The most disciplined investors I know rebalance on a schedule. They don’t wait for the market to scare or thrill them. They pick a date, review the portfolio, and adjust. A schedule takes the guesswork out. Your kitchen has a calendar, too. Between October and December, the produce section changes, offering a new mix of flavors, colors, and nutrients. But we are creatures of habit, and by the time it occurs to me to look around to see what's new this season, half of what I bought last week is already in my basket. Eating with the seasons is not a food trend. It is a rebalancing schedule that someone else, Mother Nature, already built for us. The change in season gives us a reason to reconsider what goes in the basket. Think of it as a quarterly rebalance, with something good for dinner at the end. We have a few months of seasonal discoveries ahead, a few new favorites to find, and a shopping list you can screenshot and bring along for the adventure. Why a Fuller Basket Is Worth the Trip Three studies give us good reasons to put a little more thought into the produce basket. They followed people’s eating habits and health, so they show associations rather than proving cause and effect. Five servings, with a ratio A 2021 analysis in Circulation, led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, pooled data on about 1.9 million adults. The lowest risk of death occurred at roughly five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, about two fruits and three vegetables. Compared with two servings a day, five was linked to a 13% lower risk of death from all causes. More than five servings showed no added benefit. Starchy vegetables, fruit juice, and potatoes did not show the same link. Two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables each day give your shopping list a simple starting point. Leafy greens and the brain In a 2018 Neurology paper from Rush University and Tufts, researchers followed 960 older adults (averaging 81 years) from the Rush Memory and Aging Project for about five years. Those who ate the most leafy greens, a median of 1.3 servings a day, declined at a rate equivalent to being 11 years younger cognitively than those who ate almost none. A serving is half a cup cooked or a cup raw. If you take a blood thinner, ask your physician about leafy greens before making any changes, because vitamin K matters in that case. Your physician is your expert. This study does not mean greens turn back the clock, but it is a compelling reason to give kale, spinach, and Swiss chard a regular place on the plate. Variety counts The American Gut Project found that people who reported eating more than 30 types of plants a week had more diverse gut microbiomes than those eating 10 or fewer. Thirty may sound ambitious until you remember that beans, whole grains, nuts, and seeds count alongside fruits and vegetables. Seasonal shopping makes exploring that variety part of the fun! You can keep your favorites and leave a little room in the basket for something unfamiliar. Try a different squash, a purple sweet potato, or a pear variety you have never tried. Let the season introduce you to your next favorite. The Four-Color Basket Before you check out, look at your basket to ensure it includes at least one green, one orange, one red or purple, and one pale or white item. That is the whole system. If your basket has four colors, you have almost certainly rotated through different plant families. A Budget Benefit Seasonal abundance often brings better prices and more specials. When you buy locally grown produce, you also support farmers close to home. October: The Handoff October is the month summer hands the portfolio to fall. The sturdy vegetables arrive, and the last of the tender ones linger. At the market Fruit: Apples Pears Grapes Pomegranates Cranberries Figs Persimmons Dates Vegetables: Pumpkin Winter squash Sweet potatoes Brussels sprouts Broccoli Cauliflower Beets Carrots Parsnips Turnips Celery Leeks Mushrooms Artichokes Eggplant Hot and sweet peppers What makes October’s picks worth trying The cabbage family (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts) carries vitamin C and vitamin K along with fiber. Orange produce like pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and carrots supplies carotenoids, the pigments your body can convert to vitamin A. Grapes and pomegranates bring polyphenols, plant compounds that researchers continue to study for heart and brain health. Something to try this week: roast a sheet pan of Brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes at the start of the week. You now have two colors ready for every meal. November: The Slow Pot Season The days shorten, and the produce gets sturdier and sweeter. This is the month for winter squash and for anything that wants to simmer. In the market Fruit: Apples Pears Cranberries Pomegranates Persimmons Grapes Kiwi Dates Oranges Grapefruit Lemons Vegetables: Delicata (sweet winter squash you don’t have to peel) Acorn Butternut, and kabocha squash Pumpkin Kale Swiss chard Green