Healthy Aging
Explore this collection of articles to help you age gracefully and healthfully.
Use these jump links to navigate to your area of interest:
Cognitive Health / Alzheimer’s and Dementia / Physical Fitness / Joint Health / Overall Wellness / Podcasts / Medication and Polypharmacy / Social and Emotional Well-Being / / Retirement Planning / End-of-Life Preparation
Cognitive Health
Healthy-Brain Food
The foods you eat can have a major effect on your brain’s health.
Healthy Gut, Healthy Brain
A neurologist explains the power of your microbiome to heal and protect your brain.
6 Ways to Improve Your Memory and Recall
Staving off memory loss requires more than just exercising your gray matter.
The Sleep-Memory Connection
Quality sleep may help prevent Alzheimer’s, according to recent research.
Physical Fitness
6 Exercises to Help You Get Down on the Floor — and Up off the Floor — With Ease
Have you done a sit-stand test? The ability to get up off the floor with minimal support is a marker of longevity. Practice these moves to improve flexibility, balance, motor coordination, and muscle power.
Forever Fit: How to Exercise at Any Age
Getting older doesn’t have to mean retiring from your favorite activities and sports.
Here’s your guide for staying fit for life.
How to Stay Fit At Any Age
This functional, all-ages workout builds strength, balance, agility, and confidence.
4 Fitness Markers to Evaluate Your Health
Are you aging well? Try out these four fitness tests that have been linked to a reduced mortality risk.
Retirement Planning
Finding Purpose in the Second Half of Your Life
What do you have planned for the second half of your life? Executive coach Richard Leider offers insight on working, living, learning and loving what’s to come.
Reimagining Retirement
These expert tips can help you design a meaningful and fulfilling postretirement plan.
The Value of Mentoring
Serving as a mentor can make a powerful difference in another person’s life. Follow these nine expert tips for a successful experience.
Tips for Reinventing Retirement and Exploring Your Passions
You work and work, and then what? Best case: You step into a reality designed around your passions and priorities. Here are some tips for making it happen—when and how you choose.
Medication and Polypharmacy
15 Questions to Ask When Your Doctor Prescribes a Drug
Functional-medicine pioneer Frank Lipman offers 15 questions to ask about prescriptions.
Polypharmacy: The Other Drug Crisis
Why elderly Americans are on multiple prescription drugs.
Are Your Medications Doing More Harm Than Good?
Could the medications we take to regulate cholesterol, blood pressure, and stomach acid be doing us more harm than good?
Are You Overmedicated?: An Interview With Andrew Weil, MD
Integrative-medicine pioneer Andrew Weil, MD, talks to us about his new book, Mind Over Meds, and why Americans are taking too many drugs.
Joint Health
How to Heal Arthritis Naturally
Susan Blum, MD, MPH, author of a new book on arthritis, outlines a three-step guide to treat joint pain.
What to Eat for Healthy Joints
Are your joints giving you trouble? Eating strategically can ease pain and minimize future damage.
How to Improve Your Grip
A stronger grip can yield benefits in the weight room and the workplace.
How to Ease Joint Pain
Expert answers on easing joint pain, naturally.
Overall Wellness
Tips and Strategies to Maintain Your Vision
Most of us take our eyesight for granted. But without proper care, nutrition, and protection, our eyes are vulnerable to damage and degeneration. Find out what you can do to keep your vision crisp, even as you age.
Understanding Blood Pressure Guidelines
Learn what functional-medicine healthcare providers think of the latest blood-pressure guidelines — and how to manage your blood pressure wisely.
Rethinking Heart Health
Think you know what makes for a healthy heart? Think again. New research and progressive practitioners are looking beyond cholesterol for answers.
How to Strengthen Your Bones
We often forget about our skeletons, but they are essential to multiple aspects of our health.
Podcasts
The Stages of Menopause + How to Support Your Body
Menopause is a normal physiological process that affects every woman at some point in their life, yet it’s only as of late that it’s being discussed more openly. Samantha McKinney, RD, CPT, discusses what happens to our bodies during menopause and its various stages, the symptoms one can expect and why they occur, and the lifestyle habits and behaviors we can implement to support our bodies during this transitional time.
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy as You Age
Our brains age just like the rest of our bodies, and just like it’s important to care for our bodies so we can move functionally well for as long as possible, it’s also essential to do everything we can to maintain and support healthy brain function as the years pass by. With the current absence of effective treatment options for most neurological diseases, prevention really is the best treatment for them, and it’s never too early — or too late — to start. Edward Park, PhD, explains what to know about normal and abnormal brain aging, as well as the lifestyle strategies we have control over to support our brain health and help reduce the risk of decline and disease.
10 Rules for Aging Well
Every second of every day, all of us are aging, and yet we often wait to address — or altogether avoid — age-related concerns about our health until we reach a certain point in our years or our capabilities begin to diminish. Frank Lipman, MD, shares 10 essential factors he’s outlined for aging well, emphasizing that it’s never too late — or too early — to start embracing them, and that it’s not as difficult as you might think.
Social and Emotional Well-Being
How to Become a Pro-Ager
How we talk and think about growing old can significantly affect our ability to maintain our health as we age. Here’s why.
How to Age Wisely
Learn how to cultivate a more optimistic mindset so you can enjoy your life now — and well into the future.
10 Essentials of Aging Well
Functional-medicine pioneer Frank Lipman, MD, offers simple strategies to improve how we age.
Ageless Vitality
With age comes wisdom. And if you make wise choices, it can also come with robust health and fitness, great energy, and a generous dose of satisfaction. Discover the variables that play the biggest role in determining your vitality for a lifetime — and why it pays to start focusing on them now .
End-of-Life Preparation
New Thinking on End-of-Life Planning
Popular attitudes about end-of-life care and death are changing, making it easier to thoughtfully prepare for the inevitable. Learn how to protect your quality of life — and that of your loved ones — all the way through.
The Good-Death Movement
Death-positivity can help us reframe the end of life.
On Dying Well
A pioneering palliative-care expert shares his insights on the power of finding peace and possibility at the end of life.
The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
This life-affirming practice can start at any adult age — and help your possessions live on in a meaningful, thoughtful way.
Alzheimer’s and Dementia
How Super-Agers Avoid Dementia
Genes play a role, but so do lifestyle factors, according to a recent study of centenarians.
5 Surprising Factors to Reduce the Risk of Dementia
Eating well, prioritizing sleep, and exercising help to protect against dementia, but there are other several other factors that play an important role as well. Learn more.
Untangling Alzheimer’s
Breakthroughs in understanding dementia are leading to new healthcare approaches. Nutrition, lifestyle, and sleep may be the keys to prevention.