New York, NY — Last week the American Medical Association’s Archives of Internal Medicine journal reported on a landmark study at Harvard-affiliated Brigham & Women’s Hospital identifying modifiable lifestyle factors associated with and contributing to longer lifespan and better physical function in old age. Background information for the study at this internationally acclaimed medical facility demonstrates that only about 25% of the variation in human lifespan is traceable to genetics, leaving a whopping 75% attributable to “modifiable risk factors” such as obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and causative behaviors. The thrust of the information learned points to the increased possibility of living to at least age 90. Trumpeted as a watershed event in health science, the story was carried on every national newscast and in countless newspapers and local news shows from coast to coast, thanks in no small part to Harvard’s well-oiled (and well-financed) public relations and media machine.

What did not make the news is the fact that an eminent and well-respected doctor and scholar from the West Coast, Walter M. Bortz II, said it first. And he has been saying it for years.

A Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and past president of the American Geriatric Society, Dr. Bortz is considered by many inside and outside the medical field as the foundational figure in the holistic approach to aging and age-related issues. His authoritative 1991 work We Live Too Short and Die Too Long, recently re-released in a revised and updated edition by New York’s SelectBooks, Inc., was the first comprehensive discussion of this topic. But where the Brigham & Women’s study highlights ways to achieve maximum lifespan, We Live Too Short… and the rest of Dr. Bortz’s work take the extra steps to help his audience ensure better quality of life in addition to extended quantity.

In We Live Too Short… and other works, Dr. Bortz chronicles our ever lengthening life expectancy. While acknowledging the huge contributions made by medical science in the matter, the thrust of his research has always been the simple yet concrete steps the individual can take to not only make sure that they live as long as possible, but also as well as possible. He acknowledges that the components to this approach — maintenance of a healthful diet and a regular level of physical activity, avoidance of risky behaviors such as smoking and other over-indulgences — appear almost deceptively simple at first glance. Yet their inclusion in the results of the Brigham & Women’s study made the entire country sit up and take notice. And Dr. Bortz, from his Stanford base, pioneered this research and drew matching conclusions nearly two decades ago.

But he does not stop there. Realizing that expanding our idea of longevity means that we need to rede fine the concept of aging, Dr. Bortz addresses the situation by showing how to re-examine the notions of middle age and old age and plan accordingly, in maters of health, personal preparation, and more. This is increasingly relevant and resonant information for every generation — the Baby-Boomers, who are already a decade into what has previously been considered “middle age”; members of “Generation X”, now in late adulthood and on the cusp of traditional middle age; the so-called “sandwich generation” caught between aging parents and raising children of their own. Even the more youthful “Generation Y” should take notice.

Through focusing on each aspect of the aging process — including a frank yet elegant approach to the very end of life — Dr. Bortz has made it his life’s work to help Americans rede fine the years after middle age as just another phase of the ongoing project that is life. He has been a respected authority on aging and age-related issues for well over a decade, and his work has been given added relevance in the wake of the publication of Brigham & Women’s study.

Making his home close to his university facilities in Stanford, he is available for interview and commentary. For further information, please contact Kenichi Sugihara at 212-206-1997, or via e-mail at kenichi@selectbooks.com.