Growing Older Living Younger: About longevity, wellness, healthspan,

In this episode of Growing Older Living Younger, Dr. Gillian Lockitch speaks with Caroline Alan about the often-overlooked role of minerals in nutrition, cellular function and healthy aging. Caroline shares the personal health journey that led her to investigate mineral nutrition and discusses how minerals move from soil to food and ultimately into the body. The conversation explores mineral balance, changing nutrient content in our food supply, and Caroline's particular interest in plant-derived humic and fulvic substances. You'll learn why minerals are essential participants in many of the body's physiological processes and why mineral balance may be as important as simply consuming individual minerals. Caroline explains her perspective on how modern agriculture may affect the mineral content of food and discusses different approaches to assessing mineral status. You'll also hear about humic and fulvic substances and why Caroline believes they may play a role in mineral replenishment. Finally, you'll discover why understanding what supplements and medications you take—and why you take them—becomes increasingly important as you grow older.  EPISODE TIMELINE  00:00 — Introduction: the overlooked role of minerals  03:30 — Caroline's personal health journey and discovery of mineral nutrition  15:00 — Why minerals matter for cellular function and energy  18:15 — Mineral depletion, balance and assessing mineral status  25:00 — Soil, agriculture and the changing nutrient content of food  29:00 — Understanding humic and fulvic substances  35:00 — Minerals, nutrition and healthy aging  40:00 — Unanswered questions and Caroline's practical recommendations  43:00 — A longer-term strategy for taking charge of supplements and medications  KEY TAKEAWAYS Minerals are an essential but sometimes overlooked part of the nutritional picture. Rather than thinking only about individual nutrients in isolation, this conversation encourages us to consider mineral balance, food quality and the many factors that influence nutrient availability—and to become more informed about the supplements we choose to take.  One Small Action You Can Take Today:  Take a closer look at the mineral quality of your diet and learn more about the sources of minerals you consume. Caroline specifically suggests investigating humic and fulvic mineral products as one possible approach.  One Longer-Term Healthy Aging Objective:  Make a complete list of every supplement and medication you take. Understand why you take each one, what benefit you expect from it, and review the list with an appropriate healthcare professional.  CONNECT WITH THE GUEST  Caroline Alan is Co-Founder and CEO of BEAM Minerals and author of The Mineral Reset. BEAM Minerals: beamminerals.com  CALL TO ACTION  Subscribe to Growing Older Living Younger and share the podcast link with those who you know want to stay vibrant, healthy and independent as they grow older.  To learn more about Dr. Gillian Lockitch and discover strategies for creating your own roadmap to aging youthfully, schedule a conversation with her by email: [email protected]   

What does it really mean to have an Ageless Body? In this opening episode of the Ageless Body series, Dr. Gillian Lockitch explores how the choices we make every day may influence our ability to remain strong, mobile, resilient and independent as we grow older. Drawing on her experience as a physician, medical biochemist and researcher—and on her own journey rebuilding strength after major spinal surgery—Dr. Gillian explores nutrition, micronutrients, oxidative stress, antioxidants, muscle, movement and the lifestyle habits that support healthspan. An Ageless Body isn't a body that never ages. The more useful question is: What can my body still become? Episode Timeline 00:30 — Welcome to Ageless Body: why healthspan matters 02:00 — Genes, lifestyle and epigenetics 03:15 — Micronutrients: lessons from Dr. Gillian's early research 04:45 — Why there is no single healthy-aging "magic ingredient" 06:11 — Oxidative stress, antioxidants and carotenoids 08:00 — Eat the rainbow: carotenoids, anthocyanins and colorful foods 09:15 — Where supplements may—and may not—fit 10:30 — Measuring carotenoid status and using feedback 11:54 — Why you cannot supplement your way out of an unhealthy lifestyle 13:15 — Rebuilding strength after major spinal surgery 15:00 — The one-small-action Ageless Body experiment 17:20 — What an Ageless Body really means Dr. Gillian's Takeaway; An Ageless Body does not mean pretending that aging doesn't happen. It means focusing on what we may still be able to preserve, regain or improve. We cannot control everything about aging, but our daily choices—how we eat, move, sleep, recover and live—give us opportunities to influence our health and independence. Instead of asking, "What am I inevitably going to lose because I'm getting older?" ask: "What can my body still become?" Your Ageless Action — Start Now Choose one small action this week. Add another color to your plate. Take a short walk after a meal. Practice safely getting up and down from a chair. Review your protein intake. Protect your bedtime. Or spend five minutes deliberately reducing stress. Choose something small enough that you will actually do it—and do it consistently. Small actions become habits. Habits become lifestyle. And lifestyle can influence how we age. If this episode made you think differently about your own aging journey, share it with someone who believes they may be too old to make a change, and follow Growing Older Living Younger so you don't miss the conversations coming in the Ageless Body series.

