Brain Health: Can Older Adults Build Better Brain Fitness?

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Welcome to all of our listeners tuning in today. This is Joe Casciani, your host for this program, and this is the podcast from the Living to 100 Club. Thank you for joining us. And for being a member of our community. Here at the club, I've been promoting the notion of Living to 100 and doing all we can mentally and physically to live longer and healthier. But I also like to emphasize that Living to 100 is a mindset more than anything, a metaphor for pushing ahead. We can say that Living to 100 is a great destination or goal, but also, if Living to 100 is not in the cards, We can always stay positive while trying. This is the important part, keeping the mindset that we want to live a positive life regardless of what the circumstances are. Today we'll be talking about what it takes to stay at our peak mentally and the newest technology that helps with this. Our guest is Martin Pozzani. Martin is the author of Secrets of Aging Well, Get Outside, the founder of brain fitness and longevity company Activate Brain and Body, a TED speaker, and a mountaineer who has hiked and climbed 100 million uphill steps across 7 continents over 50 years. That's a lot of hiking. His background is in mega company marketing and strategy, Madison Avenue advertising agencies, a CEO in the music business, and has many years in the fitness business. Martin is now a serial entrepreneur focused on longevity, brain health, and anti-aging techniques, and he's on a mission to reinvent the fitness business as upstream preventive healthcare, and in so doing, radically change the trajectory of aging. Martin, welcome to our program.

Thanks, Joe.

It's a pleasure to be with you. Yeah, looking forward to this.

Great. Yeah, me too. I always like to begin by asking our guests to tell us briefly about the journey that took you to where you are today.

Yeah, um, a few events got me here, intersecting events. The first trigger, uh, something I mentioned in my book, was I had a chance encounter with a trail runner on a high mountain who was 75 years old. At the time, I was about 32, and I thought I was super fit. I crossed paths with this 75-year-old guy running uphill way faster than I could, and it floored me.

We crossed paths on the trail, and I said to him, "How are you doing this?" He said, "Well, I live about 2 miles from the trailhead, and I've been doing this 2 or 3 times a week since I was your age, sonny." I said, "Oh man," and he just blew past me.. And it stayed with me forever. And it got me thinking, well, great, I could be doing what I love at an advanced age, but how is it that he could be doing that? And I started to think about the concept of hiking and climbing being the fountain of youth. And what did that do to your physiology? And how did you change? What did that make possible? So, that was rattling around in my brain. I wound up in the fitness business in 2003 as Chief Marketing Officer of the world's largest fitness company, Bally, and obviously interested in the same subject of how to keep people fit longer. And while that was the wrong forum at the time, it was a different, the wrong kind of company to execute fitness for an older population, it was very clear that the aging population, the baby boomer population bubble was going to pass age 50 and they are going to have needs and wants and they are not going to age the way our parents did or their parents did. So, there will be a market niche for keeping people fit after 50. I knew that was the case and very few people jumped on it, but we are jumping on it wholeheartedly right now. That led to my current venture, Activate, which is focused completely on people above age 45, emphasis probably about age 60. People who are still too young to give up and retire and want to stay active and fit, probably work, and how to stay sharp and fit and vital. I am right in the middle of that. You know, I just turned 65 and I feel that my best years are ahead of me. I feel I am not slowing down at all. I feel sharp as can be. Fortunately, because I have been hiking so long, I have my health and I am fit. I think the science is supporting how that came to be. That is the key thing is it is not a miracle of genetics. It is a miracle cycle of behavior and choices and things you can do to make sure you age well and stay active.

Right, right. We're showing that the genetics are not so influential as we used to think, right?

Right.

Maybe 25 to 30% of our longevity rather than what we thought was, you know, already in the cards for us that we're not going to live that long because our parents didn't live that long.

And I think that's why our parents' generation didn't take care of themselves. They felt that decline was inevitable and on a path that meant, you know, I got to retire when I'm 65 because I'll be dead when I'm 70. And as it turns out, that's just not the way it needs to be. It doesn't have to be that way. Never did, actually. And it's kind of sad at how many people kind of gave up in their early 60s and just gave in to aging.

