Use Your Brain to Change Your Age

January 1, 2012
Clinical neuroscientist and public-broadcasting favorite Amen (The Amen Solution, 2011, etc.) updates and sharpens his program for shaping a healthy brain. The brain is the hub: When it works correctly, so will you, like feeling the urge and responsibility to exercise and eat sensibly. When it is weakened or damaged, so too will be your decision making. Readers may quibble with some of Amen's particulars--such as his equation of brain health equaling wealth--but one would have to be blind not to nod in agreement at the familiar sagacity of his overall plan. In his comforting storyteller's voice, the author makes tales of the important elements in his healthy-brain system: diet, supportive friends, exercise (including our old friend sex: "Your bed may be the best piece of workout equipment in your house"), confronting and grappling with brain damage, addressing emotional challenges, learning to keep the brain nimble and keeping track of your vital numbers. With clarity and compactness, Amen presents 10 vignettes to drive home his points and then from each draws 20 tips to put the evidence into play in the reader's life. Though he doesn't shrink from boosting the brain-health products sold through his Amen Clinics, to his credit he details just which substances and supplements are important to achieve a goal. Just reading Amen's book will probably improve your brain, though his commonsensical advice suggests you can do plenty more.

(COPYRIGHT (2012) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2012
With its can-do approach to keeping the brain young, the twenty-seventh book by well-known psychiatrist and clinical neuroscientist Amen will appeal to midlifers who want to turn back the clock. The author, who believes that the fountain of youth is between your ears, encourages people to become brain warriors who take responsibility for their own mental and physical health. His sound advice includes eating and drinking only high-quality calories and not too many of them and stayin' frisky over forty. Latte fanatics will be unhappy: he doesn't like caffeine since it restricts blood flow to the brain, among other things. Throughout the book, Amen shows single proton emission computed tomography images of blood flow and activity patterns in the brains of people who are healthy versus people who are overweight or suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Patients feel motivated when they see changes in their SPECT images after they lose weight and start to exercise. The book doesn't have a religious slant, but Amen has partnered with the evangelical minister Rick Warren to improve brain health at his huge Saddleback Church.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)