Month: September 2025

Could he and Meghan be forced to move back to the UK?

We all see them: older women in their 70s and 80s, with sharp memories, sparkling wit, clear purpose, and energy that many people decades younger envy.

Scientists call these people SuperAgers, those who age in body, but hold on to cognitive strength, emotional resilience, and overall well-being far beyond what is typical. Research shows that SuperAgers don’t just avoid decline – their brains often look younger: less shrinkage, more connectivity where others lose it, and strong performance on memory, attention, and thinking tasks.

The good news? We may not be able to control everything (genes, for instance), but many of the habits that appear to underpin super aging are under our influence.

Here are seven habits that SuperAgers tend to share… and the seventh might surprise you!

Habit 1: Strong Social Connection

One of the most consistent features among SuperAgers is their web of meaningful relationships. They stay socially engaged with friends, family, neighbours, community groups. These connections provide emotional support, mental stimulation, shared purpose, and protect against loneliness. Studies show that people with strong social networks tend to have slower cognitive decline.

Humans are social creatures. Conversation, laughter, shared challenges – all of that keeps the brain growing and adapting.

Habit 2: Lifelong Learning and Mental Challenge

SuperAgers don’t “rest” their minds. They learn new skills, read, solve puzzles or crosswords, pick up new hobbies – even later in life. It’s not just about doing memory drills; it’s about staying curious and pushing beyond comfort zones.

The brain thrives when challenged. New learning encourages formation of new neural connections; novelty sparks more brain activity. SuperAgers tend to engage in activities that demand mental flexibility and adaptation.

Habit 3: Physical Movement and Regular Exercise

Physical movement is a cornerstone. Walking, gardening, dancing, swimming – whatever keeps their body active. Exercise improves blood circulation, delivers oxygen, supports cardiovascular health, controls blood sugar, reduces inflammation – all of which are deeply connected to brain health.

SuperAgers often maintain mobility and stamina, which helps with independence and also with mental health. The benefits of exercise for mood (via endorphins and better sleep) also feed into cognitive sharpness.

Habit 4: Sleep Quality and Restorative Rest

Sleep isn’t a luxury – it’s essential. SuperAgers tend to protect their sleep: sticking to regular patterns, limiting disruptions, avoiding things that disturb deep sleep. Deep, restorative sleep supports memory consolidation and helps the brain clear out metabolic waste (including beta‐amyloid, implicated in Alzheimer’s disease).

Sleep disruptions (frequent wakings, insufficient deep sleep) are associated with worse memory, brain fog, mood declines. SuperAgers often prioritize sleep hygiene: a dark, quiet environment; reducing screen time before bed; calming routines.

Habit 5: Nutrition and Eating to Support the Brain

SuperAgers generally eat patterns that support steady energy, low inflammation, and healthy metabolism. Think Mediterranean-style: plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean protein, healthy fats (olive oil, nuts), limited processed foods and sugars.

They avoid extremes: crash diets, over‐indulgence, or chronically high sugar loads. Stable blood sugar, good micronutrients, and anti‐inflammatory nutrients help protect brain tissue over decades.

Habit 6: Living with Purpose and Autonomy

SuperAgers often report having strong reasons to get up in the morning. Purpose can come from volunteer work, creative pursuits, family, mentoring, community involvement. Also, maintaining independence – making your own choices, staying mobile, staying active in life.

Purpose gives psychological resilience. It helps buffer stress, reduce anxiety and depression, and seems to be correlated with lower risk of cognitive decline and even longer lifespans.

Habit 7: They Limit or Quit Alcohol – The Brain and Body Benefit

This is the habit many of us overlook, but growing evidence suggests that limiting alcohol – or quitting altogether – can deliver outsized benefits for longevity, brain health, mood, and aging well.

The Costs of Drinking, Even Moderately

Two glasses of wine a night may feel relaxing, but over time they add up – and research is pointing to multiple risks:

Sleep Disruption

Alcohol impairs restorative sleep. It interferes with REM sleep and deep sleep, causes night‐waking. You may fall asleep faster, but quality suffers. Disrupted sleep undermines memory consolidation and brain repair.

Cognitive Fog and Mental Health

Alcohol is a depressant. Though there may be short‐term relief from anxiety, over time it worsens mood and increases risk of depression or anxiety. The “morning after” effects of alcohol – brain fog, low energy – add up.

Physical Aging and Weight Gain

Alcohol adds “empty” calories. The body will prioritize metabolizing alcohol before burning fat or dealing with other metabolic tasks. Even if you are dieting or exercising, alcohol can set you back. It also stresses the liver, affects hormone balance, influences skin aging.

Increased Risk of Chronic Disease

Regular alcohol use raises risk of hypertension, stroke, certain cancers, liver disease, all of which are risk factors for cognitive decline.

The Benefits of Cutting Back or Deciding Not to Drink

Sharper Memory and Mental Clarity

Without alcohol’s sedating or mist-inducing effects, the brain can consolidate memories better; fewer mornings of “fuzzy recall.”