What happens when something you have loved for decades suddenly no longer makes you feel good? In this deeply personal solo episode of Growing Older Living Younger, Dr. Gillian Lockitch shares her evolving relationship with wine—from studying for Levels 1 and 2 of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), exploring vineyards around the world, and writing about food, wine and travel, to gradually realizing that even a single glass of wine was affecting her sleep, contributing to brain fog and seeming to be associated with painful nighttime leg cramps. This is not an episode about declaring wine "good" or "bad." It is about learning to recognize when your body is telling you that something has changed. Dr. Gillian explores how aging can alter our response to alcohol, why alcohol-induced sleepiness is not the same as restorative sleep, the changing evidence around wine and cardiovascular health, and why alcohol reduction became especially important to her after experiencing persistent atrial fibrillation and undergoing cardiac ablation. Most importantly, she introduces a principle that applies far beyond wine: Listen to your body whispers before they become shouts. The central question she asks is "Are you still making choices based on what worked for your body years ago—or are you listening to what your body is telling you now?"  Episode Timeline  00:30 A personal story about loving—and eventually giving up—wine  02:08 Studying wine through WSET and discovering the world of wine tasting  03:33 Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and the pleasures of learning about wine  05:58 Why wine represented much more than alcohol  07:19 The first whisper: sleepiness, brain fog and disrupted sleep  09:00 Nighttime leg cramps and distinguishing cramps from restless legs syndrome  10:31 Wine, carbohydrate-rich meals and Dr. Gillian's personal N-of-one experience  11:22 Why she gradually stopped drinking wine  12:03 The French paradox and the belief that red wine might protect the heart  13:47 Why the evidence about alcohol and health has become more complicated  15:25 Alcohol, atrial fibrillation and protecting sinus rhythm  17:08 Memories of favorite wines and why appreciation doesn't require consumption  18:02 Listen to the whispers before they become shouts  19:14 Your Ageless Action: track how something you routinely eat, drink or do actually makes you feel today  20:14 Adaptation, freedom and choosing the life you want to create now  Three Questions to Ask Yourself What did I learn that I didn't know before? What immediate action can I begin today? What do I want to protect or improve over the next year, five years or ten years?  Your Ageless Action Choose one thing you routinely eat, drink or do that has been part of your life for years. Ask yourself - how does this actually make me feel now? For the next week or two, track what happens afterward and ask what impact does this have on how I feel from day to day. You can also schedule a personal conversation with your host, Dr. Gillian Lockitch, to begin creating your own Roadmap for Growing Older Living Younger.  About Your Host Dr. Gillian Lockitch is a physician, medical professor emerita, researcher, international speaker, author, and entrepreneur. Her work focuses on helping people understand how lifestyle choices and healthy-aging strategies can support healthspan, independence and the ability to continue doing the things that give life meaning. She is also an affiliate with Nu Skin, a global beauty and wellness company, and incorporates her interest in wellness technologies and healthy-aging strategies into her broader approach to living younger while growing older.  Host Links  Website: Growing Older Living Younger  Connect with Dr. Gillian:LinkedIn  Meta Growing Older Living Younger Community        

What happens when a medical tradition thousands of years old meets 21st-century wearable technology? In this solo episode of Growing Older Living Younger, Dr. Gillian Lockitch explores that question through her personal experience with the Watch2Care smartwatch, a wearable that tracks contemporary physiological data while presenting its findings through a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) framework.  