The key ideas

Younger Next Year

Chris Crowley, Henry Lodge, 2004

Why does life after fifty seem destined only to get worse? Physician Henry Lodge and his patient, former lawyer Chris Crowley, argue that much of what we call aging is actually decay, and that decay is optional. You will learn seven rules that tell your body to grow every day rather than shut down.

Who it is for

For anyone noticing their body starting to decline after forty or fifty who refuses to consider it normal. And for anyone who wants to prepare for the last third of life in advance rather than meet it in an armchair.

Aerobic exercise saves your life; strength training makes it worth living.

Growing old and dying are not one word

Many people, the authors observe, privately treat “grow old and die” as one phrase, almost one word. First comes a little weight gain, then back pain, then difficulty climbing stairs, and afterward everything rolls downhill by itself. It seems this is simply how life after fifty works.

Chris Crowley, a successful New York lawyer, retired carrying eighteen extra kilograms. His physician was Henry Lodge, an internist everyone called Harry. Harry offered a simple seven-rule program. Years later, seventy-year-old Chris skis better than at forty and writes a book about it with his doctor.

The book appeared in 2004 and became a bestseller. It speaks in two voices. Chris explains how to do it all and what experiencing it feels like. Harry explains the biology: what happens in cells when you move, eat, and interact with people. Their main claim is bold. Around 70% of what we call normal aging, meaning weakness, aching joints, and poor balance, is actually decay. Decay, the authors say, is optional. They consider roughly half the serious illnesses and injuries of life’s last third entirely avoidable.

Ahead are Harry’s seven rules and an explanation of why they work. Let us begin with what your body does to you every day, even while you lie on the sofa.

Every day the body chooses: grow or break down

Let us begin with Harry’s biology. The body, he says, is not a statue slowly cracking. It resembles a house being demolished and rebuilt a little each day. Most cells are designed for short lives: they wear out and new ones replace them.

Nature arranged this with a catch. The body tends toward decay by default, and it needs a signal to build. Without that signal, demolition outpaces construction. Hence the book’s central idea: without signals to grow, body and brain break down and you age.

Harry explains the signal through evolution. Our bodies developed in the hunter-gatherer era. For them, plenty of movement meant good times: spring, prey available, time to grow. Prolonged inactivity meant winter, drought, or hunger. In those conditions, slowing metabolism, storing fat, becoming quiet, and economizing on everything unnecessary for immediate survival paid off.

The problem is that modern life sends precisely that winter signal. The sofa, car, and food available anytime in any quantity are all read by the ancient organism as approaching famine. The body obediently begins economizing on muscles, joints, and even mood. Lodge links this to lethargy resembling mild depression.

A pair of chemical signals works within. Lodge calls them C-6 and C-10. Both are cytokines, signaling proteins through which cells communicate. C-6 triggers inflammation, meaning breakdown, while C-10 initiates repair and growth. When you work your muscles, they release C-6, and the body responds by producing C-10. A little breakdown brings repair in its wake, leaving tissues stronger. This is the author’s simplified model rather than a complete picture of molecular biology, but it explains his logic well.

The conclusion is simple and rather stern. Every day, you send the body one of two messages: “spring, grow” or “winter, shut down.”

Read in Livria

About the author

Chris Crowley is a former New York lawyer who spent twenty-five years as a partner at a major law firm. Henry Lodge was a New York physician specializing in internal medicine who taught at Columbia University; he died in 2017.

All books by this author: Chris Crowley, Henry Lodge

Terms from the book

  • Arthritis
  • Fast food
  • Inflammation
  • Internist: A physician who treats adult patients and monitors their overall health.
  • Cytokines: Signaling proteins that let cells exchange messages, including messages about inflammation and repair. The labels C-6 and C-10 are the book’s authors’ simplification.
  • Aerobic exercise: Sustained movement in which muscles produce energy using oxygen: walking, running, cycling, skiing.
  • Intervals: Short stretches of hard work alternating with easier activity.
  • Maximum heart rate: The highest heart rate a person can reach. The “220 minus age” formula gives only a rough estimate.
  • Heart rate monitor: A device, usually worn on the wrist or chest, showing heart rate during movement.
  • Coordinated strength: A concept from the book rather than a scientific term: strength in which muscles and nerves work together smoothly and help maintain balance.
  • Failure: An intensity of effort beyond which a muscle cannot perform another repetition with correct technique.
  • Refined carbohydrates: Carbohydrates stripped of fiber during processing: white flour, white rice, sugar. They are absorbed quickly.
  • Saturated fats: Fats abundant in fatty meat, butter, and many processed foods.
  • Limbic brain: A simplified term for ancient brain regions associated with emotion, memory, and attachment.

All terms

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