Improved Sleep

More deep sleep, better REM, fewer disturbances, which over time, promotes brain repair, hormonal balance, better mood, lower risk of memory problems.

More Energy, Better Physical Health

The effects on physical health are profound:

• less metabolic burden,
• improved cardiovascular function,
• better immune system,
• skin looks better,
• hormones are more stable,
• weight is easier to manage.

Mood Stabilisation

Less of the highs and lows; better ability to manage anxiety or depression.

Long-Term Brain Protection

Among the benefits for years to come are preserving brain volume, reducing inflammation and oxidative stress; potentially lowering risk of neurodegenerative disease.

Across both the SuperAger research and the “Stay Younger Longer…” perspective, what emerges is that alcohol, even at moderate levels, often undermines multiple other habits.

You can eat well, you can exercise, but if you keep drinking regularly, some of the gains are eroded.

Putting It Together: A Life Aligned with Super Aging

These seven habits reinforce each other. For example: better sleep supports emotional regulation and physical recovery, which supports movement and mental challenge; being alcohol-free or low-alcohol reduces sleep disruption, inflammation, and gives more mental clarity; social connection supports mental health, which makes it easier to maintain purpose, stick to good nutrition, movement, etc.

If you adopt more of these habits in your 60s, and 70s, you increase chances not just of living longer, but of living stronger, sharper, and more joyfully.

In Conclusion

SuperAgers are not rare miracles; they are people who, through a combination of habits, mindset, and sometimes sheer resilience, manage to preserve what many assume to be lost with age. Their habits – social connection, learning, movement, good sleep, nourishing food, purpose – all seem to build toward one thing: preserving brain health and life energy.

Habit 7 – limiting or quitting alcohol – is especially powerful because alcohol tends to undermine many other habits. By choosing to reduce or remove alcohol from your life, you may unlock restorative gains in sleep, memory, mood, energy, and long-term brain health.

Breaking Free – Your Path to Super Aging

If Habit 7, the decision to limit or quit alcohol, feels daunting or overwhelming, you’re not alone. It’s one thing to recognize that alcohol may be holding you back; it’s another to change your relationship with it.

That’s exactly why we created Breaking Free: a 3-month guided program designed to help you:

• Understand your drinking patterns, triggers, and the “why” behind them.
• Learn evidence-based strategies to reduce or stop alcohol use in a way that’s sustainable and aligned with your values.
• Build or strengthen other SuperAger habits – better sleep, nutrition, movement, purpose, social connection – so that quitting or reducing alcohol becomes part of a positive, life-affirming transformation, not a sacrifice.
• Join a community of people doing the same thing; share wins, challenges, support one another.

Breaking Free starts on 28th September! Click here to learn more about the program.

Here’s to living sharper, stronger, and longer.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Are you a SuperAger? Do you take regular breaks from alcohol to improve your health and test your dependence? What benefits do you experience during an alcohol-free period? Are you tempted by the alcohol-free lifestyle? Have you tried to take a break but felt like you were missing out?

Don’t most of us live lives of achievement? We gain knowledge, learn skills, nurture families, accomplish at work, volunteer, etc. We look back and usually feel pretty good about the life we have lived. Right?

Then, the time arrives for us to leave the obligations of work and striving behind. For many of us, this conjures pictures of leisure, perhaps travel, golf, gardening, or hobbies of some kind. Often, we throw in a day of volunteer work now and then, so we feel like we are contributing. Sometimes we have caregiving responsibilities – friends, partner, parent, or grandchildren.

Here is the crucial question for us as we navigate what can be the next 20-30 years of life: “Do I feel fulfilled and satisfied?” For some of us, whether we retired (or your version of it) for six weeks, six months or six years, there can be an awakening that something more is calling in life, that growing and a sense of meaning is still very relevant.

So, we may seek a new goal. Perhaps return to work or something similar. Or we may simply feel lost, searching for our path forward. Let us explore what may be worth considering as you seek your path ahead. What if what comes next isn’t more achievement? What if it is even more satisfying?

The Post Full-Time Skid

Almost all my clients are accomplished women between 65 and 80, who have built businesses or enjoyed growing in a professional life, and raised families. They come to me because they feel lost. They have always had a path to follow and now can see no signposts nor paths before them.

What many have discovered is that “keeping busy” does not fill that nagging sense that there is more meaning to be experienced in this life.

There is a higher level of being calling in this phase of life for those of us blessed with safety, resources, satisfactory health, and a desire to live fully.

Maslow Lives On

Many of us are familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It strikes me that our phase of life may have brought us to the peak of the pyramid, Self-Actualization, or as I like to say it, being who we are here to be now.

You may be asking yourself, how does a person self-actualize, really? We know how to achieve, so the tendency is to look for the next achievement. The problem is that for those of us approaching or in our 70s, simply filling life with another achievement may not “scratch the itch” of what you truly are seeking.

