By the time we turn 60, most of us will still have one third of our lives to live. How well we do these years will depend on our health. Are we agile and disease free, or dependent on medication and help? In her first book Staying Alive, Melbourne specialist geriatrician Dr Kate Gregorevic outlines lifestyle-enhancing strategies—from nutrition and exercise to cognitive and emotional health—for you to live happier, healthier and longer. In #Perspectives podcast ‘Staying Alive’ the mother-of-three tells Sharon Pears about telomeres, sleep and ‘good’ genes, and shares her day-to-day strategies around how to age in the best ways possible: “It’s not so much saying to someone, ‘Do your exercise,” says Dr Kate. “Everyone knows exercise is good for them. It's saying, ‘What's important to you?’ Asking what's going to add value to each of them. And I can't prescribe that.”
ZERO: Sharon introduces Dr Kate Gregorevic, who has been working in hospitals with older people during the pandemic and has released her first book Staying Alive, a holistic approach to ageing which includes her philosophy of medicine and care and wellness and has science to integrate into daily living about the best ways to age.
—Kate wrote the book over six months, getting up at 5am and setting herself a word count: “I just enjoyed so much getting into the science of ageing, but also thinking about some of the social context of that. And at that time I wasn't working full time, but part of the reason I was able to write his book is because, you know, I've done a science degree, a medical degree and a specialization and a PhD so I already had a lot of the knowledge I needed. It was one of those things. I just felt like it was, I felt like it was an important thing to do. It was really meaningful to me.”
—Sharon asks Kate’s philosophy of health and wellbeing, which “isn’t just try and fix it when it’s broke.”
—Kate: “I work in a hospital, so I do a lot of fixing when it's broke, but I mostly work with older adults and it is just the most incredible gift to get that wisdom and perspective that comes at the end or towards, you know, after many decades of life, you know, people in their eighties and nineties they've lived, they have so much understanding of what is important. Don't get me wrong. Physical things are really important aspects of health, human, sleep, nutrition, exercise, but we also need to find a framework and find motivation and find things that are important to us to actually feel like doing those things. And one of the other things about working with people in his age group, you also know that life is finite. It does not go forever. And that's one of the most important things as humans that we need to come to terms with.”
—Kate says it’s important to have a framework for how we can make these decisions to improve our chances of longevity, but also do it in a way that is putting importance on the here and now, on getting enjoyment, including emotional health and social health in how we construct wellbeing.
—Sharon asks if Kate is able to bring her philosophy into what she does within the Australian health care system.
—Kate: “One of the things that I often ask my patients is what is important to you and what matters to you.”
—She’s looked into factors including visitors to older people and they make a difference to physical recovery: “One area that's been studied particularly well is optimism and people who are optimists are more likely to make a good recovery after a heart attack. People who are optimists have more of a feeling that they're in control. And feeling that things they do matter. So after a heart attack, they're more likely to take the medications they prescribed, but there's also some other evidence that people who are optimists, it actually does have some biological effects. So it's that really interesting intersection between the psychological factors and the biology coming together affect the way our body works.”
—Sharon asks how much of the Australian system allows for prevention. Reveals she was diagnosed with stage four endometriosis as a teenager: “It really woke me up to a system that was designed just to get cut it off, cut it out, drug it … I actually had one doctor tell me once, ‘If we cut the nerves, you won't feel the pain as it kills you.’ Not saying that's the standard practice. But that was my experience. And it made me realize this is a very reactive system. Where do you think the system sits now compared to my experience many years ago?”
—Discussion from both about how infectious diseases were the main cause of death 150 years ago. Kate: “There was no antibiotics, no hygiene. There was less public health, less water sanitation, no vaccinations.”
—Sharon mentions the doctor who pioneered the sterilizing of surgical instruments.
—Kate says “in Australia, we spent a relatively low proportion of health budget on prevention” and “it’s still an ongoing issue and we don't have enough funding for allied health, the supportive management of conditions.” Says the public health system sometimes offers good holistic health care. “General practice is so underfunded compared to what we get and the way the Medicare rebates work, they get paid for seeing more patients, rather than for spending more time with patients. And when you're running a business and you've got expenses, it's got competing priorities there.”
