Healthy Aging

Society today is all about giving. Giving your time to a job, offering resources to a cause, giving your attention to the needs of family and friends. And while these things can be rewarding, it leaves little time for us to focus on our own needs. I often tell family caregivers that self-care is not just going on a spa day once a year…

A few months ago, a friend told me about an older woman who had fallen at a wedding. “She was dancing,” he explained. “She stumbled and went down. She’d been drinking.” The story stayed with me because falls are no small matter as we get older. A broken wrist, a fractured hip, or a head injury can change the course of a life in an instant…

You’ve been eating clean, moving your body, doing everything right. And yet there’s this stubborn weight around your middle that won’t budge no matter what you do. You’ve probably blamed your willpower, your metabolism, your age. But here’s what nobody told you: that belly has a name, it has a biological cause, and it responds to something most women over 50 have never even heard of…

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…

If I told you that your body has the capacity to build new bone at any age, would you believe me? I didn’t believe it myself either. Not fully. Not until I started exploring it deeper. And now I’m out-of-my-head excited for all of us…

What happens to our body, emotions and memory in our 50s and 60s? They take us by surprise. Our body starts to sag; we find ourselves yelling at our kids for no reason at all, and we can’t seem to remember anything! All of this seems to happen overnight. There are even more wrinkles on our face that were there…

We understand walking’s positive effects. Walking increases blood flow, strengthens bones, improves blood pressure, and provides cardio for the heart if we set a good pace. Walking clears out the cobwebs in our brains, creates clearer thinking, and relieves depression…

One Christmas, I called my dear Aunt Florence to see if we could stop by with some treats. “Are you home?” I asked. “Hold on,” she said. A minute later she came back laughing – that warm, familiar Aunt Florence laugh – and said, “Yes! I looked in the parking lot…

On 23rd May I celebrated 11 years without alcohol. I stopped drinking at 63, and now at 74, I can honestly say I feel happier and healthier than I did when I was drinking. That still surprises me sometimes. For many years, alcohol felt woven into the fabric of my life…

I didn’t stop drinking because I hit rock bottom. I stopped at 63, after a lifetime of what most people would call normal drinking. A glass of wine in the evening. Sometimes two. Occasionally more at weekends or social occasions…