“Look, we're all aging,” Maddie Dychtwald tells me, “and it's a process that starts in the womb and continues until the day we die.”
Deichtwald, 74, co-founder of the consulting organization AgeWave and author, with Kate Hanley, of Ageless Aging: A Woman's Guide to Extending Her Health, Brain, and Life, understands that it's a reality our culture has a hard time accepting. She acknowledges that she was advised not to put the word “aging” in the book's title because “people don't like it.” But that's what drew me in. It's because it wasn't yet another “anti-aging” or “fighting aging” guide. But what really piqued my interest was that Deichtwald frankly and practically included financial planning in the guide.
A 2017 Groupon study found that women spend up to $313 per month on their appearance, a habit that can cost as much as $225,000 over an adult lifetime. As someone who dyes her hair and uses Vitamin C serums, I don't blame anyone, but if we're spending more of our paychecks at Sephora than we're saving or investing, it's going to be a lot harder to feel good a few decades from now when medical bills and prescription drugs start to pile up.
Acknowledging that health is wealth and wealth is health, Dychtwald gives her other insights on fitness, diet, and relationships a down-to-earth context: “Getting your finances in order has a wide range of positive effects on your health,” she writes.
I recently spoke with Dychtwald about what women need to know to age as healthily as possible—and, realistically, how much longer we should keep eating cheese and bread.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Early in the book you write that men die earlier and get sicker than women. What does that mean in terms of how we need to think strategically as we enter the next phase of our lives?
The good news is that we women have won the longevity lottery. On average, we live 6 years longer than men. But there is a dark side. The dark side is that both our health span and brain span have not kept up with men's. The average woman will have 12 to 14 years of poor health at the end of her life. Who wants to live like that? This is reality, but the reality is much more than that. We have the power, the agency, to change it. The latest science says that up to 90% of our health and happiness is literally under our control. It has to do with our lifestyle and our environment.
If I had to pick three things that would make the biggest difference, first of all, it would be to avoid getting diabetes. Obviously, you can't control type 1 diabetes, but you can certainly control type 2 diabetes and cognitive decline, which many people call type 3 diabetes. You want to do everything you can to avoid that. Believe it or not, eliminating alcohol from your life is a very positive step, because it's especially damaging to your brain cells. And of course, women are twice as likely to get Alzheimer's, so that's something to be very concerned about. That's a really scary statistic. And the third thing is the environment. Make sure you use indoor air purifiers, especially in the bedroom. That really surprised me.
By the time we feel the pain, the damage is already done. Patterns are established, habits are ingrained. How much of it can be undone? We like to feel like it's not too late. But how much more bread can we eat? How much more wine can we drink?
You're asking a good question, and you're not going to like my answer, because my answer is “it really depends.” First, it depends on where your standards are, and second, what you're trying to achieve.
One of the researchers I interviewed working on Alzheimer's disease in France said, “I believe that having a glass of wine with dinner gives you a certain amount of pleasure. Remember that pleasure has more of an effect on our epigenome than anything else.” I agree with that view.
So, if you go out to celebrate, have a glass of wine. Absolutely do it. But remember that you probably don't want to drink every night. If you go out and party and have three margaritas and three glasses of wine, that's probably not going to help your brain health or your body health. I'm not saying “moderation” because that's such a weird word. I'm saying things that I've embraced in my life. I used to love having a glass of wine at the end of the day. It was a way to relax and have a few minutes with my friends and my husband. I limited it to once a week. Now I find that wine doesn't have the negative effects that it used to have, and best of all, it tastes better for me.
You talk about different types of aging: biological, age, and psychological. How do we get through all three to become our best selves?
“This is what it looks like at 74 years old. The good, the bad and the ugly.”
Let's talk about all three. First, the passage of age, the number of birthdays. Embrace that. And by the way, younger people, who are more afraid of aging than older people, need good role models to say, “Yes, this is what 74 looks like. The good, the bad and the ugly. This may be what I look like on the outside, but who knows what I'm like on the inside?”