11.32: CHURN AND BURN
—Sharon refers to Kate’s funding explanation: “How can that be?” Asks who is going to listen to older adults who want to spend more than five minutes with their doctor, talking, and bemoans the lack of simple contact like supermarket checkout operators: “So older people now, having been challenged by technology, are being told that they can't see anybody ever. And then they go to the GP and it's in five minutes, seven minutes turnaround, where do they just land and just be, and they're not going to Zoom it up.”
—Kate talks COVID: “For the next indefinite future, you know, we need to have a strategy that means everyone can get quality of life back and hopefully we're heading towards there soon, but it certainly has been a byproduct of what we've been doing. This epidemic of loneliness and loneliness has its own health problems.”
—Sharon: “I think masks added to this as well. I'm seeing people having less eye contact. Um, I'm noticing some people who are older, shying away from people.”
—Kate: “People who are older with health conditions are right to be scared of a virus. And in some ways, masks are a way that we can make a bit more connection because they do make things a bit safer.”
—Sharon: “I don't know if I agree with you on the mass, so I, I understand why we've got them, but I find older people wearing a mask, not be able to see that I'm smiling, they're avoiding me.”
—Having worked on the coronavirus wards, Kate supports wearing masks, particularly indoors, but says wearing masks have “impacted on my care for all the adults” because it’s harder to communicate. Praises specialized age care nurses doing “amazing work at overcoming that side of things.”
—Kate says “hopefully we don't have to wear masks forever. I'm looking very much forward to when we get those vaccines.”
—Sharon isn’t big on a vaccine and feels one is two year away and “will only be as effective as the flu” shot. Notes we haven’t had an effective coronavirus vaccine.: “I want a 15 minute result test. It’s the game changer for me, it's 15 minutes. Just everyone coming to work and getting tested. Have your life. When you get to the airport, 15 minute test again, repeated when you land that to me is going to free us up a lot quicker than a vaccine.”
—Kate is a “vaccine optimist” having read the research and summaries on trials: “And while we haven't had a coronavirus vaccine before, there's never been a lot of scientific or incentive to develop a coronavirus vaccine. My concern with the rapid test is they may not be accurate enough.”
22:17: INCREDIBLE HUMANS AND ‘GOOD’ GENES
—Kate says that while 2020 has been “really hard, it's just been the most incredible display of where humans are so amazing. You know, because for most people, their individual risk of getting coronavirus and getting it badly is small, but everyone's seen as a society, what we need to do is the best for everyone and made these sacrifices and you know, no other animal is capable of doing that.”
—Sharon asks what it was like working on the frontline in an aged care coronavirus ward.
—Kate: “Personally, it really made me dig deep on my own mental wellbeing strategies, and the way that I apply a lot of what I've learned from my reading, the stuff I've written in my book. to my own everyday life. And so, you know, things like I walked to and from work, which is about four kilometers. And it was really good to have that time to debrief. I actually leaned into exercise, you know, I made sure that I really kept that up. I made sure I had a good sleep routine to be really focused and present with my family.” Coming home to her children was a great circuit breaker: “Children are so amazing at being in the moment and being really present.”
—Sharon says Kate did the oxygen-on-planes technique: “You took care of yourself so you can take care of all of us.”
—Kate: “Yes, self-care isn’t a dirty word anymore. We all go through stressful and hard times in our lives and it is important that we find things that work for ourselves to get us through.”
—Sharon says one statistic in Staying Alive fascinated her: In 1900, we died at the average age of 31 compared to 18 now in developed countries and 71 across the board.
—Kate notes a lot of that was infant mortality, bacterial infections, maternal health. Says her own grandmother would have died if she had given birth 50 years earlier than she did because of placenta previa. Says “public health stuff which is often a bit invisible shouldn’t be dismissed” like understanding cardiovascular risk factors by having blood pressure and cholesterol checks.
