Health, Sports, Fitness

“Physical Intelligence:The Science of How the Body and the Mind Guide Each Other Through Life” by Scott Grafton, a neuroscientist; for me, brings attention to another idea of “intelligence”. One that I hadn't considered.

Most people may view human intelligence as exercised abstract cogitation. This varies from almost none to somewhat more depending on person and circumstances. But the brain is “running things”, most fairly complicated, at an unconscious level 24-7.

This book by neuroscientist/psychologist Daniel J. Levitin is encyclopaedic in detail, which may be useful in specific circumstances, but can be hard slow reading if you don't have that motivation.

However, I persevered at five to 10 pages at a sitting and don't regret being exposed to that detail. Not all of the heavy going had been reserved to the voluminous appendices

Chuvalo:A Fighter's Life:The Story of Boxing's Last Gladiator by George Chuvalo with Murray Greig, 2013 is an entertaining read.

Boxing, “the sweet science” has always had a select fan base and its popularity has been waning maybe partly because it is too violent, and in some camps recently, because it isn't violent enough.

This book is a window on a life few people know, and many don't care to know, through the eyes of one of the most violent and durable practitioners of the sport.

Forgetting, or at least the pathological kind, is one of the great fears of this senior generation. So worrisome that the half serious epithet “if that happens to me, just shoot me” can be heard with respect to dementia. Few are likely to ask for such an out for any other disease.

Review

'Younger Next Year for Woman' is more than a pronoun change and a pink cover from the original 'Younger Next Year'. That 'more' involves discussion of health issues more particularly related to women with a chapter on menopause.

The authors Chris Crowley, a retired lawyer, and Henry Lodge, an M.D., are the same with no addition of a female writer, but that doesn't deny that there is a slightly different orientation, although much of the text, as should be expected, is identical.

Essentially this book is a kind of 'fountain of youth' manual for those with the discipline to follow it.

Not only is the formula designed to lengthen one's life, but maybe more importantly, improve the quality by expanding one's options of activities.

It is to change the trajectory of aging from one of progressively steeper decline to one of a gradually descending plateau.

Get exercising and work up to 7 or 8 hours weekly is the best way to maintain brain health and stave off Alzheimer's disease and other dementia is Sanjay Gupta's primary recommendation in his book “Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at any Age”.

Forget those over-the-counter memory pills or reliance on mental puzzles and games other than to improve your skill in those areas. Going forward, evolving computer games may provide a breadth of stimulation in exercising the brain, with some hope of replacing drugs, says the author

I don't recall ever having read a non-fiction book that was such a page turner. Part of that certainly is my personal interest in the subject, but David Epstein, a senior writer for the magazine Sports Illustrated, has not unexpectedly, a great storytelling knack. He employs it regularly at the outset of every chapter as well as within them to introduce heavier material more painlessly.

You can make your 'own cheese', the 'ultimate selfie', with a swab from your armpit, navel and between your toes for an appropriate microbe sampling to apply to the milk.

And if you can get past this idea, the author, Tim Spector, a British professor of genetic epidemiology presents a subtle, comprehensive, imaginative, yet scientific look at a subject that many obsess over, their diet.

The reader is soon disabused of the idea that 'The Fate of Food: What we'll Eat in a Bigger Hotter, Smarter World' by Amanda Little is about the pros and cons of different menus.

In fact it is indirectly about food and really about modern hi-tech agriculture and the twists and turns it could take going forward.

The looming pressure effecting it is climate change, particularly heat and disrupted water supply.