Maddy Dychtwald knows a thing or two about aging. First off, as a vibrant, active, and fit 73-year-old, she is doing it pretty well, continuously experimenting personally with how to increase her own health span, brain span and lifespan.
Secondly, as a celebrated futurist (Forbes top 50 female futurists globally) and co-founder of Age Wave, the nation’s foremost thought leader on issues relating to an aging population, she has championed issues around aging for almost 40 years.
With women at the forefront of the longevity revolution, Dychtwald brings a deep understanding informed by countless research studies addressing women’s specific longevity-related wants, needs, challenges and opportunities. In May 2024, she released her new book, Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan (Mayo Clinic Press) to provide women with an insider’s guide to living better longer.
The book covers everything from fitness and nutrition to hormones and ageism, from sleep to purpose, from navigating the healthcare system to the role of finances. She taps into her extensive network of experts throughout its pages (some cited in this article), bringing us diverse points of view, research, and advice from around the globe. Dychtwald invites the reader to use the book as an action plan, to customize it to assess where you are now, and to take steps you can easily begin and build as you go.
Women’s “Longevity Bonus”
Women outlive men on average by six years; Dychtwald calls this our “longevity bonus.” However, according to Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore in their book, Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives, “men may die quicker but women get sicker and spend more years in poor health at the end of their lives.”
By taking steps now, Dychtwald argues women can increase their healthy years of life or your “healthspan” and not just your lifespan. So, think for a moment: what could you do with those extra “healthy” years? Not to mention avoiding prolonged years of suffering at the end.
How Old We Think We Are Matters
This was one of the most interesting takeaways: how old we think we are matters and surprisingly impacts our health span. “Age identity” is the chronological age you identify with, irrespective of your biological age. A Korean MRI study scanned people 40-plus years old and found “significantly more gray matter” in participants with a lower age identity.
Yale gerontologist Becca Levy studied how preconceptions about age also impact not only how we age but even “how old we look, feel, and behave.” In 2002, Levy studied hundreds of people 50-plus years old in an Ohio town over two decades. The median survival rate for those with a positive view of aging was 7.5 years longer than those who held a negative view.
The net-net is how old you feel and your attitudes about aging impact your physical health.
How We Age Is Mostly Within Our Control
Today, scientific consensus has settled around the role lifestyle/environment and genetics play and their influence on disease and aging. As recently as the 1990s, it was thought genetics comprised 70 percent of that ratio and lifestyle/environment 30 percent.
Forty years later, most of the scientific community, particularly those studying longevity, believe that ratio has completely reversed. Now, it is 80 percent lifestyle and environment and 20 percent genetics. What is important is that lifestyle and environment do impact our genes as they influence which genes get expressed (i.e., epigenetics), determining our health and longevity.
So, what steps can we take each day? In the beginning of the book, Dychtwald offers an Ageless Aging Self-Assessment broken into action items in two columns “Age Accelerants” and “Age Decelerates.” In this way, you can determine your starting point or baseline.
The Sweet Spot for Happiness Begins Around 50
It may come as a surprise that “the sweet spot for happiness has been identified as being from about age fifty to seventy-five,” says Dychtwald. Based on large-scale research (on Americans and Europeans), “there’s what’s called a ‘U-curve of happiness’ that starts out high in our youth, dips between the ages of twenty-five and fifty, then goes up again, and soars in our fifties and beyond, until it turns down a bit in our eighties.”
Research at Age Wave confirmed that “in general, happiness and a sense of freedom start rising appreciably around age fifty-five while anxiety plummets. This, of course, assumes finances, health and connection are all in good order.” The Age Wave team has labeled this period the “freedom zone.”
Psychologist Jim Bramson elaborates, “There’s this whole new sense of freedom, similar to that sense you have in your twenties when life is in front of you, filled with potentially unlimited opportunities, and you aren’t locked into decisions. You don’t have to follow a script. It’s empowering, especially for women.”
Another benefit women experience in their older years is increased self-confidence. Research in the Harvard Business Review revealed “women 60 plus have more self-confidence than men and more than they had in earlier decades.”
Time Affluence, Reframing, and “Menterning”
In our sixties and beyond, assuming we are not sandwiched between aging parents and boomerang kids, we may experience what is known as “time affluence,” a.k.a more time. We have time to try and do new things we never had time for before, allowing us to reinvent and “be beginners again.”
