The overall message of this chapter is if you understand how your body functions you will better know how to make it stronger, healthier, and younger. There are several main points used to get this message across: You control your health destiny, You can choose your age, You are on your way to living with more vitality, YOU should think of medicine as part science, part art, Food is fuel, and Testing your BQ: The Body-Quotient Quiz.
One thing I found very helpful, is the analogy of a house to help the reader understand the different parts of your body.
"Your bones are the two-by-fours that support and protect the inner structure of your home; your eyes are the windows; your lungs are the ventilation ducts; your brain is the fuse box; your mouth is the food processor; your heart is the water main; your hair is the lawn (some of us have more grass than others); and your fat is all the unnecessary junk you've stored in the attic..."
The "foundation" of the book,according to the authors, is:
"Knowing your body gives you the power to change it, maintain it, decorate it, and strengthen it."The chapter then goes on to explain how each of the following chapters will be laid out: explaining the anatomy, how to make the system function better, and how disease starts, affects your body, and how to keep it from happening.
Following this information are the above mentioned main ideas. First, YOU control your health destiny, is about knowing what you need to work on to be the healthiest you can be. The authors mention five specific things you can do: 1. Control your blood pressure, 2. Avoid cigarettes, 3. Exercising 30 minutes a day, 4. Controlling stress, and 5. Following and easy-to-love, healthy diet.
Second, YOU can choose your age, pertains to how old you feel not your calendar age. How you take care of your body, controls how old you feel. There are three main components to this point: 1. aging of your heart and blood vessels, 2. aging of your immune system, and 3. aging caused by environmental or social issues (i.e. stress).
Third, YOU are on your way to living with more vitality, is about educating yourself and getting exercise. You are in control of how where your life goes from here.
Fourth, YOU should think of medicine as part science, part art, is about using your doctors to get information. They mention that medicine is scientific, but part of it is also looking at the symptoms as a whole to find the diagnosis (the art portion)
Fifth, Food is fuel, is about knowing that although food is wonderful its ultimate purpose is to fuel our bodies. We can change the way we feel by paying attention to what we're fueling our bodies with.
Lastly, The body-quotient quiz, is a 50 question quiz about all the systems of the body and how they may function. An average person only scores 50% on the quiz. (I was average)
My overall impression of Chapter 1 is: I felt the book has some good information, and I like the comic relief it provides to a normally drab subject. I liked having the quiz to see how much I knew about my body. The downside is, as with most self-help type books, they push their information over other information. Although, I didn't get this as much with this book as with other books I've read. I get the feeling they are more interested in sharing information than pressing the issue. At some point they also talk about the FAQ section of their website www.RealAge.com, which I checked out. I took the Real Age Quiz on the website and was ranked at 2.5 years younger than my actual age. I will be looking at the supplemental information on their site as I go through the chapters, and report here how it may be useful or not.
