Many of us dream of staying as young as possible as long as possible whether we're in our 30s, 40s, 70s or even 80s, and there's a growing Conga line of products and people offering you just that dream. The dilemma is, which of the pills, mental and physical exercise programs, diets and superfoods actually work? Some of them do help to keep us young, healthy and living longer, others may work when the researchers get the potions right and some are a downright waste of money. So how do you know what and who to trust? That's the journey that Dr Norman Swan is going to take you on in So You Want to Live Younger Longer? Deeply researched and written with his trademark wit, common sense and accessibility, Norman brings together what's known, not known, hopeful but not harmful and harmful and not hopeful, summarised with quick takeaway messages backed up by the science and evidence. No matter what your age, So You Want to Live Younger Longer? gives you the information you need to make your own choices without wasting your time and money or even missing a nice dinner because you might be on a diet that is getting you nowhere. Norman disentangles our 'Book of Life' - the genes we're born with and what we subject them to later on - and shows that in the search for youth, genes matter much less than you'd think for most of us. In other words, we can overwrite our personal Book of Life and Norman's book will help you do it. We can live younger, longer - at any age - we've just got to know what to do.

Advances in modern medicine - with the exception of psychiatry - are fantastic. Who would accept the surgical techniques of 1950, today? Which hospital would allow a surgeon fully trained in 1950 to even enter a modern surgical suite? In psychiatry, modern treatment does no better than it did in 1950. Psychiatry has the worst record of any medical specialty. This assessment is based on my observations from 1950 when I began to work in the mental hospitals in Saskatchewan. At that time patients were locked up in awful buildings placed far from centers of population. The treatment used by the Quakers in 1840, which yielded fifty percent discharge recoveries, was forgotten. Admission to mental hospital in 1950 was a life sentence, with no time off for good behaviour. The situation is different today. Patients are no longer locked up, but their brains are imprisoned by powerful, toxic chemicals from which they can not and are not allowed to escape. Orthomolecular treatment, which developed before these toxic drugs were found, has been ignored. Modern psychiatry uses only drugs and ignores the three most important elements of treatment, i.e. shelter, food, and treatment with civility and respect. The evidence is provided in this book. The optimum treatment in 1850 when drugs were not available yielded fifty percent recovery; today it is less than ten percent if the criteria are freedom from symptoms, ability to get along well with family and the community, and paying income tax.