grace" shows that old age does not have to mean an inevitable slide into illness and disability; rather, it can be a time of promise and productivity, intellectual vigour, and continuing freedom from disease.