As a Western-trained physician and medical biochemist, Dr. Gillian was intrigued—but also skeptical—when her watch  displayed unfamiliar scores associated with the TCM concepts of heart, liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys. Studying her scores led to an important distinction: the watch is not directly measuring these organs or diagnosing organ function. It tracks 38 physiological metrics and uses an AI-based platform to transform those data into functional indicators interpreted through a TCM-derived framework. It looks at scores in 5 system concepts - heart, lung, liver, spleen and lung.These do not equate to anatomical organs but to TCM functional systems that add to an overall wellness score. This episode explores the difference between what a wearable actually measures and what an algorithm subsequently infers, why trends may be more useful than isolated numbers, and how curiosity and critical thinking can help us use increasingly sophisticated health technology intelligently. The central question: Can wearable technologies help us understand our bodies better without allowing algorithms, scores and increasingly abundant health data to confuse—or control—us? Episode Timestamps 00:30 — When ancient Traditional Chinese Medicine meets modern wearable technology 06:05 — Understanding TCM functional systems and the five elements 08:00 — Western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine: two different interpretive frameworks 10:00 — Tracking patterns rather than relying on a single measurement 11:56 — When more health data creates confusion rather than clarity 14:00 — Why wearable wellness scores should not be treated as medical diagnoses 17:01 — Your Ageless Action: choose one meaningful metric and follow the trend 20:00 — Curiosity, critical thinking and what is coming next for healthy aging. Your Ageless Call to Action:Choose one metric from a smartwatch, fitness tracker, sleep tracker, scale or other health-monitoring device and follow its trend to see what improves or makes things worse. It might be your resting heart rate, sleep duration, number of steps or another measurement meaningful to your  healthy aging. Then ask yourself -Is there one small behavior I could change? Your Longer-Term Healthy Aging Objective: Over the coming months, learn to recognize patterns in your own health data and relate them to changes in sleep, activity, nutrition, stress, illness, travel and daily routines.The objective isn't to achieve perfect numbers. It is to know yourself better and use information intelligently to support the larger goals of protecting your brain, body, resilience, independence and quality of life. About Dr. Gillian Lockitch: Email her at [email protected] to schedule your personal conversation about aging youthfully.Dr. Gillian Lockitch is a physician, medical biochemist, professor emerita, researcher, author, international speaker, entrepreneur and host of Growing Older Living Younger. She translates the science of healthy aging into practical strategies designed to help people protect their brain, body and independence as they grow older. She is the author of Growing Older Living Younger: The Science of Aging Gracefully and the Art of Retiring Comfortably and an independent Brand Affiliate with Nu Skin, a global integrated beauty and wellness company. Her entrepreneurship complements her longstanding interest in healthy aging, wellness, lifelong learning and helping people take an active role in how they age.  All information provided in the Growing Older Living Younger podcast and project is for education and entertainment purposes only, and must not be construed as medical advice. Discuss any changes that you plan with your appropriate health care professional.

Welcome to Season 5 of Growing Older Living Younger, and a new way of exploring what it means to grow older while continuing to live younger. In this solo episode, Dr. Gillian Lockitch introduces a new themed format designed to move beyond individual topics and create a clearer pathway from information to action. Season 5 will explore healthy aging through three interconnected themes: Ageless Brain, Ageless Body and Ageless Living. Each series will look more deeply at one major dimension of healthy aging, bringing together different experts, perspectives and areas of science while asking a practical question: The central question is how can we turn the rapidly expanding science of healthy aging into practical choices that help us remain healthy, capable, engaged and independent throughout our lives?  The Three Season 5 Themes:Ageless Brain How can we give our brains the best possible environment in which to remain healthy, adaptable and engaged? The Ageless Brain series will explore memory and cognitive aging, dementia and potentially modifiable risk factors, cardiovascular and metabolic health, inflammation, nutrition and micronutrients, the gut-brain relationship, sleep, stress, social connection, hearing, vision, smell, exercise and neuroplasticity. It will also examine some of the rapidly expanding claims around supplements, biomarkers, brain-training programs, devices and longevity technologies—asking what is supported by meaningful evidence, what remains preliminary and what may simply be effective marketing.  