Yeah, that's so true that we know now that decline is not inevitable. Now you've spent a lot of years in the fitness industry, I know, and we'll hear more about your new company, Activate. But what's happened with the fitness industry? And, you know, when you and I were talking on the phone, you had said that the fitness industry didn't really address the 50+ age group. And what's that all about?

It was really surprising to me when I became part of the fitness industry and got to look behind the curtain. First of all, the data showed quite clearly, uh, 15, 20 years ago that, uh, only 10% of the population above age 50 belonged to a fitness club. So right there you see, hmm, that's, that's interesting because it's more like 30 or 40% under age 50. So what, what is it that happened? Why is that so?

That's number one.

Number 2, I think there was just a belief that you did need to slow down. There was no point in working out. There was that inevitability of going down the decline of aging. So, what is the point of wasting my time in a fitness club? Well, actually, that is the point. You know, you can reverse it, right? And then the other thing was I think there was this cultural expectation. People had lifespan numbers in their heads. And said, well, you know, I should start to slow down and enjoy my senior years because, you know, I should do less and go to the beach or play golf and slow down. That is just the wrong attitude, I think. Net-net, I think some people in the fitness business didn't think the 50+ audience was profitable. Well, I have got data that shows it is exactly the opposite. The 50+ audience is now 50% of the population. And they control two-thirds of the financial resources. So, focusing on 50+ is the smart move. And it baffles me that here I am now, 20 years after I saw this trend, and very few companies have figured it out. They're just giving, they're giving the 50+ market lip service because they know it's big, but no one has focused on it and understood the unique needs and the unique environment and the unique workouts that are possible, what is going to motivate people to stay engaged. I think we have kind of figured it out.

Yeah, that is the longevity economy, right? That is what we are talking about.

Exactly. Yeah.

Two-thirds of the disposable resources, yet only 50% of the population.

You know, as you know full well, the baby boomer population has influenced and changed and morphed every category they have moved through. Now, they are looking at, how am I going to spend the rest of my years? And thinking, well, number 1, I am not going to spend it watching Netflix or playing golf or doing something inactive. So, how do I stay active? By the way, the other thing that is rattling around in people's heads is how do I afford healthcare? How do I afford my lifestyle if my health turns south? Because as you know, that is the number 1 reason for financial stress. Stress as you age is healthcare expenses. So, wouldn't it be great if I can stave that off by staying fit? As it turns out, you have heard this before, fitness is medicine and being fit as you age is the best way to keep your healthcare expenses down in addition to, you know, staying active and vital and sharp. If you don't want to retire, you don't have to. So, yeah, it is almost a perfect storm for us to kind of focus on this market.

Yeah, yeah, that's so important to understand. You had recommended this book Spark by Dr. John Ratey. I picked it up and I started reading. It's fascinating what we've discovered about fitness and how it relates to academic performance. I mean, I haven't gotten very far in the book, but it's great.

It is.

I think it's landmark. And you know, the funny thing is all my partners, uh, we have 10 partners have come together to create this company, Activate Brain and Body. The moment they read that book, they all got on the bandwagon and instantly said, oh yeah, we're doing something.

We're doing—

we're—

we are going down this path. And it's been very influential for us.

Yeah. Well, I know we'll touch on that more, but you're really close to a lot of the technology and, and Brayden Fitness and a lot of new products. Can you share with us some of those products that are out there and are they available to the consumer?

There's some great products. Um, most of them are not consumer ready just yet. They're found in rehab centers and neuroscience centers. Some of them are starting to create consumer versions, but this is not, not there yet, although there are some very accessible technologies that are capable of reversing the way you age and giving you cognitive stimulation. And before we talk about the tech, I've got to tell you, all this tech is based on discoveries in neuroscience. That even 10 years ago were considered far out. But you know how when we were growing up, we were always told, uh, you're born with a finite number of brain cells and all you can do by drinking or boxing or, you know, is lose brain cells?

Sure.