—Notes they “seem so mundane. But the things that we can intervene on can improve longevity and decrease the chance of getting chronic diseases. There is a lot of genetics of ageing is really interesting, but I think it's really important that for the vast majority of people genetics are not an absolute sentence to which how you live, how long your life is going to be.”
—Sharon asks how the attitude that health issues are genetic has been perpetuated: “What am I missing here?”
—Kate says while most centenarians do have excellent genes … for the majority of us, you know, when you just look at that life expectancy gain in such a short period of time, that's not our genetics. That's all to do with getting better health measures.” She doesn’t recommend finding out if you have increased genetic markers for dementia: Yeah. And I, you know, even things like whether you get some genes, give people a much more increased likelihood of getting dementia. And you can, you know, say to swap away on your cheek and gone, find out you've got this, generally as it increase your chances: “whether you've got them or not, you still need to eat right, exercise, sleep, challenge your brain. If you've got the lowest risk that doesn't mean you can take up smoking and spend all your life watching Netflix.”
—Both discuss survivor bias.
30:51: THE HEALTH BANK
—Sharon says her endometriosis was a “wake up call” that made her dedicated to her health care: “I've literally spent decades now being as best as I can be in getting the research and being on top of it. I see other people, it's almost like, no matter what happens, they still feel they don't have a say in it.”
—Kate: “One of the fundamental flaws in the whole idea of prevention is that it's an abstract future. None of us actually knows what’s going to happen in 10 years, twenty years. And people don't often articulate that in their everyday choices but we balancing that up and that's why I think it's so much more important to focus on a definition of health that's really present, that's much more about enabling you to engage in your life. That you can physically and mentally do what you want to do and so then it makes it important in the here and now. And you know, my take personally is I'm not willing to make any major behavior changes to my health that I don't get benefits from.”
—Asked by Sharon if she means now, Kate says yes: “You know, things like I'm, I'm very, I'm very active. I exercise a lot, but the thing that gets me up in the morning and going for my walk and my run, isn’t thinking, ‘This is decreasing my chance of dementia.’ It's because I'll be in a better mood after I've done that.”
—Sharon says she agrees and also invests in her health bank for her old age, which Kate says is “fantastic.” She invests in heart health and is fascinated by telomeres, which are the caps at the end of each strand of DNA that protect our chromosomes, like the plastic ends of shoelaces. Without the telomeres, DNA strands become damaged and our cells can’t do their job. As you get older, telomeres shorten.
—Sharon: “And when they get really short, that's the game. So what I've been interested in looking at is research and studies around how to prevent the shortening of telomeres.
—Kate is across the research. “And I think what's really interesting with this is that it's again, the physical factors, but there's also factors linked with psychological trauma. Yeah, they can shorten telomeres as well. They're completely integrated. And you know, even saying something is all in your mind where, you know, your mind is still a part of your body. And I think it's so good, interesting that it gives us this idea of, you know, a measure of what's been going on.”
—Kate adds a small caveat: “We need more longitudinal studies of telomeres. And so there are some studies showing, you know, children who've been under psychological stress have shorter telomeres which is really disturbing, but we, we don't entirely know what that means for their longterm health outcomes.”
—Sharon (“paraphrasing terribly”) says studies showed that they had more chance of heart disease, diabetes, blood pressure, and heart issues.
—Kate doesn’t like to “overly worry” people.
—Sharon finds it “because I did experience trauma when I was younger. And so I found that study empowering because I thought, okay, so these are the things I need to make sure I prevent happening in my life. Which is why I studied positive psychology. It's why I do what I do.” Asks if there is potential that psychology can physically express itself: “What do I need to do to ensure that it's not inevitable and I don’t become the stat?” References an “incredibly empowering digital formation” that made her think, “I just need to lift my game with those areas of my life. So my diet, I just really manage my health, my wellbeing, the whole thing. I'm looking all the time because I don't want the potential to become probable that's the way I look at it.”
—Kate says Sharon has a “fantastic ability to look to the future and make these changes yourself.”
—Sharon asks why that is often the hardest step.
