and how to care for it
Nonfiction / Aging / Self-Help
Date Published: 06-12-2025
Publisher: The Woodtick Press
Written in understandable language, this book describes the ways in
which our body changes with age and outlines some practical ways to counter
many of these changes. It begins by discussing the aging process in general
terms and why some people seem much younger than others of the same
chronological age. After a presentation of general characteristics of the
aging body, subsequent chapters focus on what lies behind the aging of
specific parts of the body and how the reader can counteract or slow down the
aging process through lifestyle changes. The text illustrates how some
seemingly quite different aging changes, for example skin wrinkles and high
blood pressure, are due to very similar underlying mechanisms. Although not
focusing on disease, the book deals with a number of conditions, e.g.,
hypertension, arthritis, Type II diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, which
affect many older adults. A concluding chapter pulls together many of the
details presented earlier in the book and offers some practical advice for
navigating the aging process.
As both a professional anatomist and a gerontologist, the author is well
qualified to write a book on the aging body. Forty years as a professor at the
University of Michigan Medical School, he served as Chairman of the Department
of Anatomy and Cell Biology and also Director of the Institute of Gerontology.
For several decades he conducted research on the aging of muscle. He is a
past-president of the American Association of Anatomists and of the
Association of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Neurobiology Chairpersons.
Excerpt
How Do We Keep Our Balance?
Our body is never completely stable. Even while standing still, our body
sways ever so slightly. Usually we don’t even notice it. The main reason is
that we constantly make tiny un-noticed corrections to our stance that keep
our body in a stable upright condition. If we are walking and our foot hits a
snag of some sort, one of our legs automatically kicks out and our arms spread
to counteract the forward lurching of our body. If we are lucky, that action
is enough to correct the stumble and we continue walking. If we are unlucky,
we fall.
Keeping our balance involves a complex dance among several systems in our
body. Most important are 1) a component of our inner ear, called the
vestibular system; 2) our visual system; and 3) a large batch of sensory
nerves that make up what is called the proprioceptive system. These three
systems all send messages to the brain, which sorts them out and then sends
appropriate messages to a variety of muscles throughout the body, telling them
to adjust their individual contractions in a manner that keeps our body in a
stable position.
About the Author
Bruce Carlson has had a long and varied career in a number of fields. As an
undergraduate student at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, he majored in
biology, languages and chemistry. As a prelude to becoming a fish biologist,
he worked for the Minnesota Conservation Department (now DNR) as an aquatic
biologist during summers except for one when he conducted research at the
University of Georgia Marine Laboratory on Sapelo Island, Georgia. He entered
a program in ichthyology at Cornell University, but became fascinated with the
phenomenon of regeneration. After receiving an MS from Cornell, he entered the
MD-PhD program at the University of Minnesota where he conducted research on
limb regeneration in salamanders.
In 1966 he joined the faculty of the Department of Anatomy at the University
of Michigan Medical School and became Chairman of the Department and later,
Director of the Institute of Gerontology. He taught microscopic anatomy and
human embryology and received several major awards for his teaching. His
research on regeneration, embryology and muscle biology led him to live for
extended periods in five countries – The USSR, Czechoslovakia, the
Netherlands, Finland and New Zealand. A prolific writer, he has written over
200 articles and chapters in scientific publications, has edited 15 symposium
articles and translations, and he has written twenty books on a variety of
topics.
Bruce is an avid fisherman, who is on the water well over 100 days per year,
either night-fishing for walleyes or fly fishing for smallmouth bass in
northern Minnesota. He has also taken many trips to New Zealand, his favorite
country, to fish for trout in a remote lake surrounded by snow-capped
mountains. For many years he wrote articles for several national fishing
magazines. The main theme was that the more you understand the biology of the
fish you are trying tocatch, the better will be your results.
Since retirement in 2006, Bruce has reverted to his scientific childhood and
has again taken up work on fish and lake biology. In addition to weekly
collections of data about the lake by his cabin, he has directed a ten-year
study on the growth of northern pike on a nearby lake and has spent hundreds
of hours taking underwater videos in northern lakes. This activity has led to
his writing two popular books on lake biology and one on aquatic invasive
species.
In addition to his outdoor work, Bruce has maintained an active professional
writing schedule, with seven editions of his book “Human Embryology and
Developmental Biology” and other books on regeneration, the human body
and muscle biology. His work in the area of embryology has led him into expert
witness work in that area and writing a new book on the abortion controversy
– “The Abortion Controversy – An Embryologist’s
Perspective.” His background in anatomy and the biology of aging has him
thinking about writing a new book on understanding the aging body.
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M.C.V. EGAN ❧Defining Ways❧ 