Well, as it turns out, that is just not accurate. Neuroscience has shown that, um, you can build brain cells. It's a natural process at any age, your body builds brain cells. The key thing is giving your body something to do with those newly triggered cells, and so it requires stimulus. It requires exercise and, and cognitive stimulation to make use of those new neurons. There's a hormone that's created when you work out. If you get your heart rate up to about two-thirds of max, your body starts to create a hormone called BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. That is the building block for a healthier brain. It creates new brain cells. When you then do some of the new technologies or work out in a particular way, you give those brain cells a place to go and to create new neural pathways. New neural pathways are basically the building blocks of a stronger, more fortified, more reinforced brain that can resist aging. So it's some really cool science that has now become mainstream. Not enough people know about it, but that's what all this new stuff is capitalizing on, is the ability of the brain to rearrange itself using these new cells. It's called neuroplasticity. The brain is plastic, and you can train it and retrain it and build new pathways. It's called cognitive reserve. When you build more neural pathways, that gives your brain a little bit of extra energy. It's like physical reserve. You got extra strength. Well, you got extra brain power through cognitive reserve.

So we're creating this additional reserve. Is this neurogenesis?

Yes, neurogenesis is this— is the term for building new brain cells. Neuroplasticity is how those brain cells get rearranged.

And interact. Okay.

And into neural networks. Neural networks is what creates the pathway that your brain uses to control your body. Like, you know, it's funny, as more I research this, it was just fascinating to me. Remember another one of those myths was the concept in sports of muscle memory?

Sure.

We used to be told, you know, hitting a curveball or serving a tennis ball, your golf swing, that's muscle memory. Well, no, it's not. Your muscles don't have any memory. They're controlled by your brain. So really what's happening is when you perfect you perfect your golf swing or you perfect a tennis serve or any complex motion, you're building neural networks. And those neural networks, the more you practice, the more you rehearse, they get stronger. But also, that's how you get on automatic pilot, you know, like shooting a foul shot, you know, you just keep shooting and practice, practice, practice, practice from the foul line. Soon it becomes automatic. That's because the neural networks that control all your muscles and your eyes and how much effort you give things, that's a neural network that helps create a denser, more resilient brain.

Hmm. Okay. That's great to know. I never bought the mental muscle memory. I never bought that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Myself. So I'm glad you confirmed that. So neurogenesis is what we're learning more about. And the BDNF, is this, is it a protein that gets built up with? Yeah.

Yeah. I guess technically it is a protein. Yeah. And it's the building block for new neurons.

Okay. And as you're talking about fitness and staying physically active, we touched on the subject of dual-tasking and it— I mean, it's not multitasking, that's got another connotation, but what is dual-tasking and what's your thinking there?

It's a great thing. It's actually related to multitasking. Multitasking, the negative connotations when you start to do too many things, you can't do anything right. You are just distracted. Dual tasking means stressing yourself to do 2 things at once, to load both your physical system and your cognitive system at the same time. You know, you brought up what technology is out there. Some of this new technology, that is what it does. It creates the circumstances for dual tasking. There is a thing called the Cybercycle that you ride and follow instructions and think at the same time. There is a device called the SmartFit Board and there are other products from various companies that put a dual load on brain and body. So at a very basic level, dual tasking means getting your heart rate up to maybe 66% because that's where BDNF starts, and then challenging it to think or follow complicated routines or instructions. So the technology that's developing does that.. But it doesn't even require technology. Let me give you a couple of really good examples. One, dancing. Dancing requires— let's say ballroom dancing, not, you know, modern dancing. Ballroom dancing requires you to memorize complex patterns of motion, think them through, follow rhythm, listen to the music, move your body. It gets your heart rate up. Dancing is a wonderful entry-level dual-tasking activity that does build brain health. It relaxes you too, and it's fun, and that's good. It de-stresses you. That's also a part of brain health is getting the cortisol out of your system through exercise and not stressing yourself. So, dancing is really good, but what's more near and dear to my heart, and that's really the basis of my book, I think hiking is the best dual-tasking activity there is. And the reason for that is, let me compare it to like a treadmill. When you're on a treadmill in a gym, you are getting your heart rate up and that is a good thing, much better than most activities, but you are not thinking. Every step is predictable, right? You kind of can go on automatic pilot, listen to music, watch television, you know, on the treadmill. So, you are really not using your brain much. Most steps you take during the course of the day, through your house, through your office, predictable. You are not worried about falling. So, when you get yourself into a natural environment, where hiking comes into play, and you put it uphill and you get on uneven terrain and you put a little bit of risk in, like maybe tripping and falling over a cliff, your brain every step has to recalculate, how am I going to keep moving forward and upward without tripping, falling, slipping? Where am I going to put my foot because the steps are uneven? You, you're doing thousands of micro calculations that you're unconscious you're not even aware of most of the time, but that is causing cognitive stimulation. It's great dual tasking. And I really started to believe in this firmly when I wrote the book. I interviewed over 100 people who were hikers above age 60, and every single one of them was sharp as a tack. I'm telling you, they were. And they didn't even understand the neurology of it, the neurogenesis part, but they knew somehow that hiking was making them young and sharp and physically fit. And that's because it's dual tasking. It requires you to think while you're active. And there's a lot of ways of doing it. And, you know, so there you go. It's physiology. It's stuff that's been right in front of us forever.

