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There are a lot of variables to consider in planning for retirement. A big one is longevity. We don’t know how long we’ll live, but we should plan for a long life. But there’s more to consider than just our lifespan. Rejoining us is Maddy Dychtwald, co-founder of Age Wave, to discuss her new book Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan, a guide to living better longer by proactively attending to your healthspan, your brainspan and your wealthspan.
Maddy Dychtwald joins us from California.
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Bio
Recognized by Forbes as one of the top fifty female futurists globally, for nearly 40 years, Maddy Dychtwald has been deeply involved in exploring all aspects of the age wave and how it’s fundamentally transforming our lives and the world at-large. This has led her to become an award-winning author, acclaimed public speaker, and thought leader on longevity and aging, health, wellness, and the new retirement.
Maddy co-founded Age Wave, the world’s leader in understanding and addressing the far-reaching impacts of longevity and our aging population. The Age Wave team has worked with more than half of the Fortune 500 in industries ranging from healthcare and medical technology to financial services and consumer products.
With women at the forefront of the longevity revolution, Maddy has dug deep into their specific longevity-related wants, needs, challenges and opportunities. As a researcher and social scientist, she has led numerous acclaimed studies, including the landmark Women, Money and Power sponsored by Allianz and Women and Financial Wellness: Beyond the Bottom Line for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In addition, she has been involved in more than 25 thought leadership research studies worldwide on longevity, aging, retirement, health and wellness, family and social connections, purpose, caregiving, finances, and leisure, which have cumulatively garnered more than twenty billion media impressions. As a blogger and member of The Wall Street Journal’s Expert Panel, Maddy’s posts on leadership, wealth management, and financial planning have topped the most-read lists. Her insights and research have been featured in prominent media outlets, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Newsweek, Time, Fox Business News, CNBC, and NPR.
Maddy has written four books, including the award-winning Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy, Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better, and the children’s/young readers’ book Gideon’s Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings. Her highly anticipated new book, Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan, (Mayo Clinic Press, May 2024) will provide an insider’s guide to living better longer, covering everything from fitness and nutrition to hormones and ageism, from sleep to purpose, from navigating the healthcare system to the role of finances.
Over the years, Maddy has herself become part of the age wave and has experimented personally with how to increase her own healthspan, brainspan, and lifespan. She is a co-founder of the non-profit Women Against Alzheimer’s and serves as a board member of the non-profit BrightFocus Foundation, which funds cutting-edge research to cure diseases of the brain and eye. She is also a lead partner for Portfolia in the Active Aging and Longevity 2 Fund. She is also a lead partner for Portfolia, a collaborative women-focused investment platform in their “Active Aging & Longevity Fund 2.
Maddy and her husband Ken were awarded the prestigious Esalen Prize for their outstanding contributions to advancing the human potential of long-lived men and women worldwide. An empty-nester, she is highly involved with her adult children and her granddog.
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For More on Maddy Dychtwald
Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan
Age Wave
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Wise Quotes
On Ageless Aging & Agency
“There are three things that come to mind. First is that we are the CEOs of our own healthcare and our health and our wellbeing, including our brain health. Knowing that we have agency over our health and wellbeing and that it’s never too late to take steps and even just starting somewhere with changing your diet or your exercise or your sleep, it’s really powerful medicine. 90% of our health and well-being is really within our control. And so we ought to know that and take action where possible. Second is that it’s not just about one thing, like sleep or what you eat or your exercise. Those things are the basics and super important. But it’s about a bouquet of different ingredients that all work together to create a more ageless kind of aging. And the good news about that is you can start anywhere and you can pull one lever. And by pulling that lever, you’re going to start feeling better, which is going to motivate you to try more. That to me is good news. And third is, and I didn’t really talk about this with you too much, Joe, but I think the idea of having joy in your life can really add life to the years that we have, no matter how long or short our lifespans might be. One of the pieces of research that I learned along the way was from Dr. Becca Levy at Yale. She did a longitudinal study in the middle of the US. And what she found was that when people felt more positive about aging and their own aging in particular, it could add up to seven and a half years to their lives. And that’s like flipping a switch in your brain to tell yourself on a daily basis: Aging, it’s a gift. It’s a real gift, and we ought to take advantage of it. So that’s why I wrote Ageless Aging, to give people the tools and the information that they need so that they can live better longer.”
On Purpose
“There’s different ways that we can get a sense of purpose as we get older. The number one way is to continue working in some way, shape, or form. That’s something that I interviewed Dr. Linda Fried, who’s head of the Columbia School of Public Health about. She is their Dean, and she’s also an amazing physician and expert on aging. She told me that often times she would suggest to her patients: you ought to work longer. To spend the last 30 years of your life without a sense of work or purpose is not good for your health. You lose your vitality, your energy, your willingness to go on in life, and that is not something that you want to have happen. So work is one solution, but there are other ones too, like volunteering. Volunteering your time serves a lot of great purposes because when you give, it actually gives back. And there’s been studies that show that giving is a really amazing force of nature that can help you to live better longer. By the way, from the Age Wave studies that we’ve done, one of the things that we found was that adopting a pet was one of the number one things that people were willing to do. add more purpose to their lives.”
On Exercise
“And I do think there is one silver bullet. And that is something that I’m kind of obsessed with personally. And it’s a little different than I actually thought it was. If you talk to the brain health experts, they all say the one thing you have to do is exercise. And it’s definitely true. But it’s not just about cardio. It’s about your balance. It’s about your posture. It’s about believe it or not, your ability to relax. That one was a cool one for me. And most importantly, it’s about building muscle strength. Because as we get older, like literally beginning in your 30s, we begin to lose muscle mass. It’s called by a fancy name; sarcopenia. But it really means a loss of muscle mass. And some of the scientists that I talked to were in agreement on the fact that they believe that muscle mass should be the new vital sign with equal importance to our heart rate and our blood pressure and our weight. So that’s how important building muscle mass is.”
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About Retirement Wisdom
I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.
Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.
About Your Podcast Host
Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.
