The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-decade Study

A great book for an insight into what influences our health.

VERY GOOD INFO.

"The Longevity Project" is a study of long life from a landmark study that lasted eight decades. It shows some surprising results about the factors that contribute to longevity and the myths. This study is unique in that it covers such a long time span. The book covers such factors as personality, health, childhood effects of parental divorce, marriage, religion, social life, the gender gap, and the toll of war and trauma.According to the authors many common ideas about what makes people live longer are myths. For example, getting married will help you live longer, religious people live longer, hobbies and vigorous exercise, worrying, don't be so serious, children getting a head start in school. The book contains self-assessment quizzes in almost every chapter for the reader to do. These are supposed to provide a deeper understanding of the ideas discussed.I did not find this to be the easiest book to read. Some of the results are colored by the particular decades in which the person lived. For example, back in the first 30-40 years of the study children from divorced homes did not adjust to life as well as children from homes that stayed in tact. However, as divorce became more common in more modern times children of divorce tended to adjust better in society. According to the authors it is tough to generalize the results of the study because so much depends on the circumstances of the persons life, which was different depending on what decades they lived in.I found this book difficult because there are so few generalizations, or as I see it, conclusions about the study. There is a lot of dwelling on varioius individuals lives and the unique factors of each persons life and I don't see how you can gain anything if you don't unearth some common conclusions that we can take away from it and apply to our lives today. The book was alright, but I'd like to see the data evaluated from a different perspective and perhaps we could learn more about longevity. -- Valerie Lull, Author, Ten Healthy Teas