And so— Whatever taxes the body and taxes the brain at the same time is considered this ideal dual tasking.

Listen, at a very basic level, when we started doing trial programs, we started figuring out things like, all right, well, if you do, if you're doing jump rope and rehearsing and reciting the alphabet backwards, that's dual tasking. It is because you have to think about it. So you're giving your brain something to do. You know, I almost think that's kind of funny. One of the greatest things you can do to have a really cognitively powerful brain is learn a second language or play the piano. Both of those create incredible density in your neural networks because they're basically, you know, if you speak 3 languages, you have to have all those neural pathways in your head. If you play the piano, just think of how— or more than one instrument— think of how complicated the motions and the memory and the thinking has to be. So to me, if we could invent a way to be on a treadmill and learn to play the piano at the same time, that would be like the ultimate, I think, you know. So, or play the piano.

That'd be really an art to be able to do that.

But actually, we should do that.

I want to develop a piano workout. Yeah, play the piano while you're on your ExerBike. Yeah.

Well, I did buy myself a set of drums a few months ago, and I'm teaching myself how to play the drums.

Awesome.

You know, for the same reason, not so much the dual tasking, but just that new language.

Well, you know, the emphasis is on learning, Joe. That's the thing is learning does that. I mean, I personally, when we first went down this path, and I still have this vision, I think our facilities will have the ability to teach people to maybe do piano lessons, dancing lessons, foreign language lessons, because learning is the key to keeping a sharp brain. Dual tasking is great, but putting it to good use by learning new things at, you know, above age 50, 60, and 70, incredibly important, incredibly important.

Yeah, let me ask you about the long-term benefits and how this— does it affect our cognitive efficiency and does it postpone decline that would come with dementia or, you know, that is the thought.

Listen, as you know, aging, you can't reverse aging. It is unstoppable, right? We are going to age, but what we can do is we can resist the decline. We can, what we like to say is we are changing the trajectory of aging and there is a norm of how your brain and body slow down as you age, but you can exceed that norm both physically and cognitively through exercise and cognitive stimulation. So, our— we're sure the science is going to show 10, 15 years from now that, that this is completely, a completely valid and 100% guaranteed way of resisting the decline of aging. Look, you're starting to see case studies pop up everywhere. I don't know if you noticed it or not, but there was a guy who was 85 years old just about a month ago, hiked rim to rim on the Grand Canyon, which is a grueling, grueling hike, you know, up and down 10,000 vertical feet. He did it in like 20 hours. Imagine an 85-year-old guy being physically active for 20 hours. That's doable now. You know, this— I believe it's 80— an 80-year-old guy got to the top of Mount Everest recently. That was considered— you couldn't even get near the mountain a generation ago if you were age 50, they thought you would die. So, um, there's— if you push it, I think you can. I believe, and I'm trying to live that for myself, I'm still climbing and hiking, and I have big plans for, for more mountains and, and other activities. And I, I'm, I'm trying to push it as hard as I can to not— to resist that decline. And to not worry about age. That's just a kind of a number. To me, it's what's— how you feel about things, how you feel about aging, what's in your head. Do you feel young? Do you feel active? Are you still sharp? And, and you can do that with exercise and cognitive stimulation.

