Prime Time: Some Healthy Aging Insights For Healthy Aging Month

Not only are we in back-to-school territory now, but September is also recognized as Healthy Aging Month. As such, it’s a good time to review some of the expert recommendations and strategies, based upon the latest evidence, for how to keep yourself healthy as you get on in years. As challenging as it may sometimes feel to deal with aging, there’s never been a time when we know as much as we do about how to keep ourselves physically strong and cognitively sharp, and when we’ve had as many opportunities to engage in a meaningful life, regardless of our age. So let’s dive into some of the most recent pronouncements concerning healthy aging.

US News recently released its 2026 Healthy Aging Survey, which included the input and expertise of 63 health professionals from different disciplines who ranked which efforts are of greatest value when it comes to supporting and prolonging your health span and life span. Forsaking some of the most cutting-edge “biohacks” that may be popular among an elite few, these experts relied less on high-tech measurements and gadgets and more on some basic, tried-and-true lifestyle behaviors and routines to underscore how much aging in a healthy way is within our control. You probably know the drill, but it’s worth repeating. At the top of the list? Regular and consistent physical activity and movement, a nutritionally balanced diet, and quality, consistent sleep. Also near the top of the recommendations? Staying socially connected and cultivating meaningful relationships in your life. Specifically, the advice for starting an “Evidence-Based Healthy Aging Plan” includes the following: Move regularly, employing a range of exercises, including aerobic, strength, balance, and mobility; build your meals around nutrient-dense foods, without being a slave to a specific diet; protect your sleep; recognize and respect relationships as being important to your health; monitor your functional fitness, not just your weight; and keep up with your preventive health care, including well-visits and vaccines. As one expert said, “We’re surrounded by messages telling us that we need to hack, track, and optimize our way to a longer life. Yet the habits that rose to the top (in this survey) are remarkably basic, and to some, boring.”

Moreover, there’s new evidence that these basic daily habits and routines are not only keeping you healthy but can now be quantified as having a measurable impact on your biological aging. In a study published in Nature Medicine, researchers from Yale University found that diet and exercise, along with certain medications, appear to slow biological aging, as seen through biomarkers and epigenetic clocks. While more research needs to be done to better understand the changes found in biomarkers in this study, it does appear that exercise and nutritious eating not only make you feel better but are biologically slowing down your aging. This research also suggests that over-the-counter supplements do little to change biological aging, though medications like Metformin and GLP-1s appear to slow down biological aging. This is not a recommendation to seek out these newer drugs, but suggests that going forward, we may be able to more quickly evaluate the anti-aging properties of new therapies, and that we may be on the precipice of understanding how drugs like GLP-1s may someday play an important role in slowing down aging and in possibly reversing the aging process. A new study in Nature found that aging mice who were given a GLP-1 experienced reduced inflammation, reduced cellular senescence, and improved metabolic functioning over a wide range of areas. As one expert surmised, GLP-1s seem to increase the healthspan of mice, and within the not-too-distant future, we are likely to see human trials to examine the possibility of this outcome in people as well.

But back to the basics: One other recent study underscored the benefits of routines and regularized daily habits to support healthy aging.  This study found that older adults who stick to steady schedules- for waking, eating, and socializing- reported less pain, a lower body mass index, and had fewer depressive symptoms than those who kept a more irregular schedule, even if they did not have sound sleep. While this was one small study, it does suggest that daily consistency may have an important role to play in staying healthy as you get older. As one expert made clear, “If we are consistent with when we wake up, eat, work or study, interact with others and go to bed, those time cues help synchronize our internal body clocks. Over the long term, that seems to be linked with improved health outcomes.” So set your alarm clock, and find out more here.