Author of 'Younger Next Year' Dead at 58

Dr. Henry S. Lodge, whose series of health-advice books, “Younger Next Year,” written with his patient Chris Crowley, sold in the millions, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 58.

The cause was prostate cancer, his partner, Laura Yorke, said.

In the late 1990s, Dr. Lodge became concerned about the patients he was seeing at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, where he was an internist with a specialty in geriatric medicine. Far too many in their 50s and 60s were having strokes, developing diabetes, falling down and suffering fractures.

“You take care of somebody, and you see him gaining five pounds a year and being sedentary,” he told U.S. News & World Report in 2006. “Then really awful things happen — strokes, heart attacks, and people becoming apathetic and withdrawn. It became clear to me that this was lifestyle choice. Very little of it was related to luck or genetics.”

Mr. Crowley, a retired lawyer in his 60s, was a prime example: He was 40 pounds overweight and aging poorly until Dr. Lodge put him on a regimen of regular exercise and healthy eating that returned him to his 50-year-old self.

Together the two men translated their experience into an advice book, “Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You’re 80 and Beyond,” published in 2004 by Workman. Alternating chapters, the authors delivered a breezy guide to better living that rested on seven rules that blend physical and spiritual disciplines. Readers were told to work out daily and stop eating junk food, but also to “connect and commit.”

Putting an evolutionary spin on diet and exercise, Dr. Lodge argued that humans remained, from the physical point of view, hunters and gatherers who thrived when in motion and surrounded by others.

The idea of resetting the biological clock proved deeply appealing to the swelling population of Americans approaching old age. The Hartford Courant called the book “a near cult item among some baby boomers, who appear to be fueling a good part of the sales through word of mouth, with one reading it, then pestering a friend to get a copy.”

“Younger Next Year” and the rest of the series, “Younger Next Year for Women: Live Like You’re 50 — Strong, Fit, Sexy — Until You’re 80 and Beyond” (2005), “Younger Next Year Journal” (2006) and “Younger Next Year: The Exercise Program” (2015), have more than two million copies in print and have been translated into 21 languages.

Henry Sears Lodge Jr., known as Harry, was born on Oct. 20, 1958, in Boston and grew up in Beverly, Mass. His father, who died two days before him, was chairman of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority and the first president of the Metropolitan Center theater for the performing arts in Boston. His grandfather was Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the Massachusetts senator and ambassador to the United Nations. His mother, the former Elenita Ziegler, was a freelance writer and editor active in civic affairs.

In 1996 Dr. Lodge created New York Physicians, a multi-specialty medical group that, unusually, operates as an independent group practice but maintains an affiliation with Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. As it grew, it became an entry point for younger doctors to gain a foothold in the medical profession. He served as its chairman and chief executive until his death.

Via: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/books/henry-lodge-dead-co-author-younger-next-year.html