About Forrest Blanding
For many years he headed an Exxon research section responsible for analysis of research done by different company research groups throughout the world. He was a specialist in the unraveling complex multifactorial problems from multiple research studies and was a most highly regarded analyst. He was involved in analyzing company research results not only in engineering but in problems of marketing, health and business development. He was head analyst of a then most extensive research project on environmental carcinogens and cancer. He held about 20 US patents.
During the 1970's he become interested in the importance of exercise to long range health as a personal project because of his poor family health history. Most researchers then were dismissing exercise as unimportant. From what was a most extensive-then five year study of exercise research he found that cardiovascular fitness from exercise was a major factor involved in risk of heart disease. His book "The Pulse Point Plan' published by Random House in 1982 provided what a first scientific verification of the importance of what is now termed cardiorespiratory or cardiofitness. This book was introduced by Dr. Samuel Fox, the then top regarded authority on exercise and heart disease.
During past two decades Forrest has been developing the Life Ahead Program that is today's most advanced scientific computer model of how life-style habits and factors produce the major diseases that terminate life. This project has included a Global Analysis of all published research on exercise and disease that is described in this book. The Life Ahead Model, a free download, values how all types of exercise are involved in causing the major terminators of life. The program is available at and verified by nearly 100 scientific papers published on the internet at www.lifeahead.net.
These new and more extensive analyses now show that cardiofitness may be more important to our health and life than the other major risks of cholesterol, blood pressure or cigarette smoking Yet incredibly, most health experts today seem to have little understanding either of cardiofitness or of its importance. A major problem has been the lack of a useful measure of cardiofitness, and a generally useful test for measuring it. This book provides solutions to each of these problems.