Yeah, no, I agree 100%. Age is just a number. It's how we feel and what our outlook is and what our attitude is and how we hand it— handle little setbacks that come along, big setbacks. How we manage and cope with them. So let's talk about your, your new program, Activate Brain and Body. You have a new fitness center that's, you have it opening this summer in August, I think you said.

It's actually, we've postponed it a little bit. You know, we're actually a year and a half behind schedule due to COVID, but it's looking like late fall, early fall maybe.

We're not sure.

We're kind of thinking November 1st, but you know, a lot of things have to come together. To make that happen, like getting the contractors to actually do the work. I mean, they've, you know, post-COVID, it's all this activity coming together and, you know, that kind of stuff. So anyway, let's say November 1st, Cincinnati. We think we've developed a formula that has unique workouts in a unique space guided by very unique Coaches. And we think we've created a, let's call it an oasis, that will be a haven for people above age 45. And I think our probably core target will be someone about 58, husband and wife, still working, want to stay sharp, have no plans to slow down. I think that's our, our core target. We kind of think women will be more important because, you probably know this, women make most of the healthcare decisions in a household, and women are the ones who are going to kick their inactive their 58-year-old husband in the butt to stay active because the last thing they want to do is be taking care of them when they are 70 and sick. So, staying active as a couple, I think, is going to be important. I think we are going to have that. Those people will populate our membership base, but we are very excited about this. This has been strange. It is, you know, you talk about overnight success. This has been 10 years in the making. We first had this idea 15 years ago and some of my team, has been around for some of that whole time. But we've put together a really remarkable team of people who understand both exercise, brain health, customer experience, coaching, motivation. Really remarkable team. And so, our first location, Cincinnati, but we intend to scale very fast and, and go to some of the places where you see density of an older population— Florida, Arizona, you know, places like that. And so, uh, we're very excited. We're testing this out and, you know, if it all goes the way we hope it'll go, we'll be scaling it very fast.

Yeah. Well, that's great. So it'll be a combination of physical and cognitive activities or the dual tasking?

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the trick. We've actually turned this concept of dual tasking into a number of workouts, one of which we call the Cognitive Circuit, which is a, a 30-minute high-intensity workout that works brain and body. Our trial programs have shown remarkable, remarkable physiological and psychological measures improvement. People just feel better when they are fit, but when they are being stimulated and coached and measured and you can see improvement in all the measures, not just physical measures, but things like reaction time, executive function, the things that measure cognitive fitness are improving. And as we get more experienced and measure more people, we think the data is going to be valuable in showing what works best and what doesn't. So, you know, in addition to being a brain health company, I think we're doing some very important research on the interaction of cognitive stimulation and physical stimulation and its impact on physiology and the things we know how to measure.

You have an opportunity for some great research, great outcomes research there.

Yeah, and we are— we've started down that path. We've got a number of universities interested. Um, Ohio University— I'm sorry, Miami University in Ohio is, is in business with us now. We're going to start doing research there, creating a kind of an adjunct test program on the campus, and, uh, and I expect we'll have many more contacts in academia here because I don't think anybody is doing what we're doing.

Yeah, well, congratulations.

Thank you. It's premature for congratulations. Congratulate us when it's successful. Opening it is hard enough.

It's got to work.

It's got to— Tenacity and the perseverance is what gets you the gold stars, right? You know that. Yeah, yeah, that's super. So I know you're a very active outdoors person, walking, hiking. You mountain climbing. I always like to ask, what have you learned about the human spirit from all of these outdoor activities?

Well, actually, that is in my book, and it's kind of the core of my second book, which, as you know, is about entrepreneurship in the mountains. I—