Ageless Body: An ageless body is not a body that looks 25 at 75, 85 or 95. The more important question is how well does your body allow you to live? This series will explore muscle and sarcopenia, resistance training, protein, bone health and osteoporosis, balance, falls, joints, mobility, cardiovascular fitness, metabolic health, body composition, nutrition, energy, mitochondrial function, inflammation, immunity, recovery, vision, hearing and skin. The emphasis will be on maintaining function, strength, mobility, energy, resilience and the physical independence that allows us to participate fully in our own lives.  Ageless Living: Healthy aging is about more than preventing disease. It is about what we do with the life that our health makes possible. Ageless Living will explore purpose, relationships, friendship, family, community, resilience, retirement, lifelong learning, technology, independence, creativity, curiosity, play, travel, ambition and continuing to set meaningful goals.  Each Ageless Series will begin with an introductory episode from Dr. Gillian explaining why the subject matters and providing a framework for the conversations that follow. Approximately six to eight guest conversations will then explore different perspectives and areas of expertise.  Each guest episode will end with the speaker suggesting two practical elements that you can consider: One Immediate Action — something you could potentially begin today or this week. One Longer-Term Healthy Aging Objective — the larger goal that repeated actions can help you work toward over months and years. At the conclusion of each themed series, Dr. Gillian will return to connect the dots: Where did the experts agree? Where did they disagree? What surprised us? And, most importantly, what can we actually implement? The goal is not many new habits starting tomorrow morning. It may be two or three meaningful changes that you can make part of everyday life. Episode Timeline:00:30 Welcome to Season 5 and why the podcast is changing 03:00 Introducing Ageless Brain, Ageless Body and Ageless Living 06:12 Ageless Brain: cognition, cardiovascular health, sleep, senses and neuroplasticity 11:29 Ageless Body: muscle, mobility, bones, metabolism, nutrition and independence 17:04 Why ambition should not have an expiry date 22:36 Moving from information to transformation 27:57 What "ageless" really means 29:32 Closing and medical disclaimer About your host:Dr. Gillian Lockitch is a physician, medical biochemist, professor emerita, researcher, author, international speaker, entrepreneur and host of Growing Older Living Younger. She translates the science of healthy aging into practical strategies designed to help people protect their brain, body and independence as they grow older. She is the author of Growing Older Living Younger: The Science of Aging Gracefully and the Art of Retiring Comfortably and an independent Brand Affiliate with Nu Skin, a global integrated beauty and wellness company. Her work in entrepreneurship complements her longstanding interest in healthy aging, wellness, lifelong learning and helping people take an active role in how they age. Medical Disclaimer: Each episode is for education and entertainment only and does not offer medical advice. As a retired physician Dr. Lockitch does not diagnose, treat or prescribe for any medical conditions and suggests that you should consult your personal practitioner before making any therapeutic changes. Connect with Your Host: Website: https://www.askdrgill.com/ Email: [email protected] to schedule a conversation

oes an increase in forgetfulness or increasing "senior moments" imply developing dementia? One of the greatest fears associated with growing older is losing memory, cognitive ability and ultimately independence. But dementia is not a single disease, and not every change in memory or thinking represents irreversible neurodegeneration.  In this episode of Growing Older Living Younger, Dr. Gillian Lockitch welcomes Dr. Brad Montagne, a functional medicine practitioner, educator, author and host of the podcast Your Health Reclaimed.  Brad begins by describing a personal history of gastrointestinal illness, vertigo, food intolerances and other health problems beginning in childhood. He explains how his experiences led him toward functional medicine and an approach emphasizing extensive investigation of chronic health problems.  