Skip the healing waters, the Mediterranean diet, and those 10,000 steps.
If you are caught up in the deep-seated belief that healthy aging only depends on what you eat, how you exercise, and how you sleep, you’re sorely missing a beat.
So says Ken Stern, a longevity and aging expert, founder of the Longevity Project and host of the “Century Lives” podcast from the Stanford Center on Longevity — and author of the new book “Healthy to 100: How Strong Social Ties Lead to Long Lives.”
“While many people already acknowledge, or at least pay lip service to, the relevance of social connections to healthy longevity, few would elevate it to the same level of relevance as nutrition, fitness, and healthcare,” Stern told me.
“If you want to live a healthy and rewarding life, you need to start with social health.”
In his book, Stern takes us on his months-long journey to meet folks in some of the longest-lived countries in the world — Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Spain — places that have scored significant steps forward in the quest for longevity by intentionally building social connections into communities.
Here are edited excerpts of our conversation:
Kerry Hannon: Ken, I’m a big advocate for longer working lives in some fashion. How does work provide social connection and purpose?
Ken Stern: Work is an essential ingredient in healthy, longer lives. It does it in a number of different ways. At work, we forge deep and lasting relationships with people. We also develop an entire ecosystem of relationships and social connections that are really important to your health. You spend decades building those social connections, and then they’re just gone when you retire.
Across my travels in Japan, I met dozens of older workers — in candy factories, machine shops, car and bicycle parks — who told me of the central role of work in creating purpose, meaning, and better health in their lives. Money wasn’t irrelevant to the conversation — it never really is, but it consistently faded into the background while meaning, purpose, and vitality took center stage.
Why is social connection not given the due it deserves?
It has become a little bit like the weather. Everyone talks about social connection, but no one does anything about it. We know it’s as important as fitness and nutrition. Being lonely is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And we don’t have treatment plans for that. We don’t have the infrastructure to help people be socially connected. And that’s the biggest risk of all the risks that Americans face right now. It’s that risk of loneliness and being disconnected from friends, family, community.
How do you define healthy longevity?
It is years that you live without disability or disease.
What role does learning play in healthy aging?
We have the notion that formal learning generally ends sometime before 25. And after that, you have job skills learning to a certain degree. That takes you up to probably age 50 or 55. Most people now live closer to 80 or 85. That leaves the last quarter of your life without some sort of avenue for lifelong learning.
South Korea, for instance, has a constitutional right to lifelong learning, and they’ve set up an enormous infrastructure. Virtually every city in the country has earned the designation of lifelong learning cities, and they set up schools all around the city. There’s no more than a five- or 10-minute walk for anyone to get to a classroom.
The things you learn aren’t necessarily job-related. They can be, but they can be about things you’re passionate about or the arts or literature or culture. These drive passion that brings you out of your house, keeps you mentally engaged, and keeps you in community with other people.
You write that social health is a team sport. Can you elaborate on that?
We think about healthy aging as something we do by ourselves. Nutrition is largely something we do by ourselves. Exercises can be social, but largely things we’re sort of personally responsible for and personally can execute.
You can’t make social connections without other people to be socially connected with. One of the things I learned in my travels for this book was that when other countries think about healthy aging, they often start with creating opportunities for people to be socially connected. That could be everything from supporting lifelong learning to creating more volunteer opportunities for older people to breaking down some of the barriers to work that older people face in places like the United States.
In Singapore, the housing redevelopment board owns most of the housing, and they think about their mission — not just to put up buildings, but to create environments which bring people out of their house, their apartments. Apartments are small; common spaces are big. So they created an opportunity for people to get out and be in communion with other people.
“The decline in social connection is the biggest threat to health in the US,” says Author and Longevity Expert Ken Stern, pictured. (Photo courtesy of Ken Stern) ·Photo courtesy of Ken Stern
What about the idea that wealth is health?
A statistical relationship exists between people of higher income and higher education and health. That’s an unfairness that is built into most societies because income and education give you access to more knowledge. It gives you access to more resources. It gives you access to more leisure and less dangerous work, generally, and healthy foods, of course.
What’s the biggest stumbling block for retirees?
Not planning ahead. People retire and think that’s the end. And it’s not. It’s another beginning. You can’t get there and expect that there are going to be answers. You have to plan for those years.
Read more: How to catch up on retirement savings
Of course, financial planning is key, but also what’s going to give you purpose and meaning and social engagement is critical. We just don’t encourage that in this country. You find a lot of people reaching that point and not really knowing what to do. There are only so many cruises you can take. There are only so many TV shows you can watch. We need to change the mindset for people to be healthy and connected and contributors to societies.
Social connection means connecting with people of all ages, correct?
Putting generations together is good for both generations — for young and the old — and you could see it in the workplace and in housing policy in Singapore, you could see it in senior centers in Italy, which are centers for all ages.
Have a question about retirement? Personal finances? Anything career-related? Click here to drop Kerry Hannon a note.
Why did you write this book now?
It’s become clear that the decline in social connection is the biggest threat to health in the US — both personal health and, frankly, societal health. We’ve become increasingly divided as a society and as individuals alienated from each other. Technology has pulled us apart with a terrible impact on our personal health and our social health. The idea of trying to help people get back together is an important one. That’s what drove me to write this book.
We need to understand that the second half of life can be as valuable, as meaningful, and as useful as the first, if not more so. You don’t get there by accident. You don’t show up at 60 and say, ‘Gosh, what do I do next?’ It is time to take it seriously and plan ahead.
Learn more: What’s the average retirement savings by age — and how to you compare?
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including the forthcoming “Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future,” “In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work,” and “Never Too Old to Get Rich.” Follow her on X and Bluesky.
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