“For a decade, I thought food was the only thing [to focus on],” Walker says. Save for a couple of supplements here and there, she thought, “If I just eat this way, then everything’s going to be fine.” 

As those living with an autoimmune disease likely know, food is not the only trigger for flare-ups. Things like stress, sleep, and social environment all play a role. “I realized that if I didn’t get enough sleep, if I drove myself into the ground, working too hard, and didn’t talk to people like my husband…there’s a lot we have to make sure that we’re paying attention to,” she explains. “My biggest advice is to breathe and take a look at all of the different things that are happening in your body and your life and figure out how you can try to manage all of those things.” 

For Walker specifically, managing sleep and stress are paramount. She has noticed that when she’s stressed or worried, her body creates an inflammatory response. Same goes for sleep: “As an autoimmune disease sufferer, the less sleep I got, the worse my day would be with my symptoms,” she notes. That said, she now prioritizes quality sleep and carving moments for downtime just as much as she prioritizes eating well. 

Even though I wanted to hide, my life carried on. My mom, who had a bout of alopecia during her childhood, asked me how I still woke up and faced each day. My response was the only one that made any sense to me: There was no other choice. I have two young daughters who are watching my every move, I have a family to take care of and I have students who rely on me to show up and give them my best every day. 

For the next eight months, I did everything in my power to grow my hair back. I tried topical creams, medications that compromised the immune system and made me extremely ill, steroids injected into my scalp every week for six months. Nothing worked. During that time, I couldn’t look at my own reflection or allow anyone to see me bald. I went to bed with a hat on and waited for my husband to turn off the lights before removing it.

The image was my enemy.

It even took me a few months to finally purchase a wig. I was in denial and felt that if I bought a wig, I was giving up on ever growing my hair back. But when I did, it gave me a sense of normalcy. I could finally walk into the grocery store without people staring or asking me if I was going through treatment. I could hide. And I have to admit, it was nice. But I also realized that I was so concerned about what other people thought—how they looked at me—that I wasn’t focusing on what was most important: how I viewed myself. 

Rountree has been meditating for stress management for over 45 years. More recently, he added controlled breathing techniques—specifically the box breathing method—to his routine. This breathwork entails releasing all of the air from your chest and holding your breath for 4 seconds, then breathing in through the nose for 4 seconds, then holding your breath for 4 seconds, then exhaling out of the nose for 4 seconds.

Breathwork teacher Gwen Dittmar recommends repeating this 4-4-4-4 cycle for five minutes, or until you start to feel more calm. Rountree likes to call on this one when he feels suddenly overwhelmed by a stressful thought and wants to ground back into his body. Going back to the pragmatic thought component, breathwork is a good way to take control of your reaction when faced with a stressor that’s otherwise out of your control.

While stress will always be a part of daily life, having the right tools can help take the edge off, which could pay dividends for health down the line.

During some of the “not good” readings, the medium would frequently try to engage in conversations to get information. When it was clear I was not going to give any information, they’d begin to flat out ask questions such as “What did your father do for work?” Or “Do you have any siblings?”

One question that is often asked in cold readings (a type of fake reading) is “Your father/mother/any loved one hasn’t passed, have they?” That is open-ended, so if you answer “Yes, they have” or “No, they haven’t,” the medium will reply, “I thought so.” 

Yes, a good medium may be stumped, and ask you for some information but won’t do that for the majority of the reading. 

For many, fine lines are their top skin care concern. Fine lines can be the result of skin dehydration, exposure to environmental irritators, internal stressors, and of course, naturally with age. So it’s important to take a multifaceted approach with your routine in order to get the best results. 

But one major part of that gameplan? A smart topical formulation to improve skin texture, increase hydration, aid in protection, and encourage collagen production.

Luckily, we did the hard work for you (you know, testing tons of products, interviewing experts, and loads of hours looking at the research), so all you have to do is check out the list below. 

As we write this, Richard is 76; Dave is 63. Obviously, we’re old. But in other senses, we’re not old at all. As we look back across the decades, the words of Bob Dylan in “My Back Pages” come to mind: “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

Spoiler alert: You’re getting older; everyone alive is getting older. Eventually, if you live long enough, you’ll be what is sometimes referred to as “old old.” And yet, it’s almost taboo to talk about getting old, much less acknowledge being old. Yet in spite of all the denial, most people want to live to be as old as possible.

Always on the move, William H. Thomas, M.D., author of What Are Old People For?: How Elders Will Save the World, is a man with a purpose: to challenge conventional views of aging.

Far ahead of his time, “Dr. Bill,” a Harvard Medical School–trained geriatrician, is particularly well known for pioneering the Eden Alternative, a radical system of humanizing nursing homes by introducing plants, pets, and even children into the environment. Now, he has given up practicing in favor of proselytizing about what it means to grow old.

