In Pursuit of Health and Longevity: Wellness Pioneers through the Centures [Paperback]

For the past 34 years, best-selling author Cal Samra, age 87, has been the editor of a national humor newsletter calledThe Joyful Noiseletterdirected mainly to churches and health professionals. Health, physical fitness, and longevity have been the authors longstanding interests during his years as an Associated Press and newspaper reporter, and as the lay executive director of the Huxley Institute for Biosocial Research, a medical research foundation. But he says he owes his health and longevity to the teachings of the many health pioneers, from long-ago centuries to the present, who are featured in this book.

For the book, this award-winning health and humor historian researched and treaded into the history and teachings of many health pioneers down through the centuries: religious figures of all faith traditions, medical doctors, nurses, health professionals, counselors, agnostic philosophers, bodybuilders, professional athletes, dietitians, and nutritionists, and rediscovered their admonitions on health and longevity which have long since been forgotten or ignored. Starting with the Hebrew prophet Daniel (circa 620 B.C.), he then proceeded down through the centuries to Jesus, the third-century Greek physicians, the Franciscans, John Wesley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ellen White, Sojourner Truth, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the Hindu Swami Vivekanada, Teddy Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, Catherine Doherty, Linus Pauling, Jack LaLanne, Dr. Donald L. Cooper, M.D., Dr. Rex Russell, M.D., Patch Adams, M.D., Dr. Mehmet Oz, M.D., Etta Dale Hornsteiner, professional athletes like Tom Brady, and Serena and Venus Williams, Bob Hope, and many others. All of them were extraordinary men and women from numerous faith and philosophical traditions. They were Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem, and agnostic, African-Americans, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans. Many were immigrants or the children of immigrants.