Morry Kernerman, an accomplished violin prodigy, commits YouTube recordings of classical music to memory, hikes in a hilly ravine with his son and volunteers to teach music in South America. As he prepares to celebrate his 101st birthday next week, Kernerman is convinced that music has played an outsized role in contributing to his long and active life. The Toronto resident is what's known as a super-ager, someone 80 or up who retains the memory abilities of those in their 40s or 50s.
In 2018, Sharples and his research lab, now at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, were the first to show that exercise could change how our muscle-building genes work over the long term. The genes themselves don't change, but repeated periods of exertion turns certain genes on, spurring cells to build muscle mass more quickly than before. These epigenetic changes have a lasting effect: Your muscles remember these periods of strength and respond favorably in the future.
"When we became friends, I remember her almost walking out the front gate and then turning around, looking at me and saying, 'Are we going to be friends?' And I said, 'Yes.' And she said, 'Now don't just say it by rote. Are you going to be intentional? We've got to be. Because at my age, I have to be intentional,'" Steenburgen said, recalling Fonda's words.
Just as there have been remarkable advances in weather forecasting with the use of large language models, so will there be for determining an individual's risk of the major age-related diseases (cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative). These diseases share common threads, such as a long incubation phase before any symptoms are manifest, usually two decades or more. They also have the same biologic underpinnings of immunosenescence and inflammaging, terms that characterize an immune system that has lost some of its functionality
There was a time when I could text a friend about getting a drink at 4:50 p.m. and be drinking that beer with them an hour later, but those friends now live in Minneapolis or Albany or comparatively remote parts of Queens, and they have children, and they don't really drink like that anymore, and so on. I know that those days are long gone,
Pillemer has spent over two decades distilling wisdom from older adults into usable advice. Through his Cornell Legacy Project, Pillemer has talked with more than 1,500 Americans in their 80s, 90s, and even 100s to capture their wisdom about living. The project represents the largest systematic collection of elder wisdom ever assembled. Last month, Pillemer was a guest on The Mel Robbins Podcast, one of the most popular podcasts across the globe.
When we started the company, a big chunk of our staffers were in their 20s, bestowing large portions of our editorial output with the imprimatur of youth, but it turns out that every 28-year-old becomes 33 five years later, like clockwork. While we've frequently hired early-career writers in their twenties, our overall average age continues to inch upward, as everyone progresses interminably towards unc status.
People act as though this is an achievement, and I suppose it is, sort of. Nobody in my family has lived this long, and I've been lucky. I'm still in pretty good health, no wasting diseases or Alzheimer's, and friends and strangers comment on how young I look, which cues me to cite the three ages of man: Youth, Maturity, and You Look Great.
There are physiological explanations for why our ability to tolerate alcohol wanes with age. For one thing, studies show the liver enzymes that break down alcohol become less efficient. "That means that our bodies metabolize alcohol a little bit differently," she says. "We also lose more muscle as we get older, and that muscle is replaced by fatty tissue." That's important, because muscle stores water and that water dilutes alcohol in our blood,
"We're so conditioned, women in our 40s, to think, OK, well, I'm creeping closer to the end. You know, you think you go into menopause and you're going to stop having sex, and your boobs are going to sag, and your skin's going to go crepey, and all these things," Winslet said. "But, first of all, so what? And secondly, it's just conditioning."
No one warns you about erotic grief. We hear about and live menopause, testosterone changes, cancer treatment, chronic illness, and the slow, steady realities of aging-but almost no one prepares us for this part: One day, desire may not be as effortless as it once was. It may not rise on command. It may go quiet, or slow down, or disappear for stretches. And that shift can break your heart a little.
"There is a saying about old age - 'Keep moving' - and what Clint Eastwood, 95, says: 'Don't let the old man in,'" he said. "The way to do that is to keep getting up in the morning, keep working out in the gym, keep taking your vitamins, keep taking your prescribed meds, and keep moving. Keep moving. That is the secret to it all."
I left after three years and went to work for an aerospace company back in New Jersey. I then had the opportunity to work with a manufacturer as a systems engineer, as well as with a smaller company as the vice president of a small division. At my final company, I served as vice president, and we had contracts with the Department of Defense.
