Stronger muscles and bones, increased mobility, lifelong independence, and a new mentality for aging with power--this cutting-edge guide to nutrition, training, and lifestyle will optimize a woman''s body for longevity, through menopause and beyond. More than 70% of women experience musculoskeletal symptoms like joint pain, muscle loss, and reduced bone density as they enter perimenopause and menopause. These symptoms--what Dr. Vonda Wright refers to as the "musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause"--can often set women up for osteoporosis, osteopenia, broken bones, increasingly limited mobility, and reduced independence later in life. Indeed, as Dr. Wright explains in Drawing on her decades of experience as an orthopedic surgeon helping women at all fitness levels to repair their bones and regain strength, Dr. Wright helps readers calculate an individual "Unbreakable score" and then gives clear action steps to counteract the "timebombs" of aging in four critical categories: Nutrition : What to eat to extinguish inflammation, repopulate the gut biome, and support strong bones and muscle growth. Exercise Lifestyle : How to manage chronic stress, get more restorative sleep, and turn down system inflammation in daily life. Supplements : What to take to target the elimination of “zombie cells” and improve cell function. Including a unique quiz to assess your present musculoskeletal fitness (your "Unbreakable Score"), information about baseline blood and mobility tests that will help you understand your current health state, twenty easy, anti-inflammatory recipes, and a master exercise plan to help you pace your weekly workouts, <Unbreakable <is an invaluable roadmap for adding more healthy life to your years....

Autorentext

Vonda Wright, MD

Klappentext

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Stronger muscles and bones, increased mobility, lifelong independence, and a new mentality for aging with power—this cutting-edge guide to nutrition, training, and lifestyle will optimize a woman's body for longevity, through menopause and beyond.

*“Stop believing the BS about getting older. In Unbreakable, Dr. Vonda Wright lays out the science that proves your best years can still be ahead.”—Mel Robbins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Let Them Theory*

“Building muscle and bone are what I like to call my nursing home avoidance plan. There is no better mentor in this important work than Dr. Vonda Wright.”—Mary Claire Haver, MD, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The New Menopause**

Strong skeletal muscle drives healthy longevity yet too often women in particular neglect this important measure of fitness. Indeed, more than 70% of women experience musculoskeletal symptoms like joint pain, muscle loss, and reduced bone density as they enter perimenopause and menopause. These symptoms—what Dr. Vonda Wright refers to as the "musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause"—can often set us up for osteoporosis, osteopenia, broken bones, increasingly limited mobility, and reduced independence later in life. That trend stops now. Unbreakable outlines a new and direct path to protecting ourselves against this too-common fate.

Drawing on her decades of experience as a pioneering orthopedic surgeon helping women at all fitness levels to repair their bones and regain strength, Dr. Wright gives clear action steps to shield us from the timebombs of aging in four critical categories:

Exercise*: Pinpointing the right combination of cardio and resistance training for you to aid in tissue regeneration and improve metabolic function.
*Nutrition: What to eat to extinguish inflammation, repopulate your gut biome, and support strong bones and muscle growth.
Lifestyle: How to manage chronic stress, get more restorative sleep, and turn down systemic inflammation in your daily life.
Supplements**: What to take to target the elimination of “zombie cells” and improve your cell function.

Including a six-week, master exercise protocol to jumpstart skeletal and muscular strength, critical information about baseline blood and mobility tests that will help you understand your current health state, and twenty easy, anti-inflammatory recipes, Unbreakable is an invaluable guide to adding more vibrantly healthy life to your years.

Leseprobe
1

The Time Bombs of Aging

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. —Marie Curie

“Get used to it. You are just getting old.”

“Well, that’s just part of aging.”

I hear from people every day that this is the way their doctors—and friends and acquaintances too!—react when they talk about the changes they are experiencing as they get older. It’s as if everyone is throwing up their hands and taking a copout attitude about what it means to age. This is exactly the same sentiment I heard from Eva when we began working together. “Well, I guess I’m just getting old,” she’d said. A learned resignation from her previously vibrant life. Somewhere she had internalized the narrative that normal aging means suffering.

Maybe you have too. If I asked you what it means to age and what aging feels like to you, your response may depend on how old you are right now and how you see aging depicted around you. I remember in my early college years I was in such a rush to be an established adult I would repeatedly tell my roommates to “just grow up!” And now, ironically, I wonder what the hurry was about anyway. How we feel about the passage of time is also determined by what we have seen in our own families or the messages we receive from the media. Your outlook will be very different if you see your elders living vibrant lives decades past retirement, traveling the world and taking time to enjoy the fruits of their labor, or if you see your grandmother or aunts become frail and hunched over or fall and break their hip, resulting in not only tremendous personal stress but changes in family dynamics and tough family decisions.

Gender matters too. If you watch the media or marketing portrayals of how to live longer, you’ll see a gap. For men, more time is often portrayed as longevity, new adventures, and a dignified passing into graying temples and confidence that may be undergirded by Viagra (or the twenty-nine other choices that exist for male vitality). For women, more time in life is at worst portrayed as invisibility and frailty and at best by the message of the need for anti-aging cosmetic procedures to return to the appearance of youthful times.

So, we all have these concepts of aging from our lived experiences and the cultural waters we swim in. But what is aging anyway, and why do we age at seemingly different speeds? From a biological standpoint, what is this lifelong process of aging, and what accelerates it or slows it down?

The Hallmarks of Aging

The very systems and processes that keep us alive—metabolism, immune system, and cellular repair mechanisms—are designed to protect and sustain us. They are pillars of health, working tirelessly to balance energy, repair damage, and fend off disease. But as time passes, these systems can become overburdened or less efficient, turning from protective forces into what I consider molecular time bombs that threaten to break us down.

There are several reasons for this breakdown. Over decades our bodies face relentless wear and tear. Our cells divide, our once healthy metabolic pathways produce damaging proteins, and waste accumulates in our cells. Young bodies can handle and repair this damage easily, but over time, damage accumulates faster than it can be repaired. And our metabolism shifts. While metab…