They discuss hydration, nutrition, medications, sleep disorders, thyroid disease, depression, infection, nutritional deficiencies, gut health and metabolic factors. Dr. Montagne also presents his functional-medicine perspective on food intolerances, toxicity, Lyme disease and alternative testing methods. In this spirited conversation, Dr. Gillian questions several broad claims during the conversation and emphasizes the need to distinguish established evidence from emerging hypotheses and unproven approaches. They agree on the essential message: new cognitive symptoms deserve investigation—not the assumption that they are simply an inevitable part of getting older.  Episode Timeline 00:30 — Is memory loss always irreversible dementia?  03:36 — Brad Montagne's background and personal journey through chronic illness  06:39 — Normal forgetfulness, mild cognitive impairment and dementia  07:04 — Hydration and Brad's perspective on cognitive symptoms  09:16 — Minerals, nutrition and dietary patterns  11:14 — Dr. Gillian's approach to individualized nutrition  13:10 — Food intolerance and Brad's approach to testing  14:40 — Conventional laboratory testing, muscle testing and bioenergetics  19:07 — Can dementia really be called "avoidable"?  19:31 — Lyme disease, neurological disease and claims requiring careful evaluation  24:40 — Reversible conditions that can mimic dementia  25:30 — Brad's approach to extensive functional testing  28:02 — Sudden versus gradual cognitive change  30:37 — The 2024 Lancet Commission and modifiable dementia risk  31:30 — How to evaluate expensive tests, programs and treatment claims  31:56 — Three questions Brad recommends asking a practitioner  32:54 — Why memory changes should not simply be dismissed as aging  34:39 — Protecting brain health and independence  Resources from Brad Montagne https://healthfullyu.com/ https://healthfullyu.com/lyme-book/ https://www.instagram.com/healthfullyu/ https://www.facebook.com/healthfullyu/ https://diet.healthfullyu.com/ Your Host, Dr. Gillian Lockitch website: askdrgill.com schedule your consult  The Growing Older Living Younger Community  

Is it possible to eat nourishing whole foods without letting grocery costs overwhelm your budget? Grocery industry insider and author Carol Ann Kates joins Dr. Gillian Lockitch to share practical ways to plan meals, shop sales, select produce, understand labels, and store food so less goes to waste. Their conversation offers useful ideas for smaller households as well as families. Rising prices and confusing product claims can make a healthy grocery trip feel expensive and complicated. A thoughtful plan can help you bring home only food you will enjoy and use. For people who want to stay healthy and independent as they age, a sustainable eating routine has to work in everyday life. Carol Ann explains how planning around weekly specials, checking what is already in the pantry, and shopping with a list can protect both your food budget and your time.  Raised in her family's corner market, Carol Ann later helped run its supermarkets and wrote recipes for store advertisements. She is the author of "Grocery Shopping Secrets" and the award-winning cookbook "Secret Recipes from the Corner Market". She shares what that experience taught her about fresh ingredients and the real cost of convenience. Dr. Gillian and Carol Ann discuss frozen versus fresh vegetables, pre-cut produce, choosing avocados, prioritizing purchases when organic foods cost more, and interpreting food date labels. They also explore storage habits, batch cooking, and ways to make the same ingredients work across several meals. They recommend starting with one change before your next trip: plan the week's meals around what you already have in your kitchen and what you will actually eat. Episode Timeline: 00:30 — Why healthy food and grocery costs belong in the same conversation 04:34 — Carol Ann's family markets and the path to her books 10:50 — Meal planning around store specials 11:48 — Lists, impulse buys, coupons, and loyalty offers 14:06 — Pantry organization, food waste, and date labels 18:47 — Shopping for whole foods, frozen produce, and convenience costs 22:12 — Organic produce and the Dirty Dozen/Clean Fifteen discussion 26:07 — Grass-fed and free-range labels; where Carol Ann prioritizes spending 28:44 — Selecting avocados 29:59 — Produce storage and reducing spoilage 32:51 — Shopping and cooking for one or two 34:24 — One practical change before your next grocery trip Connect with Carol Ann Kates https://www.facebook.com/p/Carol-Ann-Kates-Kitchen https://www.carolannkates.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-ann-kates https://www.instagram.com/carolannkates https://www.pinterest.com/CarolAnnKates/Pinterest https://x.com/CarolAnnKates Connect with Your Host, Dr. Gillian Lockitch Explore physician-led resources designed to help midlife and older women remain healthy, active, independent, and engaged in life. Website and podcast episodes: https://www.askdrgill.com Download the Growing Older Living Younger app For your personalized one-one-one lifestyle strategies conversation email me at [email protected] Join the Growing Older Living Younger Facebook Community