—Kate: “Look, it's interesting. And that's where I think as well with people when I'm talking about is trying to get them to make some lifestyle changes to help improve health and wellbeing. It is often about saying to someone, you know, ‘What's important to you?’ and helping them feel that they are worth doing it for, helping them feel empowered, helping people have motivation to do something that is hard. Because you know, changing habits is hard. Take quitting smoking. Smoking is hugely addictive.
—Sharon asks why it's hard to change a habit: “Is there a pattern there on what people are resisting or what's going on for them?”
—Kate says particularly in health people often have entrenched behaviors and beliefs. “It's not so much saying to someone do your exercise. Everyone knows exercise is good for them. It's saying, you know, what's important to you. If someone says, ‘Well, I love spending time with my grandchildren’, okay, being active is really great for that because then you'll be able to keep up with them. And so it's framing it in people's lives, in what matters to them. What's going to add value each of them. And I can't prescribe that.”
—Sharon says studies are clear that intrinsically motivated people are going to do better than the extrinsically motivated every single time: “I sometimes wonder if people who don't take the actions that are really self-evident, that they don't maybe feel had the same level of hope as others. Maybe I am an optimist! So I wonder if some people who don't take action don't have the level of personal agency or don't perceive themselves as being empowered in that area as much as perhaps others do.”
—Kate: “Oh a hundred percent. And sometimes that comes from life experiences. And, you know, if someone's had a really hard disadvantage childhood, their life experience is that they don't have a lot of agency. And so it can be something that someone's learnt, you know, if someone's been throughout their life, that's in a marriage where they're very much under the control of someone else.
41.46: TELOMERES 2.0
—Sharon asks how we extend telomeres and cites “like, 25 clinical trials … non-supplement, what is it that you would suggest to help increase that?”
—Kate: “One thing with ageing, it is multiple cellular processes.” Says one study she read had experts on ageing “trying to get a consensus statement on what ageing actually is.” Adds that “again, there’s multiple factors happening. You know, our cells are more likely to have DNA errors as we get older. Telomeres might be a bit shorter, which can also contribute to genetic instability. We've got less stem cells, so we're a bit less able toreplenish what we need. We've got more cells that our senescent, which is when they've had some damage. They're no longer replicating, but they're still kind of sitting there, um, affecting all the other cells around them. The thing is they also got some really important roles, so they have roles in tissue healing, and they've even got roles in embryological development. But if you accumulate too many of them with age, they start to cause problems. And so aging really is it's multifactorial and it's related to a lot of really essential underlying biological processes. And so with all of these things that I've looked at in my book, they affect telomeres but they're also going to have effects on other parts of the cellular aging process as well.”
—Sharon loves that Kate wrote about gut health: “I am just the biggest fan.” Raises the “mind blowing” subject of “gut bugs that have their own neurology transmitters.”
—At university in the mid-2000s, Kate wasn’t taught about gut microbiology. “And now we realize that no, actually it is so important. Everything that's going on down there, it's this whole other huge component of health that was a complete mystery to us until very recently. And so your gut bacteria want to make the best home possible for themselves and they do that by producing their own neurotransmitters. They produce their own products that affect our colon cells that make things better for themselves. And so there's all these really interesting links coming out now between gut health and neurological disease.”
—Sharon thinks medicine is catching up on gut health what we’ve been learning other fields. 20 years ago doctors recommended antibiotics for her candida but she chose a different pathway which “gave me amazing health. Am I going too far if I say gut bugs can cause depression, are we there yet on that?”
—Kate says “We’re close. And there's some studies linking a high-quality diet and lots of vegetables, healthy fats, like fatty fish, low ultra-processed foods, linking that with actually being a treatment for depression. My take on things like this is if I have someone with issues like this getting them eating more vegetables is a pretty low risk strategy.”