and purple cabbage Brussels sprouts Broccoli Cauliflower Carrots Beets Parsnips Turnips Radishes Celery Leeks Shallots Mushrooms Artichokes Sweet potatoes (try the purple sweet potato) Potatoes What makes November’s picks worth trying Kale and Swiss chard are your leafy greens, the category tied to the Rush findings we explored earlier. Leeks and shallots add depth of flavor, making it easier to eat more vegetables without feeling like you are trying. Winter squash keeps for weeks on your counter, which makes it the most forgiving item in the basket. Make it simple: A big pot of soup with squash, carrots, leeks, and kale makes a lovely Sunday project, with enough to set aside for the week. By Wednesday, dinner is already waiting. December: A little winter brightness with citrus Citrus arrives! Oranges, grapefruit, and mandarins bring bright color and fresh flavor to December’s basket. Root vegetables and hearty greens round out the selection, ready for warm soups, roasted sides, and winter salads. At the market Fruit: Oranges Grapefruit Tangerines and mandarins Lemons Limes Kumquats Pomegranates Pears Apples Cranberries Vegetables: Kale Collard greens Brussels sprouts Beets Red cabbage Sweet potatoes Leeks Cauliflower Parsnips Carrots Rutabaga Turnips Winter squash in every variety, including butternut, acorn, honeynut, kabocha, delicata, and spaghetti More than just good taste Citrus is a reliable source of vitamin C, and December is when it tastes the best. Collard greens and kale keep your leafy green serving alive through the holidays. Roots like parsnips, rutabaga, and turnips are inexpensive and store well, so they protect your budget in a spending-heavy month. Two ways to enjoy December’s produce Slice an orange into a kale salad with red cabbage and pomegranate seeds. That is four colors on one plate! Add collard greens or kale to a hearty 15-bean and ham pot of soup Fuel for the result you want to see Ask any good advisor about a goal, and the first question you get back is: What is this money for? Some dollars have a one-year job. Others have a twenty-year job. Every serving on your plate has a job too, so before you fill the basket, decide what you want it to do. Changes in skin, hair, and energy over the years are common and usually gradual, shaped by many factors at once: sleep, hormones, genetics, stress, medications, and what you eat. Food is one lever. No single food changes things overnight. Patterns repeated over months do the work. Your fall basket can support more than a good dinner. Here are a few ways to connect what you enjoy eating with what your body needs. For skin nourishment Walnuts and other fall-harvest nuts, flaxseed, olive oil, avocado, fatty fish like salmon or sardines, and water Why: your skin is built from protein and supported by dietary fats, and fluids matter alongside them For collagen support Citrus, kiwi, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, pomegranate, sweet potatoes Why: your body cannot make vitamin C, and it needs vitamin C to build collagen, the protein in your connective tissue. The orange and red items add carotenoids, the pigments we covered in October For hair health Eggs, Greek yogurt, lentils, beans, and fish contribute protein, the building material for hair. Lentils also provide iron, and pumpkin seeds add zinc. Sudden or persistent shedding deserves a conversation with your physician, since nutrition is only one possible factor. Why: hair is made of protein, and low iron can play a role in shedding for some people. If shedding is sudden or persistent, ask your physician to look at iron, thyroid, hormones, and medications before you change your shopping list For digestive regularity Beans, lentils, pears, vegetables, and whole grains bring fiber and variety to your meals. If you are adding more fiber than you usually eat, build up gradually and include fluids along the way. There is plenty of overlap here, which makes shopping easier. You do not need a separate menu for every goal. A varied basket can serve several purposes. The Stuffed Date If our last newsletter inspired you to try dates, remember that they are in season in the fall, which makes them the perfect carrier for this idea. Slice one open and fill it with walnuts, almonds, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, or a little peanut butter. The filling pairs their natural sweetness with fat or protein for a satisfying snack. Dates are sweet and concentrated, so a couple can go a long way. Whether any one filling changes your hair or skin depends on the whole pattern of your month. The pairing is a smart snack, and the pattern is the strategy. Try out Brie + finely diced apple, topped with toasted walnuts and a drizzle of honey Mascarpone + orange zest, topped with chopped pistachios and cinnamon Goat cheese + cranberry chutney, topped with toasted pecans and a little fresh rosemary Cream cheese + pumpkin butter, topped with crushed gingersnaps or pumpkin spice Dates are a delicious way to enjoy the fall! A Note on Where You Live These lists