Living Well, Living Long: Lessons From the Super-Agers: Tom McDermott

A Collection of Recent Insights into Super-Aging

Advice on how to live longer while staying healthy seems to appear everywhere — often in bite-sized lists that are easy to skim but hard to follow. 

The sheer volume can feel overwhelming and often contradictory, and it’s tempting to tune it all out. Yet behind the noise is a growing body of serious research into why some people thrive well into their 80s and 90s. What follows is a synthesis of recent findings from leading scientists and clinicians on the habits, conditions, and a little bit of luck that help create the so-called “super-agers.”  

Here in XUNICEF, we are fortunate to count quite a few super-agers among us — and we hope to “expand the club” with many more. Already there, or nearly there? We’d love to hear your own thoughts on how to live a long, happy, and healthy life.

Tom

What is a Super-Ager?

Defined as adults over 80 whose memory capacity rivals that of someone 20–30 years younger, super-agers have become the focus of major studies at Harvard, Scripps, and Northwestern.

The evidence suggests that while genetics and luck play roles, lifestyle choices are decisive.

Stay Socially Connected

A quarter-century of research at Northwestern University found that the one factor uniting super-agers is the importance they place on social relationships. “Personality wise, they tend to be on the extroverted side,” noted Dr. Sandra Weintraub, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern Click here for the article.

Neuroscientist Ben Rein adds: “People who socialize more are more resistant to cognitive decline as they get older… and they have generally larger brains.” Social activity helps protect against brain atrophy and reduces the stress hormone cortisol, which in chronic excess can damage neurons. Click here for Ben Rein's forthcoming book "Why Brains Need Friends".

Exercise as a Foundation

Exercise consistently emerges as the most effective intervention. It reduces cancer, heart disease, and dementia risks while promoting neurogenesis and maintaining larger memory-related brain regions.

Dr. Eric Topol, cardiologist and author of Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity, is emphatic: “Exercise is extraordinary. It works across all three age-related diseases.” Click here for the article.

Harvard neurologist Dr. Andrew Budson underscores the dual benefit: “Exercise helps in two different ways: by reducing cardiovascular risk factors and augmenting the size of brain structures.” Click here for the article.

Cognitive Engagement

Like muscles, the brain needs challenge to stay fit. Reading, painting, writing, language learning, or playing music all build “cognitive reserve.” Women in particular show stronger protective effects from these activities.

Budson draws the analogy plainly: “It’s a simple analogy, but the brain is a bit like a muscle. If we don’t use it, we’re going to lose it.” Click here for the article.

Sleep — But Not Too Much

Sleep both consolidates memory and clears toxins. Chronic insomnia in older adults raises risks of memory decline (Sleep, 2022).

Topol, however, warns that more isn’t always better: “About seven hours is the optimal duration of sleep. Every one-hour-a-night increase above that threshold is associated with 12% higher risk of total cardiovascular disease.” Click here for the article.

Nutrition and the Gut–Brain Axis

A Mediterranean-style diet — vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, olive oil, minimal processed foods — repeatedly shows benefits for both cognitive and immune health.

Topol emphasizes the “gut-brain axis”: “The way to a person’s brain and to healthy aging, it likely will be through their gut.” Foods with active cultures (yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut) help diversify the microbiome; vagus nerve stimulation through deep breathing, singing, or even cold exposure further supports gut–brain communication Click here for the article.

Preventive Health Tools

Topol also critiques the limits of standard checkups, which typically cover only cholesterol, blood pressure, and a few basic screenings. He argues that these leave gaps in understanding an individual’s real health risks. “Standard medicine is missing out, leaving too many unsolved questions about a person’s risk,” he told the Los Angeles Times Click here for the article.

To fill those gaps, he recommends relatively inexpensive tests: Polygenic Risk Scores (PRS) to flag inherited cancer and disease risks, DEXA scans to track bone and muscle composition, and one-time genome sequencing to identify predispositions. These tools, he argues, could help personalize prevention and extend not just lifespan but health span — the years lived without chronic disease.

Genes, Neurons, and Luck

Genes matter less than once assumed. “There’s only a small component here that’s actually genetic. It’s been overestimated,” Topol told Fortune Well Click here for the article.

Super-agers often show more spindle neurons — rare, spindle-shaped brain cells tied to social behavior and rapid communication — and while their numbers are largely set early in life, lifestyle factors like social engagement and cognitive activity may help preserve their function into old age Click here for the article.

Luck also plays a part. Infections can trigger what neurologists call a “cascade of amyloid” — when amyloid-beta proteins, produced to help fight infections, accumulate abnormally, leading to plaque buildup, inflammation, and the neuron damage linked to Alzheimer’s disease Click here for the article.

Conclusion: Building Your Super Age

Super-aging is not about reversing time. It is about stacking the odds through exercise, cognitive engagement, social connection, restorative sleep, a Mediterranean-style diet, and preventive health care. Genes and luck may open the door, but lifestyle determines how far one walks through it.

Or, as Topol puts it: the real aim is not immortality but “reducing the risk of developing chronic diseases that become more common with age.”