00:00Something else that you do, just going back to your prescription writing, that's perhaps unorthodox among clinicians, you were also an educator on top of, you know, being a physician and a public health scientist.
00:12Something that you do with some of your students is you ask them to write prescriptions for different stages of their life, I guess you would say.
00:22Tell me a little bit about that practice and what you're hoping to accomplish with it.
00:26Welcome to The Future You, a new series by Men's Health, where we talk to the leading experts in health and longevity to help you live longer and stronger.
00:34I'm your host, Rich Dormant.
00:36In this episode, we're talking with longevity expert Dr. Linda Freed about finding success at any age.
00:42So I teach a course for Columbia and Barnard undergraduates and for graduate students, both in the School of Public Health and around the university.
00:52It's also open to auditors from the community, which is a great pleasure because then we have a real multi-generational classroom, which opens up all kinds of opportunities for exploration and conversation.
01:07But the goal of the course, it's called Your Longer Life with a bit of a brain teaser because there's a parenthesis around the first why in your, so your longer life and our longer lives and how we plan for them.
01:22To my mind, it's really particularly important for young people to understand that these longer lives we've created change their lives.
01:33And we need them to see the arc of a long life and how you plan for it and how you invest in it at different stages.
01:43We're all getting older all the time.
01:44Every day.
01:45Not just when we're getting older, right?
01:46Right.
01:47And one of my mentors used to say to me, Linda, that's the good news.
01:50Right.
01:51Exactly.
01:51When you compare it to the alternative, the good news.
01:55So what I decided was that we wanted them to take the evidence, the knowledge that they learn in the course about how you invest at every stage of your life so that you have the opportunity to not just live a long life, but live a long life with health.
02:13Mm-hmm.
02:13Mm-hmm.
02:13And how you invest financially so that you have enough money to retire with, and how you take care of your own health at each age and stage of life, but also what we need society to build.
02:31I mean, think of my CEO.
02:33Mm-hmm.
02:33He was ready to stay engaged, which is important for his health and well-being, but we hadn't societally yet built roles that would welcome him and use that man's assets he could bring to the table and learn to.
02:46Mm-hmm.
02:47So we need to both invest in ourselves and build together and demand together the building of a society for longer lives that invests in all of us.
03:00Mm-hmm.
03:00So I take them through that exercise.
03:03Mm-hmm.
03:03And after every class where we go through the evidence, they need to reflect on it and say, what will they do in their 20s and their 30s, in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and even 100, based on the evidence, how will they use it to both secure their own health, and what will they need society to build so they can be successful?
03:28Mm-hmm.
03:30I'm going to put you on the spot and say, what have been some of your favorite prescriptions or the things that really resonated with you, let's say, in their 20s?
03:40What's something that somebody wrote a prescription for themselves and you said, that is really smart, really forward-thinking?
03:46Yeah.
03:46Oh, there have been so many.
03:47I have to think about this for a second.
03:50I think they got the message about loneliness.
03:53Mm-hmm.
03:53Loneliness is affecting both young and old really badly.
03:59I mean, there are many who are saying we have an epidemic of it.
04:01Mm-hmm.
04:03And I think in the course of this class and the many experiences the students have and the many conversations and interactions they have,
04:16I think they realize that they need society to build connections across generations that we have lost,
04:24that young people need older people in their lives.
04:26Mm-hmm.
04:27Some of them built friendships with the older auditors in our class.
04:32Many of them have, actually.
04:34And they brought them a realization that they never interacted with people who were older otherwise except for family members.
04:41So I particularly love that.
04:44Mm-hmm.
04:44And then they design, they propose different kinds of programs that society needs to build.
04:49I love that.
04:50Another thing that you ask them to do is to read obituaries.
04:54Mm-hmm.
04:54But, like, in a fun way.
04:57Tell me about why you're asking them to do that.
05:00So when people don't, as young people, have little interaction with older people,
05:05they don't have the opportunity to learn what a life well-lived includes,
05:12to set models for themselves, as well as the fact that we all stumble and fall many times across those long lives.
05:20Nothing is a straight shot, at least in my experience.
05:23It's important, I think, to have an idea of how people's lives roll out.
05:30And what better way than reading, I happen to love reading obituaries in the New York Times
05:37because they're so beautifully crafted to tell the story of how people's lives rolled out.
05:42Mm-hmm.
05:42You know, what can get accomplished in life?
05:46And what people are happy about that they accomplished.
05:51And we're all happy about different kinds of things.
05:54Mm-hmm.
05:54So, and I want them to learn to look at obituaries, not as a reminder of the thing that scares everybody,
06:03which is that we do all die at some point, but an opportunity to honor people and learn about people
06:11who did many, many moving, as well as interesting and valuable things.
06:18We all have to die, but we also get to live, right?
