Functional Fitness: Look Younger, Stay Active Longer by Paul D'Arezzo

How's your posture? No really, this is important. Paul D'Arezzo, an emergency room physician for over twenty years, has been studying how people move and what makes them age. A lot of it comes back to posture. How we stand reveals a lot about how well we'll function as we get older.

In his book, Functional Fitness: Look Younger, Stay Active Longer, Dr. D'Arezzo uses whimsical illustrations and a breezy style to make the very serious point that much of what we blame on aging can be prevented. All we have to do is stay strong, stay flexible, correct and maintain proper posture, and stay active. These are tools we can develop now that will keep us looking younger and feeling better into our senior years.

He describes a downward spiral that starts with an accident, poor posture, or a small pain of some sort. We give up sports we love because it hurts, we vie for those close-in parking places, we hire others to do the physical jobs we used to do. Soon we've lost the option: we're no longer able to do those things we used to do.

This slow, progressive physical deterioration is occurring at younger ages. People in their twenties and thirties now are beginning to fall prey to this decreased activity and ability. Luckily Dr. D'arezzo has the answers. Move. Move. Move.

Although the book does have lots of narrative that amounts to "move and move more," the value of the book comes from illustrated postures and exercises that most anyone at most any age can do. Any age: You're never too old to improve flexibility and strength. In one study people in their 80s and 90s increased quadriceps strength by 175% in a 12 week period improving their ability to get in and out of cars and climb stairs.

You may have noticed that recovery after a break from exercising takes longer as you get older. The body will respond, it simply takes longer to get back to where it was. "After a certain age it's simply easier and makes more sense just to stay in shape." So keep moving. In the words of Ashley Montagu, the social biologist, "the idea is to die young as late as possible."