Aging with Attitude: Growing Older with Dignity and Vitality Robert Levine

Explains the physiological realities of aging and describes how those are compounded by ageism in the United States, affecting our pride and self-worth, and guides readers to take positive steps for retaining health, dignity and vitality through our later years.

The Rolling Stones (now in their 60s) have sung to us for years about "what a drag it is getting old," but it doesn't have to be that way. Despite living in a youth-oriented society, many of the aged patients seen by Dr. Levine have kept their emotional zest, intellectual zeal, and empowering dignity. Levine points to well-known public figures clearly aging with dignity and vitality. And this neurologist author shows steps we can take to age while retaining these qualities in defiance of a society that challenges this quest. Living longer is not enough for most of us; we don't want to just survive. The quality of our life as we age is most important, and much of that depends on our attitudes and approach. This text includes strategies to optimize self-esteem as well as health, including attention to nutrition, exercise, health care, education, mind stimulation, sexuality, social activities, and cosmetics and cosmetic surgery.

Table of Contents
	Foreword
1	Introduction	1
2	The consequences of time : how the aging process affects us	15
3	Understanding the enemy : the diseases and disorders associated with aging	31
4	The luck of the draw : how age and disease can rob us of dignity and vitality	59
5	Aging and loss : what it means in terms of dignity and vitality	75
6	Ageism : society's attempt of deny dignity to older people	99
7	Taking charge : strategies in the quest for dignity and vitality	117
8	It's never too late : additional strategies in the quest for dignity and vitality	145
9	Over the horizon : aging in the new millennium	175
10	Observations and conclusions	193