Embracing Aging, Health, & Reinvention

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

Well, hello to everyone joining us today. You're listening to the Living to 100 Club Podcast, and I am your host, Joe Casciani. I'm passionate about helping people embrace the principles of psychologically healthy aging staying positive, finding purpose, and making the most of all the years we're given, no matter what challenges come along. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Now let's dive into today's conversation. In today's episode, we welcome back the dynamic and insightful Lynn Bowman, now celebrating her 80th year. Lynn shares her reflections on aging, health trends, and personal reinvention. We discuss her fitness journey, the evolving views on sugar substitutes and healthy eating, and the role of social connection in longevity. We also touch on embracing new passions, whether it's painting, drumming, or exploring AI technology. This conversation is an inspiring reminder that aging is not about slowing down, but about evolving, learning, and thriving. First, a little background about Lynn. Lynn Bowman has been featured at women's expos throughout the country, teaming with actress Deirdre Hall to write and publish Deirdre Hall's Kitchen Close-Up and Deirdre Hall's How Does She Do It? In previous lives, Lynn won national awards as a creative director for Silicon Valley companies, was creative director at E&J Gala Winery, advertising manager at Redken Laboratories, and freelanced for agencies in San Jose, Los Angeles, and New York. She's also worked as an actress, makeup artist, screen— screenwriter, illustrator, legal journalist, and television weather person. Lynne, welcome to our program. Welcome back to our program.

It's great to see you, Joe, and to be with your listeners and watchers. I know you and I both really, really enjoy this process. The podcasting thing is a cool thing. And we both—

yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Glad to have you back with us.

Glad to be back. I, I always like to, uh, do something.

Go ahead. All right, so I always like to open our, our, our programs by asking our guests to talk about the kind of pivotal points in your life that brought you to where you are today. I know we talked about this on your first time on our program, but maybe some other pivot points have surfaced for you. What's— what stands out that really triggered the places to go through that brought you to where you are today?

Well, I have to say that hearing you read my bio is a pivot point for me. It's like, that's too much stuff. I mean, come on. One of the things about being this age is that you've done a lot of stuff, different, crazy things, not things that all blend together or make sense, but you just, you've done them. There you are. And especially people, I think, living now. As a woman, I can certainly say that starting out as an adult, young adult in the '60s, I mean, the world was a different place. It was such a different place. So our hopes and dreams for ourselves, our plans are— I don't know what— are programs, it— they didn't have anything to do with what life is like now. And we really could not have imagined in the '60s, even in the '70s, uh, what we're living in now. New challenges, new voices, new— so many things.

Yeah.

And yet it's all old. Too, you know. Um, yeah, there's a lot of it that's, that's been around and will probably continue to be around. So yes, pivot points, there have a lot, a lot.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, in my life it was occasionally being fired for something or other. And, um, you, you know, and I bring that up because it seems to be a thing that a lot of people think is a horrible experience and, you know, a sort of a failure. Well, I embrace failure. And most of us, I think, who have lived a long time and done a lot of stuff, sometimes those failures are— it's that great somebody saying, no, don't go there, go here.

Yeah.

You know, those voices on your shoulders, whoever they are. I would have kept going in that direction. But, but there was a big slap and, you know, no, don't do that. And, and when I look back at being fired, uh, several times, uh, that's what I think. I think, thank heaven, yeah, I got some direction there and I went another way, um, because I would have missed all this or all that.

Of course, of course. There's a great line from Dustin Hoffman. He says something like It's true what they say, say about failure. We don't learn so much from success.

Yeah, we don't.

Yeah, failure and repositioning and taking off on a new trajectory that we haven't expected. Yeah, great.

Yeah, and also building your courage bank.

Yeah, your courage bank. Yeah, yeah, we do need to tap into that, don't we?

Yeah, we do. And of course, especially, I think, and I, again, I'm going to reach back, women who were brought up sort of at the time that I was brought up, we were taught to behave and mind our own business and not reach too far, not be too so that the other thing. And of course, now you understand that almost nobody gets anything done by behaving.

That's a good point. So you've, you've reached the milestone of 80, 80 years. How has your—

working on it. I had my 79th birthday, so I'm in my 80th year.