In conversation with Richard, he says, “My view as a geriatrician is that we have to grow up twice—from childhood to adulthood and from adulthood to elderhood. If we don’t mature during adolescence, all kinds of alarms go off. But for the second phase, there are no bells, beacons, alarms, or rituals if we miss it. I see aging as a strength, rich in developmental growth. What we need is a radical reimagining of longevity that makes elders central to our collective pursuit of happiness. How we perceive aging to a very large degree determines how we age. It’s the story that matters. How people interpret their experience goes a long way to determining their well-being.”

According to Thomas, our culture rewards the ideal of an older person who “still” does what they used to do. They fill their life with what has historically given them pleasure and fulfillment. They define success in backward-looking terms. The older person is admirable because they’re still acting like a younger person.

But if “still” signifies success, then people who can’t “still” do those younger things are failures. “This is wrong,” contends Thomas. “We need to push the delete key on ‘still.’ In older adulthood, the word still is a sign of success; in childhood development, by contrast, the word still is a sign of failure.”

As a geriatrician, Thomas believes that embracing death is a path to a more meaningful life. He has observed that “the happiest people are those who have chosen to shed the illusion of immortality. Knowing they have limited time, they focus more on purposeful relationships and less on pleasing others, less on stuff, more on experience. They choose to be their authentic selves.”

Currently, Thomas, on the cusp of elderhood himself, is focused on helping people of all ages to live in the place and manner of their choosing. “We’re lucky if we get to grow old,” he says. “I want to help people grow whole, not old.”

This article was co-written by David A. Shapiro.

Reprinted from Who Do You Want To Be When You Grow Old?: The Path of Purposeful Aging with permission of Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Copyright © 2021 by Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro. 

Secondly, I’ve found that for a digital workout platform to stick, it has to be high-quality. The production quality, paired with music that makes you want to move, is what made LES MILLS workouts stand out for me. These online classes feel like being right in the room with the instructor, which frankly, I’ve never felt on other apps. As we all know, home workouts require a greater degree of motivation, and the world-class LES MILLS instructors have made that an art form. Integrating LES MILLS On Demand into my quarantine fitness routine was seamless, leaving only results to be enjoyed.

I researched Les Mills to find out what it was that made this app different from others and was surprised to find that Les Mills has been making exercise videos for over 40 years, with the expert help of creative directors and exercise scientists. Les Mills himself is an iconic New Zealander: four-time Olympian; former national head track and field coach; and three-term mayor of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Back in 1968, he opened a gym in an effort to bring elite sports training methods to the wider community. Five decades later, the business has released 21 branded workouts and offers group classes to 21,000 gyms worldwide (also streamed directly into thousands of homes via LES MILLS On Demand).  

As Jackie Mills, M.D., LES MILLS chief creative officer, describes: “Our job is to help people fall in love with fitness so they want to keep coming back, and they experience the huge benefits of lifelong exercise.” My experience, to a tee.

Luck is a popular topic in feng shui. I’ve personally never connected to the idea that we can create good or bad fortune simply by putting a crystal on a string in a particular place, facing a certain compass direction, waiting until a special day to take action, or much of anything else that involves following a set of rules strictly to get lucky. 

Over the years, I’ve had hundreds of people reach out to me concerned that they won’t have a love life because of the position of their bed in their bedroom or that they will have bad health because of where a bathroom is in their house.

They’re worried that they’re doomed to bad luck because their house breaks some sort of feng shui rule. This concerns me deeply. Not only is it disempowering, but it also stokes fear and opens the door to self-fulfilling prophecies.

And it’s not true.

In my experience of 17 years working as a feng shui master with thousands of people, I’ve seen that your bathroom doesn’t need to affect your health simply because of where it is on your floor plan, the number of your house doesn’t need to have anything to do with the amount of money you’ll make, etc. Your house can’t automatically limit your life. It can’t make you “unlucky.”

However, it is possible to make yourself luckier in so many ways that don’t have to include filling your home with good luck charms that you have no connection to you whatsoever. (That’s not to say you shouldn’t display personally meaningful objects, like gifts from loved ones, family heirlooms, items of spiritual and cultural significance that empower you, etc.)

I believe that the best way you can get more luck for yourself is by consistently doing activities that put you in a more positive and abundant state of mind. Feeling empowered and creative can kick off waves of positive momentum and all those brilliant “synchronicities” where things seem to fall into place with ease.

I’m not implying that we can control everything that happens in our lives or that bad things can’t happen to happy people. But I am suggesting that there are empowering, fun things we can do to help usher in more positive, prosperous energy—and today I’m going to share a few: