When we think about healthy aging, we often focus on exercise, nutritious food, and sleep. Our need for affection and pleasure deserves attention, too. For many women, sexuality remains a meaningful part of life well beyond 60. Yet this subject can become difficult to discuss. Changes in our bodies, the loss of a partner…

One of the greatest dangers of growing older is not always illness, financial difficulty, or physical decline. Sometimes it is something much quieter: allowing our world to become smaller and smaller without realizing it. It rarely happens all at once. We stop driving at night…

Retirement can be one of life’s great rewards. After decades of working, meeting obligations, and living according to someone else’s schedule, we finally have more freedom to decide how our days will be spent. But there is an important distinction between retiring from a job and retiring from being useful…

Most of us think of aging as something that simply happens with the passing of time. Another birthday arrives, another candle goes on the cake, and we are one year older. But there’s an important distinction: our chronological age and our biological age are not necessarily the same thing…

There is a quiet assumption in our culture that life follows a predictable timetable. We are expected to learn when we are young, build a career in middle age, retire around 65, and then gradually withdraw from the world of ambition and accomplishment. I do not believe that timetable serves us well…

For much of our lives, we have been told that we need to exercise. The word itself can be intimidating. Exercise sounds like something that requires workout clothes, a gym membership, perspiration, and perhaps a personal trainer urging us to do one more repetition. As we get older, that image can become even less appealing…

As we grow older, we often think about maintaining strength in our legs, heart, and muscles. But there is another kind of strength that deserves attention: the strength of our speaking voice. A strong, clear voice helps us communicate, participate socially, speak up in medical appointments, enjoy conversations, and feel more confident in daily life…

At 90, I have discovered something rather amusing about getting older: the calendar insists I am old, but most days I don’t feel particularly interested in cooperating with it. I believe one reason is simple: I nearly always have something to look forward to. It may be a book I am working on…

For centuries, people have searched for the fountain of youth – some miraculous food, pill, treatment, or discovery that might slow aging and keep us young. I have spent much of my life studying aging and longevity. I earned a master’s degree in gerontology, have written about longevity, and, perhaps most importantly, have had the opportunity to experience aging firsthand.

When I was 60, I thought I was getting old. Now that I am 90, I find that rather amusing. At 60, I had already lived a substantial life. I had worked, learned, made mistakes, enjoyed successes, worried about things that never happened, and survived problems that once seemed enormous. But looking back over the 30 years since then, I can see several things much more clearly…