All right, you're approaching your 80th year, 8 decades.

Yes.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

How has your perception of aging changed over the years?

Well, completely. Which is one of the reasons you and I are out here talking. I mean, if anyone had told me that I would be lifting weights and complaining about it, but happy, you know, and I had actually my class this morning, so I'm moving unsteadily, but love it. And it's socially so much fun. If anyone had said to me, some of your most wonderful hours will be spent in the gym with people you didn't know before. And now there you are, sweaty and groaning with them. That is a thing that I'm loving, and I highly recommend to anybody. And of course, we can go on about why you need to do strength training and your bone strength and another thing worth talking about.. But mainly it's fun and it gets me, it gives me a structure to my days. I go 4 days a week to this little gym, love it. And it's close by. So that's the thing. If anyone had told me, because I wasn't sporty, you know, I wasn't anyone who ran every morning or was on a team or who golfed or anything. I was busy making a living and raising kids, basically. Sure. And that did not leave a lot of time for anything. Uh, and so you're thinking, wait a minute, that resume I just heard about you doing books and so on— well, a lot of that happened at my kitchen table, um, or at my friend D's kitchen table.

Yeah, dual tasking or multitasking. Sure. So yeah, decades ago you wouldn't have envisioned yourself going to, uh, exercise class at this age, but what else has kind of turned for you about getting older? What else has kind of caused you to rethink all those old expectations?

Well, for one thing, this age is so freeing. The idea that we had about getting older was that you were confined and there were things you couldn't do and you wouldn't be able to— and people wouldn't— I'm finding the opposite. I was so confined, I guess, in a way, by the demands of my younger life, as many of us are, raising children with a full-time career, mortgages, all those things. Now I have the freedom I never had. And as a woman, I love particularly not being prey in the way you are as a younger woman. I suppose older ones are prey in a different way, but I don't feel that viscerally, and I certainly don't experience it in my life now in any kind of conscious way. But I experienced being prey, actually, for a long time.

Yeah.

And so the freedom, and with that freedom comes this feeling of strength. You know, we were talking about the word courage. You know, when, when you get to be this age, um, you get to call bullshit. Yeah, a lot of things just go, well, she, you know, she's a little eccentric, but, um, there it is. You know, you occupy a different space socially. And I don't know, growing up I was certainly not conscious. I loved my grandparents. I had grandparents fairly close by. There's a picture of my grandfather on the wall behind me.

I see it. Yeah. Yeah. So I love those terms. What we used to consider part and parcel of aging, the decline, the helplessness, the dependency. Now you're using terms like freeing, freedom, not being preyed upon, strength and courage. These are very, very opposite from what we used to envision about, uh, growing older. Yes, that's— yes, that's a beautiful— that's a beautiful take on this whole process. I love that.

Well, and of course, and you know that I'm really into the, the health space, and I talk a about nutrition and chronic disease and so on. But this is all based on being as healthy as you can possibly manage to be. And that takes some work. It's fun work for the most part. But, but I've been doing it longer than many because I just became aware sooner because I was diabetic that I needed to do it. So most, and a lot of people just kind of don't figure it out until they're 60s or 70s, um, and particularly I'm going to say something sexist, Joe, so brace yourself. You men will not go and get yourself seen at a doctor's until you are forced to do so by one, typically your spouse, but it is usually something like erectile dysfunction that just, okay, all right, I will go, I'll see the doc.

Yeah.

You know, but until then, you, you, you tend to just put it aside.

Well, certainly the, the pre-diabetes stage or marker is a, is a wake-up call. And that's, that's something everyone should address. But you've done a, you've done a lot of research on sugar and health. And what should people know about sugar substitutes? And their effects?

