Many of us over 60 take the same pills every morning for years, and it has been a while since anyone reviewed the list. Two of the most common are a pill for heartburn and a pill for blood pressure or swelling, often called a water pill. Certain kinds of both can lower your magnesium, particularly with long-term use, and magnesium is often left off routine blood work…

More than 2,000 years ago, the Roman playwright Terence wrote a comedy called Phormio. In one scene, an older man named Chremes returns from a long stay on the island of Lemnos. When his brother asks why he stayed so long, Chremes says illness kept him. Asked what illness, he answers, “Senectus ipsa est morbus.” Old age itself is a disease…

As far back as I can remember, conventional wisdom has been that the higher our HDL cholesterol levels, the less we and our healthcare providers had to be concerned about our ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol levels…

We are constantly getting health advice from doctors, pharmacists, friends, family, television ads, podcasts, social media influencers and people we have only met online. In fact, I write articles giving you advice about how to think, what to eat and how to live. Perhaps just last week a friend at lunch told you the magnesium she uses fixed her sleep, a television ad…

You learned this one early, and you learned it as praise for somebody else. A neighbor sat with a dying woman for three weeks, or an aunt took in her sister’s children, and the adults said it about her while you were in the room. It is usually a compliment, and a compliment asks nothing of you, so there was no reason to hold it up to the light…

I recently had my annual physical and after all these years, I started to detect a rhythm. I fast overnight, get weighed, roll up a sleeve, then wait. Usually, the answer arrives as one line in the portal. All results within normal limits. That is good news and I take it as such. But there are times when I read that line and something in me does…

I grew up being told not to judge. Maybe you did too. In my house it came with a Bible verse attached – the way we heard it, judge not, lest ye be judged – and somewhere along the way I turned that into a simple instruction: the judging itself was the sin. A good person doesn’t size people up. A good person gives everyone the benefit of the doubt…

After 21 years, I left my first marriage. There was no scandal, no single terrible night I could point to. Our values and our goals for a life had simply quietly stopped aligning. One of us was in constant chase of money. The other kept looking toward home and family and finding the other chair empty. Nobody had to be a villain…

There is a something I have heard from too many women my age, and maybe you have said it yourself. “I’m just tired all the time now. I don’t feel like myself, but maybe this is just life after 60.” We say it with a shrug, because by now many of us have learned to be practical. We know aging is real, and we are not looking for a magic cure…

A woman over 60 cancels plans on a Friday night. She makes tea. She sits in a chair she loves and reads until her eyes get heavy. She sleeps well. When someone asks what she did over the weekend, she hesitates. Because “nothing” sounds like a confession when you’re over 60. A younger woman has the same Friday. She calls it self-care. Same evening…