offer a general guide, but the seasons follow a slightly different calendar depending on where you live. Your local farmers’ market can help you discover what is being harvested nearby. “What’s good this week?” is always a useful place to start. A screenshot of the three monthly lists makes a handy shopping companion. There is no need to try everything. One unfamiliar ingredient might be enough to make dinner more interesting. If you follow a prescribed diet or take medication affected by certain foods, check with your care team about any significant changes. The Fall Rebalance Just as we rebalance a portfolio to support our financial goals, we can rebalance what we eat to support the life you want to enjoy. This fall, that can begin by making room for a new favorite. There is pleasure in paying attention to what the season offers, bringing it home, and finding a reason to gather around the table. That is how we broker age into strategic advantage, one walk down the produce aisle and one dinner at a time. BROKERAGE™ | Investing in Longevity

What This Weekend Just Did to Your Biology This past weekend, we lost an hour as the clocks moved forward. Most of us woke up Sunday, shrugged, and made coffee a little earlier than normal. But our bodies didn’t shrug, nor did they shift with the clock. They’re still on the old time, and they will be for days. Daylight saving time, in the most precise biological sense, is a forced disruption of your circadian rhythm. The spring change moves the light-dark cycle forward by one hour overnight, causing an immediate mismatch between your internal clock and the outside environment. Morning light now comes an hour later than your biology expects. Evening light lasts an hour longer into what your body still perceives as night. The result is a kind of social jet lag: your physiology is aligned with one time zone, while your calendar follows another. Research on this effect on the body is clear. Studies published in Current Biology and cited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine show a noticeable increase in cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, right after the spring transition. Traffic accidents go up. Cognitive performance declines. Inflammatory markers increase. The same process occurs every night when artificial light delays your melatonin signal. The circadian clock loses its reference point, causing the hormonal, immune, and metabolic systems that rely on that timing to start drifting. Here's what makes this relevant beyond just this week. The spring shift is sharp and noticeable. You can feel it. But for most high-achieving adults, a quieter version of the same disruption occurs every night, all year long, driven not by a government order but by the light environment inside the home. The clocks changed once. The screens stay on every night. The Signal Your Body Is Waiting For Here is something I find both fascinating and a little funny: the people most committed to optimizing their health, the ones tracking HRV, adjusting macros, and logging their Zone 2 minutes, are often the same people who bring their glowing screens to bed at 11 p.m. and wonder why they wake up tired. I am not judging. I do it too. But the biology is worth understanding, because the fix is simple. There is a biological clock running inside every cell of your body. It is not metaphorical. It is molecular. Encoded in a group of genes, including CLOCK, BMAL1, PER, and CRY, this circadian system governs the timing of nearly every physiological process in the body. Hormone release, immune activity, cellular repair, metabolism, and cognitive performance all follow its rhythm. For most of human history, this clock was calibrated by a single reliable input: the arc of natural light across the day. Sunrise triggered alertness. Cortisol rose. Core temperature climbed. Metabolism activated. Then, as the sun descended and darkness arrived, the signal reversed. Melatonin began to rise, temperature dropped, and the repair window opened. Today, that signal often doesn’t reach us. Not because the biology has changed, but because the environment has. What the Research Reveals The eye contains specialized photoreceptors called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or ipRGCs. Identified and characterized by researchers David Berson and Samer Hattar in the early 2000s, these cells are sensitive to short-wavelength blue light, peaking around 480 nanometers. They are the main pathway between the light environment and the brain’s master clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus. When ipRGCs detect blue-spectrum light in the evening, they signal the suprachiasmatic nucleus that it is still midday. Melatonin secretion from the pineal gland is suppressed. The physiological cascade that prepares the body for deep, restorative sleep is delayed or sometimes disrupted. Research Note: A landmark 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that reading on a light-emitting device before bed suppressed melatonin by more than 50 percent, delayed