COUNTERCLOCKWISE
My Year of Hypnosis, Hormones, Dark Chocolate, and Other Adventures in the World of Anti-aging
In this age of lunchtime lifts, wrinkle-erasing injections, furrow fillers, and lip plumpers, there’s no question that anyone who aims to look younger easily can. But Lauren Kessler wants something more than to follow the cosmetic path to youthfulness. She wants to live with energy, stamina, vitality, resilience, and health for a very, very long time. Her goal: to reverse her biological age from the inside out.
Guided by both intense curiosity and healthy skepticism, a sense of adventure and a sense of humor, Kessler sets out to discover just what’s required to prolong those healthy, vital, and productive years called the “health span.”
In this age of lunchtime lifts, wrinkle-erasing injections, furrow fillers, and lip plumpers, there’s no question that anyone who aims to look younger easily can. But Lauren Kessler wants something more than to follow the cosmetic path to youthfulness. She wants to live with energy, stamina, vitality, resilience, and health for a very, very long time. Her goal: to reverse her biological age from the inside out.
Guided by both intense curiosity and healthy skepticism, a sense of adventure and a sense of humor, Kessler sets out to discover just what’s required to prolong those healthy, vital, and productive years called the “health span.” In her yearlong journey, Kessler investigates and fully immerses herself in the hope and hype of the anti-aging movement. She delves into the new science of “biomarkers”—objective, measurable indications of how old you really are on the inside—going as far as getting a muscle biopsy to determine the state of her mitochondria, the parts of cells that control metabolism. She tries Tabata training, calorie restriction, a diet centered on 20 superfoods, hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), hypnosis to achieve a youthful mindset, and much more. In a voice that speaks to every woman who feels her date of birth and sense of self have little in common, Kessler explores her own fears, attitudes, and assumptions about aging. The result is a thoughtful, hilarious, and informative tale of what’s really possible when you get serious about taking charge of how well and how quickly you age.
- Rodale
- Hardcover
- June 2013
- 256 Pages
- 9781609613471
Buy the Book
$24.99
About Lauren Kessler
Lauren Kessler is the author of six works of narrative nonfiction, including My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, A Daughter, A Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence, Pacific Northwest Book Award winner Dancing with Rose (published in paperback as Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer’s), Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl and Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club. She directs the graduate program in multimedia narrative journalism at the University of Oregon. She lives in Eugene, OR.
Praise
“Among the bazillion fascinating revelations in this book is the fact that the human smile is an anti-gravity device. So in addition to sifting through the hype and hope of the anti-aging circus, Kessler’s delightful, witty book ACTUALLY TAKES 20 YEARS OFF YOUR FACE!”—Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Gulp
“Lauren Kessler’s bold, bad ass take on aging solves one of our great modern dilemmas: How to stay young and vibrant without spending the rest of our lives obsessing over how to stay young and vibrant. Both scrupulous and charming, Kessler’s book takes a machete to all the nonsense and tells you everything you need to know. I feel a decade younger just having read it.”—Karen Karbo, author of How Georgia became O’Keeffe
“Lauren Kessler has journeyed to the far frontiers of the anti-aging movement and, using herself as an ever-willing guinea pig, delivers insights that are at once funny, reassuring, practical and real. If my mid-life mind could remember a danged thing, I could even tell you all about them. But one thing I can say for absolute sure: read this book!”—Peggy Orenstein, author, Cinderella Ate My Daughter
“How far will you go to look and feel younger? With humor and intelligence, Lauren Kessler has conducted a scientific yet accessible road-test of virtually every anti-age trick in the contemporary canon, from superfoods (pass the goji berries, will ya?) to homeopathic protocols to hotshot detox diets. Counterclockwise is an amateur cultural anthropologist’s smart, inspiring narrative. It identifies the sensible, the ridiculous and the dangerous and ultimately teaches that your birthdate rarely reflects true age.”—Sally Koslow, author of Slouching Toward Adulthood