Well, first, let me say that 4 or 5 years ago when I was working on this book and doing a lot of intensive research, nobody wanted to talk about sugar-free. It just wasn't a thing that people wanted to hear. And the product lineup was different. And I liked it, you know, whenever you would offer someone something and it was sugar-free, the reaction was typically, um, no thanks, you know, I'm good. That's all right. So the, the world has changed about that because it's now very well researched. I mean, I hope it will be even better researched, but there's a lot of studies out there now that back me up on this, that sugar is not only a bad thing for diabetics to be eating. It's a bad thing in so many ways for everyone. It causes inflammation. It is a cancer-promoting substance. And I'm not making this up. You know, you can read the studies. They're all out there. Google it. Use your new AI program and research this. Sugar is not just a problem because of your blood sugar or because of your weight. It's all kinds of trouble for human body. And when I say sugar, what I'm talking about is primarily processed sugar, the kind that you're eating— anything in a bag or a box with a label with a bunch of ingredients on it, you're going to find a sugar thing in there, by the time you go down 3 or 4 substances, there'll be sugar in there. Americans eat an enormous amount of added sugar, whether it's in your coffee, whether it's in your processed foods before you do anything to them. Americans eat way too much sugar, processed sugar. So what What I like to encourage people to do is, first of all, don't. Stop. Drop it like a hot rock. And the way you can do that is to find a good substitute for sugar that works for you. And I have a couple that I recommend, 2 or 3. And I'm surprised at how few people really know yet about these. My primary favorite is allulose. A-L-L-U-L-O-S-E. It sounds horrible, right? This is not something that was created by Big Food to sound great so everybody would eat it. Allulose is squished corn. I think they used— maybe it's corn. When you buy it, there'll be one thing in that box or bag and it's just allulose. That's the only ingredient.

Okay. And what's the trade name for that? I think we can say that.

Allulose.

Oh, it goes by allulose. Okay.

Yeah. And you may find it in other things, but when you go looking for it and you will only find it in a health food store, not even— I mean, I couldn't find— sometimes it will be cut with erythritol. So it'll be allulose and erythritol. I don't recommend erythritol because it causes stomach upset for a lot of people. It's a sugar alcohol and it's a different chemical altogether than allulose and causes issues for a lot of people. They're just, they don't talk. So allulose is nothing else, or allulose and monk fruit. You'll that on the market as a mix.

And sometimes— I'm sorry, sometimes it's combined with monk fruit.

Yes, monk fruit is monk fruit. It's and squished and that's it. And it's one. So when they're combined, it's fine. And of course, why do they combine them? Well, typically cost. They depending on what the manufacturer is having to pay for these various things. And so monk fruit, allulose, good. Erythritol, not so good. Inulin is a thing. Again, terrible name. It's actually chicory root, but inulin is extracted from chicory root and it is a perfectly fine, healthy It's fiber and it's sweet and it makes a good sweetener. You— it's not out there to the degree that allulose and monk fruit are. So that's my treatise on sweeteners. And, but the other thing that everybody needs to understand is when you commit, important word, when you decide that you're gonna improve your health by quitting sugar, It takes 3 or 4 weeks for your body to change because you're addicted. You actually— and I don't mean that in any kind of metaphorical way. Sugar is addictive. And so when you quit, processes in your body will be going, wait, what's happening? We have to readjust. And it takes about 3 weeks for your saliva to change, but your saliva will change. Things will taste different to you. They taste sweeter than they did. So, um, you— there may be a period of like, well, wait, you know, but it, it, it requires you deciding that you're going to do this and then just do it, like lifting weights.

Yeah, yeah, the commitment is huge. That, that's, um— and I always say we change behavior in small steps. It's hard to do it overnight. We take small steps and we see a little bit of progress and another small step. So when you're talking about processed sugar, Lynn, you're talking about, I mean, the sugar substitutes, allulose and the others, those are useful when we're preparing meals at home, right? If we're eating out, obviously we stay away from the processed foods, the fast foods, but How else can we incorporate some of these sugar substitutes when we're dining out? Is that possible?

Well, I suppose it is. You can carry them with you. They're sold in little packets.

Okay.

But I got news for you.

Yeah.

If you're eating in restaurants, you don't know what you're eating. You have no idea in most cases what they're putting in your food. And if you are really serious about going on a much healthier path, losing weight, for example, or changing your blood sugar, or, you know, making some really important change in your chemistry, you should probably— and of course, who can afford it now anyway?

That's true. Sure.

Should probably not be eating out very much.

Okay.

If at all.

Good advice. That's good advice. Starts at home. The fix is started at home.