It Is About Meaning

Seeking meaning is different than achieving. We are not fulfilling an external obligation or goal. We are fulfilling at a much deeper level, what some would call soul or heart. The point is that knowing what matters comes from within us, rather than being externally driven.

Of course, what truly calls you may appear to be an achievement. Around 4 million small businesses are owned by people over 65 in the United States. I am one of those. I launched this business at 70. I am very clear that this is my calling; I took quite the journey to get here! I have friends who wonder why I still need to ‘achieve’ because they live with the mindset that this is a time to relax. What they do not sense is that what I do does not feel like achieving. It feels like me being who I am here to be at this time in my life.

Some people find meaning in adapting skills to new contexts laden with some value that matters, for example having a career in finance transitions to helping older adults with financial issues. For others, meaning is found through creativity. We know that “Grandma Moses” started painting in her 70s; Laura Ingalls Wilder began writing in her 60s; Colonel Sanders launched his business in his 60s. I don’t know if these endeavors felt like “callings,” but I’ll bet they did!

Getting There from Here

 If you are one of us seeking more meaning in life, here are some ideas to get you started.

Notice Your Mindset

Do you truly believe that it is possible to live a life that enfolds you with meaning? Do you feel you deserve it? Will it be “too hard?” Note: It is not hard because you are living in flow with life and your desires.

Daydream Freely

Take the time to daydream. Take age out of it. What life could you create that makes you smile, feel full, and feel happy? Who are you in that life? How do you feel? Then, notice what you are doing and who you are with.

Explore the World

Explore the world to see what aligns with the life energy you want. Notice the world broadly and deeply for clues.

Move in that Direction

Take a step toward something that draws you. How does it feel to take that step? If all systems go, then take another one!

Here Is an Example

A 67-year-old woman felt without direction. She was over-giving to groups and had few boundaries with her family. She spent time getting in touch with herself and learned to listen to her own inner voice. She experimented with new ways of acting and explored new experiences and people. Out of this she came to a place of “finding home.” The “home” is really within her. She stepped into volunteering in a more powerful way to make a difference regarding climate issues. This mission is her passion now.

Let’s Talk About It:

What about you? How did you handle your transition into your later 60s and 70s? What brings meaning into your life? Where are you on your journey? If you have found meaning in this phase of life, tell us your story!

What’s going on behind the scenes for the Sussexes?

Pets are a great source of comfort to many baby boomers these days. Pets have always been a source of comfort to people, but as you age, they help to fill many gaps.

The benefits of living with pets are many. Here we will discuss only a short list. Please feel free to share how your pets help you in everyday life.

Pets Help to Ease Loneliness

If you’re alone, having a living, breathing companion in the house is comforting. Someone to take care of, someone to walk, nurture and feed. They’re a constant companion and a good one. Dogs will follow you from room to room. Just knowing they’re there is comforting.

I talk to my dogs, and they understand. Some people may think it’s crazy; I don’t think so. Dogs truly understand their owners. They get it. If you’re paying attention, you will see it in their eyes.

They Give You Reason to Move

Dogs give people a reason to get up in the morning. You must walk the dog. You must get up, get dressed and take them out. It also gets you out of the house where you will likely meet other dogs and pet parents. It’s fresh air and exercise for both of you and maybe even some socialization with neighborhood people and their pets.

They Give Us Comfort

Pets offer us a sense of solace and calm when the going gets rough. Our pets have an innate ability to understand and sense our moods.

If you’re feeling down or you’re sick, they understand. They will stick by your side until you’re well, helping to comfort you along the way. They just want to please. They’ll sleep with you and watch out for you.

Taking the Stress Away

If you are anxious, they will calm you. Stoking the fur of a beloved cat or dog or whatever animal is calming in and of itself. It has been proven that animals help to reduce blood pressure, anxiety and even depression in humans. For a depressed person, having an animal takes away feelings of being alone, because they are not alone. These are emotional support animals, and they can be a lifesaver for some people.

Practical Helpers

There are also specially trained dogs who are trained to perform specific tasks. They can be taught to alert us to seizures, turn lights on and off and even take clothes out of the dryer. These are true service dogs trained to help the disabled, and they do a wonderful job of it. Service dogs are not emotional support animals.

A Loving Companion

Pets offer unconditional love. They want nothing from us but to be loved.

The positives of what having a pet can do for humans is nothing short of amazing. How often have we seen a dog go in to save a family after they suffer a terrible loss, yet the family feels they saved the dog. In truth, they saved each other.

Pets have been wonderful companions throughout my life. Each one was special in their own way. I know I will always have a dog or two. It is my hope that people who have found solace and gratification in having a pet for the first time will continue to do so for many years to come. We depend on our pets, and they depend on us.

 “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”

― Anatole France

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Are your pets comforting to you? What are your day-to-day interactions? How do you benefit each other? As pet lovers, I’d like to think so. If you’d like to have a conversation, let’s talk about it!!!