Judy Foreman: Exercise is Medicine

EXERCISE IS MEDICINE:
HOW PHYSICAL ACTIVITY BOOSTS HEALTH AND SLOWS AGING
Judy Foreman
Oxford University Press, Jan. 2, 2020
Hardcover, $29.95, ebook, $19.99
ISBN-10: 0190685468; ISBN-13: 978-0190685461
ASIN: B081JXYH68

Foreman reports:

As a health columnist and, at one point, The Boston Globe’s officially designated “Aging Columnist,” I’ve been interested for years in the biological processes of aging. I’m also a Masters swimmer and exercise nut, so I combined these interests into a book on aging and exercise, Exercise is Medicine.

I already had an agent from my previous books, as well as a fantastic editor at Oxford University Press (OUP), Abby Gross, so it was fairly easy to bat ideas back and forth with Abby. Since I am no longer writing my column for The Globe, I was able to focus solely on the book.

Marketing a book is less fun than writing it. With all my books, I hire my own publicist, Michelle Blankenship, who coordinates with OUP’s publicity staff. I also do shameless self-promotion, i.e. emailing organizations offering to speak about my book. I also hired a Brandeis student to help make a 45-minute Powerpoint (actually, Keynote) talk about the book, with animation, graphics, etc.

As for the book itself? Like everybody else, I knew exercise was good for you. But as I did the reporting, I was stunned by how good, and why. In 2013, for instance, European scientists elaborated 9 major hallmarks of aging, each of which can be favorably influenced by exercise.

One hallmark involves epigenetic changes, specifically DNA methylation. This process is influenced by exercise. In a Swedish study, scientists took muscle biopsies from volunteers who rode exercise bikes using only one leg. DNA methylation was strikingly different in the exercised versus the non-exercised leg, suggesting that exercise slows the epigenetic clock.

I could go on. And I did. I included a chapter on nitty gritty stuff, like how fast you lose fitness when you stop exercise (fast!) and I devote a chapter to anti-aging drugs and exercise “mimetics,” pills to trigger some physiological effects of exercise without working out.

But the real message is, move! As one chapter title says, “Sitting Kills.”

Contact info:

• Judy Foreman, 617 460 0471, judy@judyforeman.com
• Book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/exercise-is-medicine-9780190685461
• Publicist: Michelle Blankenship, 917 903 4013, Michelle@blankenshippr.com
• Agent: Jim Levine, 212 337 1934, jlevine@LGRliterary.com

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