Author in Miramichi to promote book on healthy aging for women

Nurse and health book author Elizabeth Rigley says she didn't always practice what she preaches about living a healthy lifestyle.

Rigley has justauthored a new book, Smart Aging for Women. She was inspired to write it after making apromise toa 49-year-old patient dying of lung cancer. Rigley promised her patient she would quit smoking and begin her own journey to become more fit.

"I was an out-of-shape smoker a few years back who had to make some dramatic changes to my own lifestyle," she said. "I want people to understand that they have the power to change the course of their health destiny by changing their lifestyle."

As aregistered nurse, Rigley said during the course of her career she gathered lots of experience and saw a lot of people who were very unhealthy during their senior years. She even saw some who were ill long before their senior years arrived.

"That's what motivated me to write the book, I wanted to share with women what I discovered through my experiences as a nurse but also through a lot of extensive research about the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle and their impact on the chronic diseases of aging," she said.

Aging for women particularly complicated

Rigley said she wrote the book specifically for women because aging is more complicated for women then men.

"The very fact that women have to cope with menopause and its associated symptoms would certainly almost be reason enough," she said.

Rigley said the point of the book, which took hertwo years to write, is to tell women how they can get to their senior years without preventable lifestyle health problems such as Type 2 diabetes.

"Diseases that arise because of lifestyle are a different thing," she said.

"Heart disease, a lot of cancers, hypertension, obesity, you know, those things. People are making themselves sick and I don't think they've made the connection between what they are doing with their lifestyle and these chronic diseases that plague the majority of older people."

Rigleylives in Ottawa but is originallyfromMiramichi. Shewill be in Miramichion Nov. 27 for thebook launch.