Ageless: your friendships

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Find an aging mentor. It doesn't matter how old you are. You should find someone that is further down the line than you.

And no matter how old you are, you need to find someone who is behind you in the aging process.

This advice was given to me at a young age from a somewhat older woman who really was very dear to me.

And it landed, and I was 12 when she gave it to me. She said, Juliana, you need to have friends of all ages, and you need to have people to teach you how to age.

And I listened to that, it landed, and it has been an endeavor that I've had my whole life,

and I've given it to other people. She also said, when you get to be my age, you need to be a mentor for other people, too.

And when you have this mentorship relationship, what's beneficial about it is that you get real. She gave me a list of things that worked for her

and didn't work for her, that were a benefit to her, that she was glad she'd experienced, things that she wished she hadn't done.

And with everything that she gave me, it was always in the context of this was for her. That it wasn't telling me how things should be.

It wasn't telling me that her way was the right way and the only way. It was this is how I went about things.

And that allowed me, one, to have ideas. To have modeling of someone who I thought did things in very healthy and positive ways.

And it allowed me to still have room to decide these things on my own. Relationships have an enormous impact

on how we view ourselves, how we view our importance and our place in life, our purpose.

I think it has an enormous impact on what we see in modeling of how relationships should be,

how people who are happy and fulfilled and content behave in relationships-- all sorts of relationships

in their life. And we learn a lot. There's a lot that you can learn by doing self reflections

and doing the work to find out who you are. But we learn different things by being in a relationship

with others. We find the places that rub up against others. We can find patterns of how we're showing up with other people.

And we can learn that so much of our reason of being here and connecting with others

is to be in relationship with others. To learn, to grow ourself, and to help others learn and grow.

The whole world is a beehive. The social contacts are a huge part

of healthy living and healthy longevity. And the blue zones identified that very easily, is that all of the blue zones, that the communities

in the world where people do have long life, one of the critical factors is a social group. That's something with my patients

I'm assessing with every single patient right now. What is your social group? Who's your beehive? Let's talk about our hearts, specifically broken

heart syndrome. I always find this is a topic that people are fascinated with because, you know, the title of the article is always "Can you Really Die of a Broken Heart," right?

And people want to know. It is when someone is overwhelmed,

usually by something not good. It's this huge outpouring of adrenaline,

and it's a stun gun to the heart. And it looks like a heart attack. It looks and it acts like a heart attack.

But the enzyme levels don't go up very much. If you do angios on these people, they're relatively normal.

And it just takes time for the heart to get back to normal. Sometimes there's this, like, just severe depression,

and almost like you stop-- you don't have the will to live. You don't have the will to go on. There's nothing driving you.

That the pain is so intense that your body just sort of shuts down. I have seen a few people where this has happened,

and it's been spouses, in my personal experience. Spouses who have been together for a very long time, one of them passing, the other one just really

didn't have a lot of purpose. And so finding that purpose sometimes can be really helpful, just finding a new purpose.

Finding something else, another desire. And this is where I highly recommend the village come in.

Where is the family? Where are the friends? Come together, do dinner, do something that's going to just create that community and that connection.

And it's difficult when that person doesn't have that village and that support around them. And so then that might mean going outside, going out

to community resources, finding something, trying to give them some sort of connection so that they have that new will.

And life changes, but it can continue to go on. And then, of course, we have all of our mindfulness activities.

And I think this could go for both the good and the bad. Just calming that nervous system, doing some deep breathing activities, meditation.

Things to just help your body relax a little bit and lower those adrenaline levels. My advice to my younger self is find good doctors

and listen to them. Get active now. Pay attention to your physical and mental well-being.

And stay in touch with friends and family regularly. Well-being involves everything.

Family, health, relationships. We must pay attention to ourselves, others,

and our environment because they are all interconnected. Hi, my name is Henry, and I'm six years old.

Hi, my name is Grace, and I'm four years old. Welcome to "Old, New, Tried, and True." It's showtime!

[MUSIC PLAYING] Papa, what is the best thing about our relationship?

The best thing about our relationship is happiness because every time I see you, it makes me happy.

And every time you laugh, it makes me laugh. I am six. What do you remember from my age?

I saw President Kennedy when I was six, in 1961. And I don't remember very much about it,

but I remember enough that my mother took all of us to a place in Paramus, New Jersey,

and I saw President Kennedy. What's your favorite age and why? I liked being 17 because I got my driver's license

and I was able to drive a car. And you only have 11 years until you'll be 17.

My favorite age is 6, 4, 5, 6, 7, so 8, 9, 10, 100.

6, 20, and 40. And 100. Henry and Grace, how old do you think I am?

Maybe 63 or 66. 64. How old do you feel? I don't feel-- I don't feel 67.

I feel like I'm still in my 40s. What's the biggest change you ever saw in your life? The biggest change I ever saw in my life

was when I lost my hair. I used to have hair just like yours.

All of a sudden, I have hair like this. But you know what?

I don't need many haircuts anymore. I don't have to get up in the morning and comb my hair. And no one ever says to me, your hair is a mess.

What do you wish to tell your younger self? Well, it's something that my mother told me that I

should have listened to more. Stay in school. Study hard. That's a very important thing.

If I could change my health, I think I would have learned at an early age add more vegetables. Now I just don't like them at all.