Much of the book sticks pretty closely to well-known claims for improved health, such as exercising, eating leafy green vegetables, avoiding foods with trans fats, and keeping mentally active. It has an index and a fairly extensive bibliography, which stand in its favor. There are no bibliographic footnotes, however, and the references are collected into broad categories that do not match the topics in the book very well. If you want to find out the source of the claims, you have to be pretty tenacious.
I tried to do just that regarding a section in chapter three, "Are You at Risk?" about the effects of some common medications on memory. Here it states in no uncertain terms that statins, a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs that includes Lipitor and Crestor, deplete "the brain's critical antioxidant protectors" (p. 60) and therefore threaten memory. With such a scary claim (for the millions taking these drugs), I wanted to see the supporting evidence for myself. I looked for a part of the bibliography that might deal with statins in particular or prescription drugs in general, but there is none; my guess is that they are to be found in a six-page section on cognitive decline. By this point my patience was in decline, so I did a Google search and found the very question posed on the website of the Mayo Clinic, a high-quality medical center that is likely a reliable source of information. There it says the literature is mixed on the subject. So much for certainty of these drugs' effects on the brain. The Mayo Clinic also says that "any potential risk of memory loss from statins is very low compared with the proven benefits of statins in preventing heart attack and stroke," something Dr. McCleary does not mention let alone consider.
Article Author: Nancy Fontaine
Nancy Fontaine is a librarian and freelance writer living in New Hampshire with her husband, two cats, and every four years during presidential primary season, the national press.
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