Yeah, you know, you need— gonna have to chop something, you know. You are gonna have to spend a little time in the kitchen. Now, I'm a lazy cook. I don't particularly love to cook, but I love to eat, and I love to have friends at my table. So, so my superpower is putting it on the table in 15 minutes. And making it affordable because I'm just very, very frugal. Let's say we're being kind here. And over the years, I found that people are so— I mean, I just had friends here the other day, a couple of girlfriends, and they came sort of at suppertime. They were so thrilled when I put my homemade pizza on the table for them. You would have thought was a banquet for— I mean, who does— you know, people don't feed each other anymore like we used to.

Well, do you think there's a change in, you know, our relationship with food as we age? Do we become less concerned or more concerned? I mean, is there— do you see anything in It jumps out.

I do. I mean, like anyone else, I don't want to have to get up and cook a meal for myself or my husband. I, you know, I would love it if it would magically appear on my table and be healthy and delicious and aromatic and beautiful. I would love that. Guess what? Not gonna happen, right? I mean, Yes, there are meal delivery systems now, and some of them are probably pretty good. And I'm not here to tell you that I've researched them. I haven't. But what I know is I know how to open up my fridge, pull out 2 or 3 things, and make a meal.

Sure.

And I can do it fast, and I know what's in it, and I know that it's good for me. And I know that I can feed a friend and, and, or make a friend by putting some good wholesome food on the table. And the pizza is a great example. I buy Trader Joe's cornmeal pizza crust, and they're kind of small. And then I put some pesto on it and then look and see what I've got in the fridge. Have I got a red pepper? Half of one? No. Okay, go.

Olive.

Goes there. You know, if I got some half a jar of artichoke hearts, great, put that on there. And it makes the best pizza ever, much richer and more wonderful than what you're buying in any restaurant or any store, because you're not going to be chintzy with yourself. You're going to pile it on there. And of course, I always have some cheese, you know, a few basic things in my fridge, because we— well, I live in the country too, and and we do eat at home all the time.

Okay.

Find that when we go out, we're often a little disappointed.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, what you're saying, Lynn, I, I think it's really important. We may not be crazy about cooking 3 meals a day and, you know, having, you know, well-prepared meals all the time, but when we do take the time to prepare a meal, we want to kind of be more responsible for what's going into that meal. We want to be more conscious of healthier foods, the plant-based, whatever we're putting together, we want to be more responsible for that rather than quickly opening a can of—

Open yourself up to some new ideas about what's fabulous on the table. I'll give you another little example. Nowadays, you can usually find really great sourdough bread either at a local artisanal bakery or, you know, a good market will have good whole grain, maybe a walnut sourdough, a really good bread. And you slice that and then you toast it. And then on top of that, you put some— and this is not health food, but it's really good and it's got protein, it's got calcium in it. Trader Joe's has a wonderful kind of old-timey pimento cheese spread, and all that's in it is cheese and pimentos and mayonnaise. And you put that on your toast, and then you put— you sprinkle some pistachios, some roasted and salted pistachios. Now raise your hand if you've eaten that.

Okay, I see a few hands raised. Yeah.

Okay, trust me, it is absolutely delicious.

What you're eating.

Sure, it's really wholesome. So often then you have an orange with it, you know, you've eaten a great meal, but you're not going to get that meal in a restaurant.

Yeah.

And you're not going to get that meal if you don't make it yourself. So there's so many really simple things.

Yeah.

That are fine food. They're excellent for you. Of course, we have little gardens here and we raise some food for ourselves. And I'm always wanting people to try to just expand your thinking a little bit about what your everyday go-tos are going to be.

Sure.

Another one, it's spring now, and so we're going to be getting fava beans. Some people call them butter beans, but you take them off the— you take them out of the shell, just takes a minute. And also, when you have a relationship with your food that way, you feel it, you see the shape of it, you see the color of it. It's a— your body is actually responding to that.

Yeah.

You're preparing yourself to receive nutrition. And those beans take 3 or 4 minutes in boiling water to cook. And then you put a little bit of, if you want, a little bit of olive oil or a little bit of butter, good butter. And a little lemon and maybe some parsley. That's a meal. Those full of protein, full of nutrition, and they are absolutely delicious, and they're virtually free.

Yeah, when you have your own garden, sure. So let's remind our listeners about your book, Brownies for Breakfast. It's a, it's a great book because it goes way beyond breakfast. I know it has just great recipes that are very healthy. Very simple. Yeah.

