Review: Keep Sharp

 My wife checked out Keep Sharp from the library and it showed up on my Kindle, so I ended up reading it as a palate cleanser.  I remember being impressed with Sanjay Gupta from World War C, so I kept reading despite already knowing many of the topics he discussed from other books. My biggest problem with the book is that it spends a good 20% of the time telling you what he's going to talk about instead of just telling you what he wants to say.

Anyway, there aren't any magic tricks to improved brain health:

• Exercise, especially aerobic exercise
• Good diet (lots of fruits and vegetables, less red meat, and no highly processed foods)
• Sleep well.
• Having a good social life (the best job is that of a concert conductor where you get to lord it over everyone else and everyone has to pay attention to anything you say, my guess is that being a brain surgeon is the next best thing)

At the very least from the above you can tell that Sanjay Gupta isn't a crackpot and isn't selling fancy supplements (in fact, he cautions against them). There's a 10 week program to get people who aren't already exercising and eating well to do so, and there's a section on how Alzheimers might one day be cured, but you need to get diagnosed early if you want a chance to prevent the disease while there's time to do so. (Or, maybe you want to just live healthily anyway)

I enjoyed the book. I did question how someone with 2 jobs and 3 kids manages to get in his hour of exercise every day plus some time to meditate, but hey, it's quite likely he's a much more organized person than I am!