Then there's psychological or emotional aging, which is the positive side of aging. We know from our research at Age Wave and Stanford that wisdom, resilience, and happiness actually increase with age, and anxiety levels actually decrease, which is relatively surprising.
Then there is biological aging, which is our physiological makeup. There are some things we can do about the cascade of negative effects that can occur as we get older, namely pain and chronic diseases like diabetes. We have a long life ahead of us, and we want to make the most of it. We want to avoid the bad and embrace the good. I felt that by embracing a different diet and making some small changes to my exercise, I could reverse the situation. I incorporated some positive words. I know that sounds really weird. I embraced it, and I swear to God, it made a huge difference.
Exercise, diet, and sleep are important pieces of the puzzle, but they're not the only ones. It's also about community. It's also about purpose and positivity and even finances. All of those things work together to help you live better and longer. And the good news that I think is really helpful for women is that there are a lot of different tools available to us, especially when it comes to getting started.
What drew me to this book is the financial aspect. When we talk about women's wellbeing, one of the things we don't always consider is that we're earning less and having less money. We may be living in retirement caring for aging parents or spouses, which can be stressful and financially unstable. We're also experiencing the financial instability of being widowed. These things are key determinants of our wellbeing, and they can feel overwhelming and scary. What do we need to know about the correlation between financial wellbeing and longevity?
I think we need to go back to the word wealth, because it has a bad reputation. When people hear the word wealth, they think of entitlement, but wealth actually comes from a word that means happiness. We need to think about financial well-being as part of our overall well-being.
If you're worried about money and you're under chronic stress, your cortisol levels go up. We know that this can manifest as illness, and it does, and it often does. And it can lead to diabetes, or arthritis pain and suffering, and you end up in the health care system. There's a misconception that if you have Medicare, everything is taken care of. But most of us are waking up to the fact that that's not the case at all.
Additionally, women's health care costs are far higher than men's after retirement. This only makes it more difficult, not to mention the fact that women perform 80% of caregiving activities, whether it be for children, spouses, partners, parents, or even grandparents. And we are often the ones who pay for caregiving out of our own pockets.
Not only that, but they often retire early to care for their spouse, partner, or parent. Of course, they take time off work to care for their kids. They miss out on promotions, they miss out on raises, they miss out on increases in Social Security and 401(k) contributions. This is something that women should discuss with each other and, if they're married or in a relationship, with their partner.
“In one of the studies we did at Age Wave, we found that women are more comfortable talking about their death than they are talking about money. We don't talk about how much money we make. We don't talk about how we invest our money. We don't talk about financial advisors, which we like or dislike. These are not conversations we have, but we need to open that door. I feel very strongly about this.”
The gap between rich and poor in this country is getting wider and wider, making a certain level of economic prosperity out of reach for most people. But we need to connect the dots. I can do yoga every morning and meditate every night, but if I don't plan for my best possible financial future given my income, I'm still out of luck.
The stress that that brings is just mind-blowing. We, as women, have to overcome barriers that are built into the system, frankly. It's really unfortunate, but it's true. Men and women doing the same job, but there's a pay gap, and if they both start working at the same time, and they both leave work at the same time, and they don't take the time to care for their loved ones, that difference can be over $500,000. That's a lot of money.
Those are years of retirement and years of elder care. So how do you embrace these changes in an agreeable way? The challenge of adapting and building good habits is tough, especially when you're caring for aging parents, trying to hang on to a job and facing ageism all around.
There is a gap between intention and action. We know some of the right actions to do, but we don't know everything. I think we need to start adding things that bring us joy. For example, I've gotten pretty good at sleeping lately, but sleep is not my superpower. The first thing I tried to do was to acknowledge the fact that what I did in the morning, that was just as important while I was sleeping as what I did at night. So how hard is it to face the sun first thing in the morning?
I don't even have to go outside. I just open the curtains. It may sound silly, but I've been sleeping better. It's helped me feel more energized during the day and I've been more excited to meet up with friends and go on hikes. It's been amazing. I've seen a cascade of positive effects. I think we need to rely on our bodies and minds to be in tune with joy.