—The one thing that helped Sharon’s health most was dumping processed food and sugar 20 years ago. I was diagnosed with depression and I was given antidepressants, four different scripts I was given, and I'm not suggesting this to anybody else. My experience with this is reacting to what's going on, not dealing with how I got here. And that's where I made these major changes in my life. It's why I became a coach. Cause I didn't feel empowered with suppressing. And that's when I dumped sugar, processed food alcohol for two years. Um, what else? And up started exercising, what a concept. And I won't say it's gonna work for everyone. This isn't me being a doctor. All the disclaimers here. It's just for me that it was the pathway that taught me so much about how much I can impact me. It was so empowering for me. After years of surgeries with endometriosis and ovarian cysts, it was 20 years, just to empower myself that way was an incredible feeling. Every day I feel gratitude for having my health, knowing what it felt like back then not to have that.”
—Kate: “Having [ultraprocessed foods] as a routine, part of the diet. There's so much evidence now that it's terrible for your health.”
—Sharon doesn’t eat white foods, notably flour and sugar. I’m off white wine because of the sugar. It’s like I have a hangover. I’m kinda grateful I have that.”
—Kate has the same sort of thing but sometimes just wants a piece of birthday cake: “It's weird getting a food hangover, but as well for me, nutrition is such a positive in my life. I love food. I love eating. It's just such an important part of what we enjoy every day. You know, sitting down with my family and sharing a meal. Sometimes we sort of focus so much on nutrition as being this, you know, we’re denying ourselves. When you focus on eating mostly vegetables doesn’t mean you can’t have a lot of flavour and variety.”
—50.14 WHITE OUT!
—Sharon says when you stop adding salt and sugar and trans fats which she hasn’t had in years, food is a little bland for seven days.
—Kate says if she eats ultra processed food it tastes terrible to her but they activate certain reward pathways: “We call it ‘want more’ foods in our house.” When you start eating real food, you realize how much more flavor is actually in that rather than what you thought was flavor.
—Sharon ays Staying Alive walks you through great dietary choices. Asks what you are going to replace unhealthy food with: “Not what are you taking away, what are you going to do instead?”
—Kate says the way we speak to each other about lapses is important. “We'd never speak to our friends in the way we speak to ourselves and focusing on the good things you've done for yourself is so much more motivating and social powerful and not, you know, uh, I had some cake today, that means the day is a write off. It's terrible. No, it just means you had some cake, that's it? You know, it doesn't mean you're a failure.”
—Sharon says making the transition is tough but once you've made it, having the cake gets harder to do because the environment starts looking different.
54.06: INFLAMMATORY ISSUES
—Inflammation is one of Sharon’s favorite subjects when it comes to anti-ageing, a phrase Kate isn’t a fan of because we are all ageing (and Sharon isn’t against it!)
—Kate says the immune system is “so fascinating” and absolutely essential. We need an immune system that is able to have a good inflammatory response to threats … but then we also need it to switch off again.” Says the immune system is impacted by factors including exercise, sleep, stress. When people are older they lose a lot of reserve so things that might not have such an impact on you when you're more robust have a much more significant impact. And we know that people who are frail have higher levels of inflammation, so their bodies seem to be under stress. And it's still a bit of a chicken or the egg type thing of whether it's the inflammation drives ageing or the ageing drives inflammation.”
—Sharon talks epigenetics and genetics.
—Kate notes women generally have stronger immune systems than men. The downside is that women are a bit more likely to get autoimmune diseases. “But all of the things that we think of as know chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, dementia, they're all linked with higher levels of inflammation.”
—Asked the “little things” we can do, Kate says it “comes back to these same simple strategies: getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising and maintaining your psychological wellbeing are all factors that seem to have positive effects on how our immune system.”
—Sharon makes a point of getting in nature every morning. Sharon says her number of infections have plummeted since she’s been healthy: “And I'm looking at what have I done? And it's really, I am moving differently. Moving, taking care of my mindset. So nature being a good friend to me has really helped and I’ve taken care of what I'm putting into my body. So I take care of what I look at, what I think about and what goes in my body.”
—Kate notes Sharon knows what works for her. And that's the thing. This book has got a lot of scientific evidence in it, but it's also got to be how we apply it to ourselves. And it comes back to that really central message that it's, you know, prevention is an abstract concept. We've got to make it matter to us in the here and now we've got to find a way to reconcile wanting good health in the long term with creating joy today. And so we do individual strategies.”