Simple.

Yeah.

Another thing, I have a salad dressing in here that I want the whole world to know about because you need to know this. You just take some really good balsamic vinegar. I buy an apricot balsamic from a local market. They also make an apple balsamic. Wonderful tasting. Little bit in the bottom of the bowl. And then you take some tahini. Okay, raise your hand if you've got tahini in your fridge. Okay, all it is is ground sesame seeds, nutritious. Put some in there. I never measure any of it. I stir it around a little bit, then I put my greens on top of that and stir them. Boom, done. That's it. Yeah, so good.

Healthy salad dressing, sure.

Yes. Yeah, and that's a meal, virtually. You know, you can do it. I know you can.

Okay. So Brownies for Breakfast is available on your website. It's available on Amazon. You sent me a copy. I love it. We still use it.

Oh, good.

Easy to access and easy to pick up your own copy. Yeah. Good. Good.

The whole idea is, yeah, using it. I mean, I can't believe how many people, Joe, watch the cooking shows.

Yeah.

The British, you know, Bake Off.

Yeah, there's loads of cooking shows.

Yeah, they just watch it on TV. So this book was done so you would actually make some stuff. It's so easy. I mean, 8-year-olds, 85-year-olds, no sweat. It's easy.

Yeah. Well, thanks. Let's shift the subject a little bit to You know, taking up new hobbies, new passions, something that brings us a little more purpose and meaning into our lives. You talked about your history as a painter and you're rethinking maybe you want to take up painting again. So what is that? What's involved with kind of adding that kind of purpose to our lives? What do you think that brings to our lives?

Well, it's a very social thing to do. First of all, if you decide to explore something, I have a friend who teaches watercolor. And, um, and I have some other friends that have a gallery in town where they do little workshops, particularly for people, for example, who've never painted, you know, never done any artwork. You can sit down with some new friends and some old friends and a teacher, and the teacher will go through the tools with you and have everything, and you will be painting immediately, and you have the sensation of doing something that you maybe weren't— it's like, well, I'm not an artist, you know. We are all artists. Everyone is an artist, but it's a matter of being made comfortable reaching out and doing something that you never had an opportunity to do in a comfortable place, in a comfortable way. Um, I took a workshop myself, uh, an oil painting workshop, and just had a blast. And, did different than anything I'd ever painted before. And it, it's just do it, you know.

So what does it offer? What does it bring, bring to us? The social connection, the engagement? Yeah. Creative spirits. What, what does it add to our lives to take on something like that? In your own words, what do you think it brings?

Well, it, it creates new pathways, you know. I think one of the things that happens as we get older is we just start relying too much on what what we've done and what we've always been. And now we've always done something. We have to continually challenge ourselves to go down a different path, even if it's turning the corner and walking around the block that way instead of that way, even if it's saying hello to someone that you ordinarily would not say hello to.

Little things.

Um, just do it, you know. What do you have to lose?

Yeah, that's so true. It does open up, you know. I call it stepping out of our comfort zones, you know. Yeah, where we go to eat or where we go on vacation or the style of clothes we wear or whatever. We step— I mean, it's safe, it's predictable, it's familiar, it's cozy. We step out of those comfort zones and maybe take a different route to our destination, or trying something. That's what brings the opportunity. That's what brings the energy, the, the juice, uh, that kind of, uh, kind of reconnecting with the unknown. That, that's, uh, that's valuable, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. And on the other hand, and you and I were talking about this earlier, it's, it's kind of an overwhelming time to be alive today.

Sure.

We are being watched over with information about everything. And I think particularly for those of us who weren't brought up in a digital age, uh, the whole digital revolution has been harder for us than it is for the young ones who, who just have grown up with it. Um, It's kind of hard to deal with all that is coming over our threshold every day, all the unknowns.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. We, we do want a little bit of familiarity, a little bit of predictability. Sure, sure.

