Living Well, Staying Well: The Ultimate Guide to Help Prevent Heart Disease and Cancer (American Heart Association)

You want to stay healthy and avoid illness. It sounds like a simple goal, but how do you sift through all the conflicting reports that spew out hard-to-follow advice? One sure way is to turn to people you know you can rely on, two of the nation's most trusted health authorities.

The first joint book by the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, Living Well, Staying Well is the ultimate guide to help you achieve wellness and avoid two of life's most devastating illnesses--heart disease and cancer. The latest scientific research shows that making even small changes in your lifestyle can add up to big health benefits. In Living Well, Staying Well, you'll learn how to make them. This guide offers practical, step-by-step advice on how to reduce specific health risks--having high blood pressure, having high cholesterol levels, being overweight, and more.

Based on solid science, this advice is designed to inspire you to make simple changes you can stay with for a lifetime. With the aid of the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, you can create an easy-to-follow personal wellness plan that can help you avoid life-threatening illness and enjoy many added years of optimal health. And you don't have to give up delicious food or start a grueling exercise program to do it! If cancer and heart disease are so frightening, then why is 1 in 3 Americans obese, and why does only 1 in 10 eat the recommended number of servings of fruits and vegetables? The American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association, here in their first jointly written book, think it may be because of the onslaught of conflicting health information announced by the media. It's also a byproduct of managed care, because you're likely to be told you have high blood pressure and have a prescription swiftly given to you, whether or not you know how dangerous this may be, what your exact reading was, or what "blood pressure" really means. Living Well, Staying Well aims to remedy these problems with its practical, easy-to-follow guidelines to help you reduce your risk of developing cancer and heart disease by teaching you how to cut high cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, lose weight, and eat right.

These are daunting, even overwhelming tasks, to be sure, and that's why the authors have smartly broken each health "project" into simple steps. From 23 sneaky ways to work physical fitness into your day to proven tips for quitting smoking, Living Well, Staying Well's main aim is to help you take better care of yourself, one day at a time. The ACS and the AHA don't want you to become a statistic (and they're scary: each year, 1.5 million Americans have a heart attack and 1.2 million are diagnosed with cancer). Living Well, Staying Well can help you help yourself prevent health problems, all in a friendly, accessible format. Highly recommended.