the more I—

as I aged and as I became more of a mountaineer and climber and hiker and got around, I realized that that was making me more entrepreneurial. It was the lessons I learned in the mountains. And those are things like— you just said the magic word— persistence. If there's something you learn in the mountains, you learn that nature is much bigger than you, and, you know, you're the one in control of the outcome. So you have to be fit enough and smart enough to survive out there, and it doesn't always go your way. Weather can be bad. Something can be beyond your limits. And if you're goal-oriented, and that's really what this is about as well, you set goals, you try to accomplish them, you don't always get them, but you maintain, you keep that goal out there. And if you fail the first time, you try again, you get fitter, you take a different route, you take a different approach. So, learning about, like we call it self-efficacy, it's basically the confidence you get from these activities. I think empowers you to— in your whole life. And that's not new news. Climbers and hikers and adventurers have known that for 100 years. You bring back to your daily life what you learn in the wilderness and in the mountains. And that's when— you can't explain that to someone. That's the kind of thing they have to learn for themselves. And I learned it very powerfully between, you know, my mid-20s and my late 40s. That's when it really started to gel with me how important that was. And so you learn about getting outside of your comfort zone. Is where all the growth occurs. You learn about the power of, you know, there's this funny little adage in climbing world called the false summit. The false summit is when, you know, people are minute compared to the size of mountains. And often on a mountain, you will be going uphill thinking you're going to the top, but you get to the crest of something and you realize, oh, that was just hiding the actual top. And sometimes there's a series of false summits. Summits. Well, so you have to— it can be incredibly demoralizing to think you're coming to the top and then all of a sudden realize you have another 1,000 vertical feet to go and maybe it's harder than you thought it was going to be and further. Well, you know, is that not a perfect analogy for day-to-day life, right? I mean, how many times do you think you got something nailed in your job or home and then you discover, oh, that wasn't it at all. I got to double down and do twice as much work. The false summit is just this incredible analogy to life, and you start to realize if you can overcome it in the physical world, you can certainly overcome it in your job or in your home life. And so these are great lessons.

They go—

these lessons go on and on and on.

Oh, sure.

Great. Well, those are some very good ones right there. I love the notion of that confidence building and self-efficacy because that's what it takes to maintain that momentum, in my opinion.

Absolutely.

You know, you get over those little hurdles or those big hurdles, and it builds that confidence, and it builds that desire. Yes, I can handle this. I've handled them in the past, and I can do it again. So yeah, I mean, there's so many lessons and metaphors from hiking. I could see that. Yeah, handling disappointments and setbacks and—

Exactly.

False summit. I mean, that's so relevant. Yeah, good stuff. That was just the kind of answer I was looking for to that question.

Well, you know, the other factor—

I like to talk about this, I've been doing so many webinars and talks on this— risk is another thing. Um, in, in entrepreneurship, it's all about risk.

You know, there's, you know, the old, uh, the adage, the, the myth of Sisyphus, where you're pushing the rock uphill, right?

Um, well, in an entrepreneur world, if you stop pushing the rock it goes all the way down, back down to the bottom. In corporate world, if you get tired, there's other people to help you push that rock, right? There's big teams of people, there's vast resources. But having the, the ability to not only keep the rock moving uphill, but to accept the risk of entrepreneurship, I think it grew in me, um, because I was a corporate guy for 30 years, from, you know, right out of school till I was about 50. I was in big corporations. I really always felt entrepreneurial, but I didn't have the guts to go out on my own until I was 51.

And I got that through the acceptance of risk. You learn, like, you know, usually in entrepreneurship you're not going to get killed, but in the mountains, taking risk puts you sometimes in, in a, in a near-death situation where the possibility of killing yourself is there. So, by accepting that kind of risk in my avocation of climbing, I began to think whatever could happen to me in the business world wasn't really the same kind of risk, and therefore, it didn't— I wasn't scared of it. And so, I became more entrepreneurial, willing to accept the risks of entrepreneurship.

Yeah, making more calculated risks, as they say, closely measured risks and Yeah, to really understand that. That's good, that's good. So your, your first book, um, The Secrets of Aging Well: Get Outside, the overall tenet is stay active, right?

Yeah, and, and, you know, it's kind of funny, I've made it my mission.

I mean, it, it, uh, and it's, it's, it's very synergistic with yours. The subtitle of the book, it says, uh, be healthier, recharge your brain, prevent burnout, find more joy and maybe live to be 100, because I think it's within our grasp if we take care of ourselves, and it's within our grasp to be 100 without cognitive decline. And that, you know, so, you know, who knows how much, how many years we have, but I'm planning on doing what I can to make the most of what I get and to take care of it in a way that, you know, that I can have a high quality of life in my later years.

Keep pushing, keep climbing.