What if ingredients that can enrich a healthy lifestyle are already growing in your garden, waiting at the farmers' market, or sitting in your spice cupboard? Too often, eating for longevity is framed as a list of restrictions, a mindset that can drain pleasure from food and make healthy choices feel difficult to sustain. or healthy longevity, nourishment must be practical enough for daily life and enjoyable enough to continue.  Fresh ingredients, seasonal variety, herbs, plants, and mindful attention to what works for your own body can help make the kitchen a place of creativity rather than deprivation. Growing even one herb can also reconnect us with the source of our food and turn nurturing a plant into a small, restorative ritual. In this episode, international culinary consultant, award-winning pastry chef, cookbook author, and former professional ballerina, Natasha MacAller joins Dr. Gillian to discuss her new book, The Apothecary Chef: Recipes with Beneficial Herbs & Plants for a Long and Healthy Life. She shows how everyday herbs, edible plants, fresh seasonal ingredients, and sensory pleasure can support a more nourishing approach to healthy longevity. She and Dr. Gillian Lockitch explore responsible food-based guidance, simple ways to begin—even from a condo windowsill—and the importance of curiosity, movement, resilience, and joy in aging youthfully. Natasha explains how the book grew from her New Zealand garden, how its food and health statements were researched and reviewed, and how celebrated chefs around the world created recipes around carefully chosen "hero" ingredients.  You will learn how to begin with familiar alliums such as onions, garlic, shallots, and chives; how to use color, aroma, seasonality, and curiosity at the farmers' market; and why mistakes are part of becoming a confident cook. Natasha also recommends approachable recipes and combinations, including a sunshine citrus salad with lemon balm vinaigrette and simple avocado, tomato, pickled onion, and fresh-herb salads.  This reunion podcast is especially meaningful for Dr. Gillian, who first interviewed Natasha when Vanilla Table was published for her lifestyle website reviewfromthehouse.com . Their shared stories of dance, spinal injury, reinvention, and recovery bring a deeply personal dimension to a conversation about resilience—and remind us that creativity, curiosity, nourishing food, and joyful movement can continue to grow throughout life.  Episode Timeline: 00:00 — Welcome and the promise of beneficial plants, flavor, and healthy aging  06:12 — From Vanilla Table to The Apothecary Chef: Natasha's garden-inspired journey  14:18 — Responsible food-based guidance, research, and culinary medicine review  19:12 — Gut health, calm, immunity, longevity, resilience, and the book's chapter themes  21:03 — Where beginners can start: alliums, windowsill herbs, and familiar ingredients  23:52 — Why healthy longevity does not have to mean a restrictive diet  26:18 — Movement, spinal recovery, resilience, and finding physical joy  34:44 — One simple action to take today and easy recipes to try  39:24 — Final reflections: nourishment, creativity, curiosity, and lifelong resilience  Connect with Natasha MacAller The Apothecary Chef: https://www.dancingchef.net/cookbooks  https://www.octopusbooks.co.uk/titles/natasha-macaller/the-apothecary-chef/9781804192818/  Natasha's cookbooks: https://www.dancingchef.net/cookbooks  Vanilla Table, Spice Health Heroes, The Apothecary Chef: Recipes with Beneficial Herbs & Plants for a Long and Healthy Life  PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/  Disclosure: No affiliate relationship with Natasha MacAller or the book publisher is indicated. As always, this episode is educational and does not provide medical or nutritional treatment advice.  Connect with Your Host Dr. Gillian Lockitch  Explore physician-led resources designed to help midlife and older women remain healthy, active, independent, and engaged in life.  Website and podcast episodes: https://www.askdrgill.com For your personalized one-one-one lifestyle strategies conversation email me at [email protected] Call to Action  Download your Quick Guide to Medicinal and Culinary Mushrooms Subscribe to Growing Older Living Younger and leave a review to help more people discover practical, joyful ways to age youthfully—and share this episode with someone who would love to bring more flavor, color, and beneficial plants into their kitchen. 