—Sharon says she follows people like Kate on Instagram and people who are older who are examples of taking car of themselves and thriving and striving and are still going for the dream.” Does yoga, as does her mother. “We'll send each other, which yoga class we did that day, little moments like that and developing new habits for us.”
—Kate says there are negative perceptions that somehow people who are older stop having ideas or stop mattering. Discusses David Attenborough, in his 90s, who went on Instagram for the first time and had two million followers in two hours: “I followed him. I think he's amazing. I mean, you know, Jane Fonda, who I was listening to an interview with her recently and she's 82 and her goal was to spend two 82nd birthday in prison, you know, getting arrested for protesting climate change. Like well, living her values. And I thought, well, if they get rid of this idea that people are not as capable, just because I've lived more.”
1.02.26: WHAT DOES A 90 YEAR OLD LOOK LIKE?
—Sharon was asked what someone who is 90 years old looks like in your mind's eye: “And then a bunch of people describe them all they're hunched over and they're frail. No way. They've got their shoulders back. They're out walking with someone and they're real and they're gardening and enjoy it. I think if we have a vision of how we used to be that age, that's what we kind of aim towards.” Notes there are “dedicated areas” in stores for how for how women should dress when they are older. “I’m going to dress the way I feel. There is not going to be a moment when I'm going to make less input and just think a house dress and slippers.”
—Kate says a common trait is centenarians admit they “don’t take rubbish from anyone.”
—Sharon references late US Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and 99-year-old businesswoman Iris Apfel who have “cool characteristics that I admire. They stand for what they believe in, they're not trying to prove anything except how great they can live their lives. They're my heroes. I just think they're fantastic. Who are your heroes?”
—Kate says she spoke to a lot of academic leaders in her field for the book who are “past retirement age and they're still at the absolute top of their field. That's absolutely inspirational to me. ‘Cause that's what I want going forward. My work really matters to me and I wanna be, yeah, I want to keep doing it. “
—Sharon references Kate’s noting towards the end of the book that women are more likely to have symptoms dismissed than men.
—Kate: “It still happens now. I've called out colleagues on unconscious bias as well. And it's one of these things that people in, especially what they call atypical heart attack symptoms, which is really problematic because, you know, if you just say to the population of women, if they don't have the same symptoms, it doesn't make it men and not the norm. So this, that has actually significant impact and women do have longer life expectancy than men, but when having heart attacks are less likely to get the highest standard of treatment.”
—Sharon asks what we are doing to fix that.
—Kate says “there's a lot of work going into it at the moment from the heart disease side of things” and notes what is interesting is “in an emergency department where they had more women, so women tend to be better at diagnosing this in women, but in emergency departments with more women, they teach their male colleagues to get better at it. And so it's one of these reasons, you know, gender equality, but also diversity in medicine is medical training.”
1:07:27: SOLUTIONS
—Sharon talks diet recommendati0ns, blue zones, and how she is “leaning towards the Mediterranean with a little bit of an Asian kind of diet … what are some of the general recommendations you make in terms of what we should be putting on that beautiful platter to connect with family and eat healthily?”
—Kate is very much focused on us eating meals, not macronutrients, and we need to have a holistic approach to food, not a reductive approach.. some people talk, ‘I'm going to cut carbs.’ Well, Carbs are a teaspoon of refined sugar, but carbs, you know, lentils have carbohydrates in it and it can be in the complex chains of carbohydrates that take ages for our bodies to break down. I try and make things really simple and understandable and achievable and nutrition can be spectacularly complex. And the one thing you can take away from the sheer number of diet books is there is no one right solution for everybody. And so what I would say is make most of your day, you know, most of your plate, try and have vegetables on it.
—Sharon has looked at research around plant based diets “which is definitely me” and those focusing on protein. Both are getting great results, “which I find fascinating.”
—Kate says there is more evidence around a plant based diet, and says a traditional Mediterranean diet is not a lot of meat. It’s mainly fish, salad, vegetables. References the Okinawa diet where Japanese people don’t eat a. lot of meat.