Keep pushing. And you know what? I also think, you know, within my book, I talk about retirement. I also think retirement is a mistake at age— in your 60s. I think it's too young. I wouldn't have any trouble if retirement age became 75. I think retiring is what triggers you to slow down. First of all, you stop thinking, you stop doing anything that involves risk and interaction. You lose contact with a lot of people if you retire. But also the feeling of being productive and having a goal. I think once that goes away, I think that impacts how much you move. I mean, you know, I get it if you've had a very tough career. My father was a fireman. He wanted to retire and he retired early because his body was, you know, breaking down. But what I would have counseled him to do 30 years ago is to have a different career, get out of that grueling area and do something different, be a consultant, or something. I think we can reinvent ourselves and we should reinvent ourselves if you've had a very tough career, but I'm not a fan of retiring and I have no immediate plans to retire. I hope I can work until I'm in my 80s.

Yeah, I think that's so important, Martin. I agree. I mean, retiring and not doing anything— I mean, the whole notion of staying engaged and Twyla Tharp calls it non-stop engagement and she's still teaching dance in her 70s and 80s. So it's nonstop engagement. It might mean taking a different turn, maybe learning a new career, maybe volunteering in something that's different from what we ever did. But you're so right. It's not so smart to just kind of slow down and say, what will be will be. You know, we have to be out there and connect with the world. I think that's right. So great conversation. Tell me, uh, what would you hope our listeners take away from our conversation today?

I have a very simple wish, and that is to have people to understand that you actually can take charge of the way you age. It's not an inevitable process to go down that decline. If you stay active, you can resist the declines of aging. That's number one. Number two, it's never too late to get started. If you're in your 70s or your 80s and you haven't been getting fit you can still do it. My advice would be start walking. If you walk 20, 30 minutes a day, get your heart rate up, that will be the catalyst to get you feeling like you can do more. It doesn't matter how old you are. There's all kinds of studies that show people in their late 80s and 90s, the moment they start a physical program, they increase their longevity. And so I would say it's never too late.

Great advice. So important. Yeah, thanks for that. So it looks like we're out of time, but before we wrap up, I just want to remind our listeners about a few items. I'm pleased to announce a new co-sponsor for our podcast with a program called A Mighty Good Time. Are you looking for ways to engage and stay active? Check out amightygoodtime.com. A Mighty Good Time is a one-stop shop for events and activities for those 50 and over. Free to search and free to post. amightygoodtime.com. Also, be sure to visit our website and see the option to work with Dr. Joe, that's me, for one-on-one conversations about managing setbacks, overcoming a negative outlook, and getting back to feeling engaged and motivated again. Visit the Work with Dr. Joe page on our website and see the two options available. You can also pick up a copy of my book on Amazon, Living Longer Is the New Normal. I think that whatever age you're at, inspiration and a positive mindset can be put to good use. That's my message in the book and something that our guest today has affirmed, I'm sure. So be sure to sign up for our email lists for announcements and newsletters on our website. And while you're there, download a free copy of mine, Tips for Living Longer. It's loaded with practical and useful strategies for successful aging and staying positive. Livingto100.club. So Martin, thanks so much for being a guest on our show today. For those who might want to contact you, How can they do that?

Well, I'm easy to find on Google. I have an unusual last name, and just Google my last name, you'll find me. But my websites that are relevant are activatebrainandbody.com. That's our company. We're going to be doing a newsletter very soon with all kinds of tips, so you don't have to live in Cincinnati to engage with the company. And then my book is getoutside.online, and that's where I— my email address and contact information is all over my website. So I'm easy to reach, and I'm pretty active on social media, so you can find me pretty easily.

Great, great. Well, thanks so much for this time and for inspiration. It's always great to hear this kind of uplifting conversation. So thanks, Martin. Thanks to everyone for listening to our episode. Hope to see you next time.

Thanks, Joe.

It's time to rethink, renew, and reimagine retirement. Hey everybody, Jared Sylvester here, host of Retire Repurposed. Now this podcast is about the non-financial the financial parts of retirement, which many times can be even more challenging than the financial. We believe retirement is not the end, rather the beginning of what could be the most impactful, purposeful, and fulfilling season of a person's life. So don't retire, become repurposed. To listen now, search Retire Repurpose on your favorite podcast platform, Senior Resource, or Life Audio.