THE POWER OF 5

A medical doctor offers a slim volume of advice on pursuing a healthy lifestyle.

Bernstein draws on his 35 years of experience in geriatric and internal medicine to present readers with a series of tips on how to better take care of their body and their mental health. He touches on broad topics, such as nutrition, exercise, mental health, and especially aging, and he structures his points around the acronym “GRACE,” which stands for “Goals,” “Roots,” “Attitude,” “Connections,” and “Environment.” Over the course of his career, Bernstein has had plenty of direct experience with patients whom he calls “ticking time bombs”—those who have been ignoring warning signs and healthy practices because they think they’re invincible. He writes with feeling about how astonishing it can be when such patients take just a few key steps to prolong their health, and in his book, he simply but informatively breaks down these steps into five categories that all start with the letter S: Sweets (cut down on them), Sweat (exercise every day), Sleep (pay attention to getting enough), Stress (a leading contributor to illness, including cardiovascular disease, the country’s number-one killer), and Sex (which the author oddly broadens to include nonsexual “interaction with other people”). Throughout, Bernstein adopts a the stern-but-caring tone of the ideal personal physician, and this book effectively comes across as the kind of house call such doctors once made. His system, he stresses, is “all about taking back power and responsibility for the quality of your life,” and he adds a sentiment that’s implied on every page of his book: “I’m on your side.”

A clearly written and gently urgent guide to reclaiming one’s wellness.