—Kate was raised in the 80s and 90s on diets more focused on low fat than the old meat and three veg English fare, which Sahron says “The roast with the Yorkshire pudding in the potato, and then maybe some boiled carrots that had been bloated 20 minutes.”
—Sharon is “full fat, butter, olive oil. I can't gain weight. That's the other thing I find amazing. My weight goes down or stays the same. Olive oil has been the greatest gift from my diet ever. It just makes me feel amazing. Where are you?”
—Kate uses olive oil “all the way” on salads and things and every now and again has nitrate free bacon: “By and large preserved meats are not good.”
—Sharon praises Kate’s sections on sleep, anti-inflammation, the Vega nerve, cortisol levels, the holistic attitude about community and friendship and connection and mental health: “Do you want to talk about that a little bit about how that plays a role in what you're noticing in people who have longevity and feel great?”
—Kate: “Look, the one thing I'd say when people, you know, they've reached their eighties and nineties, when I say what's important to you, they never say, ‘I want to live as long as possible. They always tell me other things going on in their lives, you know, but one story of a man who I saw here, he wanted to get better from pneumonia because he’d always gone dancing with his wife for the last 17 years. And that was what was driving here, mental health. Isn't just the treatment of mental health disorders, like depression and anxiety. And that's obviously really important, but feel positive emotion. And so putting more positives in thinking again of health is not just something, you know, the absence of disease, but something else.”
—Kate says it’s “really important is to distinguish happiness from pleasure. And I think if we just go and seek out pleasure for our entire lives. It's really important to have a little bits of pleasure in our day, you know, but humans, I think we have a deep need for something more than that. And, you know, happiness is this sense of living our values. And when I say people who are older, who are really thriving, that is really integral to their lives.”
—Sharon mentions her masters’ thesis is about hedonic happiness versus meaning happiness. “For me, it's about having a sense of purpose.” She and husband JP have a purpose and value every year “and then actions that are aligned with that and give us joy. So moment to moment decisions become easier, right? Because they're really integral and completely aligned with what we value, what we stand for, what we're fighting for, what we invest in mentally and emotionally.” They bring it alive during lockdown by going to a different city or place at home with food and costumes. “So last session, we went to Balthazar our favorite restaurant in New York. We had French food and French music and I dressed French and he had a French hat on. Um, I think this Saturday we're going to Tuscany a bottle of olive oil delivered from Tuscany. And that gives us a great sense of meaning it's very pleasurable and it does take care of feeling pleasure, but we've really invested in what we care about, which is our intimacy and us being close together, and us feeling that intimacy in a fun, playful, silly way.”
—Kate: “And one thing in a wing people get older, they generally actually get happier.”
1:17:07: PROJECT THREE, SIX, 12
—Asked what it’s about, Kate says it’s women’s health and wellbeing courses specifically aimed at women who are 40 plus, and you want to make some positive changes to their health. So it's got a strength training component. It's got recipes, and it's also got some health education. There are also webinars covering exercise physiology.
—She created it because of the focus on weight loss for women, “and I wanted to focus on people actually getting healthy again. And so trying to make people actually feel that these things are enjoyable and valuable in themselves and to not face a lot of the barriers that women face to looking after themselves.”
RESOURCES:
Dr Kate Gregorevic:
Twitter
Instagram
Staying Alive:
https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760785536/
Doctors who pioneered instrument sterilization:
https://tci.rocks/instrument-sterilization
Endometriosis:
https://tci.rocks/endometriosis
Telomeres:
https://tci.rocks/telomeres
Gut bugs with their own neurotransmitters:
https://tci.rocks/gut-bugs
Candida:
https://tci.rocks/candida
David Attenborough:
https://attenboroughfilm.com/
Jane Fonda:
https://tci.rocks/jane-fonda
Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographyGinsburg.aspx
Iris Apfel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Apfel
Mediterranean diet:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/mediterranean-diet-meal-plan
Project Three Six Twelve:
https://www.projectthreesixtwelve.com/
https://www.instagram.com/drkate_gregorevic/
https://www.instagram.com/macmillanaus/