Could difficulty hearing conversations today affect your brain health, independence and quality of life in the years ahead? Hearing loss is often treated as a minor inconvenience of growing older, yet it can affect communication, relationships, social connection, confidence and independence. In this episode, Dr. Gillian Lockitch speaks with hearing-health advocate and author Robert "Bob" Keefer, MD, about the association between hearing loss and cognitive decline, why so many people delay seeking help for hearing deficits and what questions to ask before choosing a hearing-care provider. Listeners will learn how hearing is assessed, why the fitting of a hearing aid matters, and how proactive hearing care may support brain health and healthy longevity. Dr. Gillian also shares her own experience of unequal hearing following a minor head injury, feeling she had no time to follow up, and her decision to arrange a new audiology assessment after this podcast. Bob Keefer,is a physician, hearing-health and Alzheimer's-prevention advocate, author and former founder of an audiology clinic. After discovering that many hearing-care professionals were not consistently using their profession's recommended fitting practices, he created a clinic centred on evidence-informed care. His books, Hear Better, Live Longer and The Alzheimer's Hearing Aid Paradox, explore the relationship between hearing, cognition and quality of life, as well as the importance of properly assessed and fitted hearing aids.  Episode Timeline: 00:11 — Welcome to Growing Older Living Younger  00:30 — Why hearing health matters for brain health and independence  04:31 — Bob Keefer's path from medical-product consulting to hearing-health advocacy  07:59 — Why millions of people delay hearing tests and hearing aids  11:19 — Dr. Gillian's personal experience with unequal hearing after a head injury  13:56 — When family members notice hearing loss first—and how to start the conversation  16:23 — Hearing loss, cognitive decline and dementia: what the research can and cannot show  24:02 — How better hearing may improve connection, confidence and quality of life  26:03 — Choosing a hearing-care provider and asking about real-ear measurement  27:50 — What to expect during hearing testing and hearing-aid fitting  30:54 — One practical action to take for hearing and brain health  32:22 — Closing thoughts and invitation to create your healthy-aging roadmap  Contact Robert C Keefer MD Website: https://www.hearbetterlivelonger.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrobertkeefer Book information: https://www.hearbetterlivelonger.com/  Books: Hear Better, Live Longer by Dr. Robert Keefer The Alzheimer's Hearing Aid Paradox by Dr. Robert Keefer  Contact Your Host: Dr. Gillian Lockitch Explore the Growing Older Living Younger approach to extending healthspan, protecting independence and aging youthfully. Website: https://www.askdrgill.com/ Podcast page: https://www.askdrgill.com/podcast  https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillianlockitch/  Subscribe to the Growing Older Living Younger NewsletterMessage  Dr. Lockitch to schedule a one on one conversation about healthy longevity

Health care professionals emphasize optimizing cholesterol, blood sugar and hormone levels and from that assessing biological age. These measurements can provide useful information, but do they tell us whether the body is still resilient, adaptable and capable of recovering from illness, injury or stress? In this episode, Dr. Gillian Lockitch and Dr. Sean Fletch explore the difference between moving a laboratory number into the desired range, and addressing the upstream conditions that caused it to change.  Dr. Fletch reframes healthspan as more than the number of years lived without disease. It is the functional capacity to meet life's demands, recover from disruption and continue doing the things that matter to you. Measures such as grip strength, gait speed, balance, cardiovascular recovery and the ability to get down to and rise from the floor may reveal changes in resilience that conventional blood tests can miss.  Drawing on more than 30 years of clinical, athletic-performance and rehabilitation experience, Dr. Fletch introduces his HealthSpan Framework. He describes the body as an orchestra rather than a machine: light, sleep, movement, nutrition, stress and recovery must work together, while circadian rhythm helps keep the entire system synchronized.  The conversation also examines fasting insulin, insulin resistance and continuous glucose monitoring; the limits of chasing individual biomarkers; and the growing enthusiasm for GLP-1 medications and peptides. Dr. Fletch explains why an intervention should be evaluated not only by whether it changes a number or symptom, but by whether it restores underlying biological capacity.  You will also hear how concussion rehabilitation has evolved, why appropriate graded rehabilitation matters, and how movement supplies essential sensory information to the brain. Dr. Fletch concludes with one deceptively simple practice: obtain outdoor light early in the day to help synchronize circadian biology and support the many systems involved in long-term health.  Episode Timeline: 00:00 — Why reassuring biomarkers may not reveal declining resilience  03:52 — How a college neck injury changed Dr. Fletch's career  07:48 — Biological resilience, health literacy and upstream signals  13:33 — Why biomarkers are a map—not the terrain  20:13 — The HealthSpan Framework and functional self-assessment  26:56 — Peptides, GLP-1 medications and the difference between regulation and resolution  29:56 — Concussion recovery, brain metabolism and movement  34:08 — The first practical step: reset your circadian clock with outdoor light  38:39 — Closing reflections and key takeaways   Connect with Sean Fletch Website: DrSeanFletch.com  Practice: BeyondSports.ca  LinkedIn: Dr. Sean Fletch  Book: HealthSpan: Redefined—Biological Principles for the Long Game of Health  Newsletter: The Long Game  Contact Your Host: Dr. Gillian Lockitch Explore the Growing Older Living Younger approach to extending healthspan, protecting independence and aging youthfully. Website: https://www.askdrgill.com/ Podcast page: https://www.askdrgill.com/podcast  https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillianlockitch/  Subscribe to the Growing Older Living Younger NewsletterMessage  Dr. Lockitch to schedule a one on one conversation about healthy longevity