Dychtwald cites Chip Conley’s philosophy (and his Modern Elder Academy) on discovering a new sense of purpose encouraging us to “reframe your midlife from a crisis to a calling.” He also cites the value of what he calls “menterning”—a combination of mentoring and interning which is what he did at Airbnb. He was the oldest member of the team, so relationships and exposure to younger people became an unexpected fringe benefit.
Intergenerational relationships, according to pro-aging activist Ashton Applewhite, are “an anti-ageism life hack.” Dychtwald notes how her friendships with younger women (including some of her daughter’s and son’s friends) have “introduced her to new lingo, ideas, and music and feels more culturally engaged and far more alive” as a result.
The “Positivity Effect”
As we get older, people tend to focus on the more positive aspects of life, news, and information than when they were younger; this is known as the “Positivity Effect.” Dr. Laura Carstensen, author, founder, and director of Stanford’s Longevity Center, explains it this way: “As we see time running out in our fifties, our sixties, our seventies, it becomes increasingly clear to us that we are not going to be here forever, and so we might say, ‘I want to make the most of it. I don’t want to get tied up in these trivial matters that drive people crazy when they’re young.’ Instead, older adults are more focused in the present. So, there is something about aging that I think is really a gift.”
Creating Your Ageless Aging Action Plan
Maddy encourages readers to chart their path through five steps:
- Identify your intention
- Create your vision
- Identify your entry point
- Make a plan
- Course correct
And she gives lots of guidance on how to do that.
In each chapter she says, “I’ve included practical tips, techniques, and Ageless Aging hacks that I’ve categorized according to level of experience.” Additionally, she cites products, websites, tests, and technologies along the way.
Specific chapters dedicated to fitness, food, sleep, hormones, mind, purpose and connection, and financial health offer deep dives into each of these subjects and are laden with advice from experts, global research studies, and interesting anecdotal shares. She taps her extensive network of experts throughout.
The concluding chapter, “Create Your Ageless Aging Action Plan,” devotes nine pages to making it easy to create your own customized plan or rather “a holistic recipe to guide your aging journey” step by step.
Mastering “Stacking”
Most of us are busy these days, and as noted above, time gets increasingly precious as we get older. Consider stacking activities so “an activity takes care of more than one need at a time.”
She gives a few examples:
- “Walking in the woods with a friend (takes care of cardio, time in nature, and friend time)
- Cleaning the house for 30 minutes (functional exercise, gets you a clean house, and can be meditative)
- Going out dancing (cardio, balance, and social time—and “it’s joyful.”)
Stacking may be applied to most actions across the chapter categories, if you are willing to get creative. For example, cooking and eating at home with friends checks off nutrition and social. Stacking is a good approach to master.
Be the CEO of Your Own Healthcare
This is one of the most important messages with which Dychtwald leaves us: You must be the one to coordinate and drive your own health care. It is critical to be an active participant versus a passive one.
She strongly encourages “precovery” for any upcoming surgery or intensive treatment plan; in other words, “proactively preparing for the stress of surgery or cancer treatment, so you can heal faster, raise your immunity and resilience, and even improve your recovery results with the choices you make before an event like surgery.”
Conclusion
Dychtwald talks about the importance of purpose and mission: hers is to clearly inspire us to achieve a longer health span, brain span and lifespan. She says, “Wherever you are in your aging journey, it’s never too late to invest in your well-being, or to reinvent yourself.
It is possible for life to get better as you age, especially when you are open to the idea that our longevity bonus can be an ascent, not a decline.” With this book, she extends an invitation to us, “Let’s take off together.”
Note: Nothing in this article constitutes medical advice. Please consult your physician if you have questions before undertaking any physical activity or dietary changes.
Lydia is a passionate advocate of healthy living. She has launched and positioned many health and wellness-related companies, products, technologies and organizations receiving more than 100 awards nationally and internationally. Her focus in the health sector is specifically on healthy living, aging and longevity. She is a partner and investor in several recognized national brands. She sits on the board of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging whose mission is to eliminate the threat of age-related disease for today’s and future generations. It is the only independent research organization globally dedicated to extending the healthy years of life. Like the scientists at the Buck, Graham envisions it will be possible for people to enjoy life at 95 as much as at 25. To support Buck’s mission, please visit www.buckinstitute.org.