And, and I think the, the, um, tonic for that is a podcast or an Audible book read by someone with a good voice about something that is enriching for our lives. And so what's that going to be? Well, I'm reading something right now. I'm listening to something on Audible that had been recommended to me by a number of people, and I can see how it would be Riching Floppy. It's Braiding Sweetgrass, and I don't have her name in front of me, but that's such an easy thing to remember. Um, Braiding Sweetgrass. And, uh, the, the part that I was listening to last night was about the enormous difference between Native American language and English. And in the Native American language, things are not— there are no "its." Things have an animate name. They're male, female, but they are not "its." Trees aren't "its," you know. She has a wonderful, colorful way of explaining it, but just A thought like that can, can make you go differently out your door, you know, suddenly are looking at things in a slightly different way. So I would encourage anybody always to be listening to or reading something. And then I was looking at the top podcasts, Joe, and you probably do this too, just because, you know, we have to do that. And they're all Um, they're all crime things.

Oh, sure.

All I think about is, okay, why would you choose to spend your time with a crime and criminals, so on, rehashing the crime? Yeah, if you spend your time braiding—

yeah, um, well, I think that's the beauty of the digital age where we have access to so much information, so much refreshing, uplifting, exciting information. And as you said, it gives us, you know, pause to think and take another look at things and reconsider some old approaches and maybe open up some new doors. I always talk about opening new doors. So, um, Lynn, what, what advice would you give to someone who wants to reinvent themselves? So, you know, we'd love to talk about letting go of some of the old roles and maybe redefining ourselves. What advice do you give to somebody who's saying, well, maybe I should not define myself by who I was yesterday or last year or my whole career? How can I reinvent myself? What do you, what do you think? What's the advice?

Well, this is going to sound very kind of parochial and practical, but take a class. My granddaughter is now at our local community college, and so I've had a chance to get exposed to what goes on at this community college. And I had no idea what you could do in a community college. First of all, it's virtually free here in San Diego County. The campus is gorgeous. It's maintained beautifully. It's easy to park there. I mean, I could go on and on. But the classes range from everything in microbiology to tango and salsa. I mean, cooking, making clothes, designing clothes, these things that you may have thought were sort of little hobby things. Take a class at a community college. You'll meet people all ages. And this is wonderful too, you know, the range of students at a community college. So interesting. It's everybody.

Yeah, that's great, great advice. Yeah, I was listening to a radio station yesterday in the car, and they happen to be based on a local community college campus here in town, and they had two department heads come on from the, from the college, and they talked about courses that you could take. One was in aerospace, and the other person talked about um, radio programming and public publications. And it was just great. It was just 2 or 3 minutes, but you could hear the breadth of these courses. That— and it was on a local radio station. It happened to be a jazz station, but it was great. It was better than any commercial I've ever heard.

Yeah, well, it's all right there. And if you want to get a certificate or a degree in nutrition or designing something. Do it. It's there. And it could change everything for you.

That's great advice. I love that.

Social thing.

Yeah. Social connection.

Yeah. And all the research you're talking about living to 100. What the research tells us is that the people who live longest are the happiest people. People who have a social structure of some kind may not be large, but they have social connections, and they have maintained healthy social connections. So beyond— I mean, I want you to eat right too, but social element is the big health advantage you have.

Yeah, what great advice. Yeah, the social connection, and apart from learning new information and stepping out of those old roles and taking on some new roles, the social connection— we learned that from Blue Zones. We see it all the time that people who live longer tend to be those that are socially connected and engage in their community. So great, great advice. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, looks like we're out of time for today, Lynn. But before I wrap up, I just want to remind my listeners to visit my website at livingto100.club. Sign up as a club insider. You'll enjoy many benefits, including free copies of my information, 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable, 100 inspirational quotes, and many other resources. And if you're affiliated with a senior living community, Be sure to explore my Better, Longer, and Happier card deck series at livingto100.solutions. That's livingto100.solutions. The cards are a powerful resource designed to promote positive aging and engagement. Lynn, thanks so much for being a guest on our program today.

Well, you know, I, I love doing this, Joe, and, and fun with you. So anytime. Great, great.

And people can pick up a copy of your Brownies for Breakfast book where?

On Amazon. Uh, it's also Audible, which seem to be enjoying, which I thought crazy. Yeah, Audible cookbook, but it's got stories and so on and, and very simple recipes. So you can get it all kinds of ways.

Great. Well, thanks again for being a guest, and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time.