This collection brings together Listener stories about living long and prospering, and the latest research and developments in aged care medicine. There’s also a story or two about those – rock stars included – who have no plans to retire quietly, and how and why they manage to keep on keeping on.
What science is telling us about staying youthful - and how a cold shower and good laugh help
Slowing or even reversing the ageing process is the holy grail for some scientists and everything from drugs to blood infusions and laughter is being investigated.
As the boomer generation grows old, a whole industry is springing up to help them do it optimally. Longevity and regenerative medicine have arrived, as well as specialist doctors and a whole world of supplements, devices and diagnostics. According to market analysis site Longevity.Technology, US$5.2 billion was invested globally in 2022 in longevity-related companies.
Bones, balance and ageing: The surprising links between bone health and brain function
Diseases of the bones and brain can stealthily start decades ahead of when they finally show up externally. Scientists are learning more, not only about new ways to treat these issues, but also about what individuals can do to lower their risk and potentially prevent them.
The fact that we’re living longer is one reason bone health is becoming more of a focus for innovative research. Unless we’ve broken bones, it’s likely we’ve devoted little time to thinking about their health. Yet bone density is linked to longevity – and having poor bone density is linked to early death.
Surprising new research into the habits of ‘super-agers’ - and the 12 signs of ageing
Lost your keys lately? Forgotten where you parked your car? Can’t quite summon up that word you want to use? Our thinking abilities tend to peak as early as our 20s or 30s and then, in the decades that follow, brain power heads into a slow decline. From age 60, it can fall more precipitously as the brain continues shrinking. Beyond 80, the cracks really start to show – as President Joe Biden seems to be finding out – and it may become more obvious that we are not performing cognitively as we used to.
For a long time, this was accepted as the normal ageing trajectory. What science has now proved is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Some people are different. Their brains don’t suffer the same degree of shrinkage and they remain mentally sharp even when very elderly. Neuroscientist Emily Rogalski is leading efforts to understand why.
How your friends and family make you live longer
Personality prospectively predicts how long participants lived. For every one point increase in scores for aspects of extroversion, emotional stability and conscientiousness, participants lived an average of 2-3 years longer than people averagely extrovert, stable and conscientious.
World-famous Dunedin Study points to ways to slow down ageing
Striving for longevity is popular these days. Not the type that keeps the elderly alive despite advanced decline, but the type that staves off infirmity for as long as possible. The popular movement’s epicentre is probably Los Angeles, where tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson lives. He spends $2 million a year on diet, exercise, sleep, supplements and extreme efforts such as gene editing. He’s currently ageing at the pace of two-thirds of a year for every chronological year.
But Dunedin is an epicentre of ageing science. Johnson and other longevity influencers measure their ageing rate using a test developed from the Dunedin Study, whose 1000+ participants are celebrating their 52nd birthdays about now. It’s licensed to a US-based commercial lab, TruDiagnostic, which sells it as a pinprick blood test kit.
What late bloomers can tell you about success and reinventing your life
A “late bloomer’' is not pinned to an age – a sportsperson might be a late bloomer in their 20s, a writer or artist in their 60s.
“It is someone who succeeds after the point when no one expects them to,’’ says Henry Oliver, author of Second Act.
The book is a celebration of late bloomers and draws on many of them, from Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham to Julia Child, who began her foray into fine cuisine at age 37, painters, writers, sportspeople, entrepreneurs and people you’ve probably never heard of who either found a calling later in life or became more notable for it.
His quest to find out what makes a late bloomer earned Oliver a research grant from a US university. Books and research he’d looked at didn’t properly answer the question. Through his interest in biography, he was intrigued about late bloomers and wanted to know why they find their spark later.
Oliver’s book covers the mechanics of late blooming. “What are the hundred little things that have to go off, like bits of an engine, for you to then turn into a prime minister or a novelist or something?’’
The big, late OE: How Kiwi empty nesters are finding new ways to travel
Social media groups are full of New Zealand empty nesters and retirees exploring the world. The internet has opened up ways to live abroad on a budget as travellers rather than tourists that weren’t possible a decade ago, either working as a digital nomad or travelling and living in other countries in mid-life or retirement.
Put the term “mid-life gap year” into Google and you’ll get many hits. Social media group Budget Slow Travel in Retirement has 114,000 members. At the same time, pet-sitting, house-sharing and house-sitting sites are rising in number as people look for ways to travel for extended periods – a luxury once available only to the privileged.
Don’t call it a crisis: Why midlife is the key to living long and prospering
Midlife is a tipping point for many Kiwis but the changes in health and wellbeing are poorly understood. What can help the sandwich generation live long and prosper?
Don’t call it a crisis: High-profile media couple on leaving the rat race
At the Whananaki General Store in Northland, Dallas and Donna Gurney are living a different life from the one they might have imagined. When the short-lived Today FM closed in March last year, Dallas, 46, was ripe for a big change. The former manager of Newstalk ZB was on “gardening leave” when bosses moved to close the station he was in charge of creating.
He was tired of watching the media ‒ a sector he’d worked in since he was a young journalist in Northland ‒ burn to the ground. “Everything we took for granted has changed. You never knew how long the place you were working at was going to be there.”
Timeless rock: Why veteran music legends are still shaking up the stage
When British heavy metal legends Iron Maiden played Auckland’s Spark Arena in September, its two founding members – bassist Steve Harris and guitarist Dave Murray – were 68 and 67 respectively.
Singer Bruce Dickinson was 66, which means he’s been screaming “your soul’s gonna burn in the lake of fire” from Can I Play With Madness for more than three decades.
And the punk-era Buzzcocks, who visited in November had one original member, 69-year-old Steve Diggle.
Even those mouthy Mancunians, Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis, are getting up there: Noel will be 58 when – and perhaps if – the re-formed band start touring next year; younger brother Liam will be only 52, but he’s already passed through that rite of passage for the elderly: the hip operation.
Advanced in years they may be, but these musicians are among many touring artists who defy the attritions of age.