sleep onset by nearly an hour, and reduced morning alertness the following day, even after a full night of sleep. The result is not simply that you fall asleep later. The architecture of sleep itself changes. Slow-wave sleep, the phase during which growth hormone is released, synaptic consolidation occurs, and cellular repair is most active, is compressed. REM cycles are disrupted, immune consolidation is impaired, and inflammatory cytokines, which are markers of systemic inflammation, are elevated in people with chronic circadian disruption. You might sleep eight hours and still wake up tired. The problem isn't how long you sleep. The problem is when you sleep and the light around it. The Cumulative Biological Cost Acute sleep disruption is recoverable. The body is resilient in the short term. But chronic circadian disruption, the kind produced by years of evening light exposure and delayed sleep timing, accumulates as biological age. Research from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and other groups shows that circadian disruption accelerates several hallmarks of cellular aging. Telomeres shorten more quickly, mitochondrial function declines, and autophagy (the cellular cleaning process that removes damaged proteins and organelles) becomes less efficient. In animal models, sustained circadian disruption shortens lifespan even when total sleep time remains the same. Cortisol, which should be lowest in the late evening, stays elevated in disrupted circadian environments. When cortisol remains high at night, melatonin is suppressed, and insulin sensitivity declines. Over time, this hormonal mismatch contributes to the metabolic dysfunction that accelerates biological aging, regardless of diet or exercise habits. Research Note: A 2019 study in Current Biology found that even moderate exposure to artificial light at night was associated with an increased risk of obesity, independent of diet, physical activity, and socioeconomic status. This suggests that circadian disruption is a metabolic variable in its own right. Why This Cohort Is Particularly Exposed High-performing adults are disproportionately impacted by evening light exposure due to structural factors closely linked to their work and lifestyle. They often work late, use screens to unwind after busy days, and travel across time zones, which worsens circadian disruption. In the hour before sleep, they review the day, reply to messages, and prepare for the next day. These are not careless behaviors. They are the echoes of the habits that built the career. Those habits, which helped establish the career, now extend the workday longer than the body can sustain. Our bodies, notably, do not care how impressive the email was. Over decades, the effect compounds. Cumulative sleep debt, suppressed melatonin production, elevated evening cortisol, and reduced slow-wave sleep begin to add up. By the time many high-performing adults reach their fifties and sixties, this pattern represents a meaningful biological liability that is rarely recognized as such. The Interventions The interventions for managing evening light range from effortless to structural. The evidence supports all of them. Blue light blocking glasses, worn after sunset, filter the short-wavelength light before it reaches the retina. The research on their effectiveness is mixed but generally positive, and the cost is minimal. Amber lenses block most blue light and require almost no behavioral change. You simply put them on. Ra Optics | Glasses That Make You Feel Good Swanwick Blue Light Blocking Glasses: Boosts Your Wellbeing – Swanwick Sleep Changing the lighting in your home is another option. Bulbs below 2200 Kelvin produce warmer light and remove much of the blue spectrum. Once the bulbs are changed, the intervention runs in the background. Smart lighting system timers can shift automatically at sunset and operate almost invisibly. Amazon.com : lighting science goodnight bulb A simple screen curfew can also help. Ending screen use thirty minutes before bed allows melatonin to begin rising on schedule. For those unwilling to stop screens entirely, enabling night mode or warm screen settings reduces, though does not eliminate, blue light exposure. f.lux: software to make your life better Candlelight and firelight are not nostalgia. Their spectrum sits almost entirely in the amber and red range, producing little circadian signal. In the most literal sense, they are biologically appropriate light for the evening hours. For most of human history, fire provided the evening light. People gathered as the sun set, and the flames took the place of daylight. This warm glow signaled to the body that the day was ending. It told the nervous system to slow down and get ready for sleep. Our bodies still recognize that signal. The Spring Edit Remove one source of evening light this week and pick the one with the least resistance and most daily exposure. It could be the overhead kitchen lights that stay bright until 11 pm, the phone you bring to bed, or the home office screen that remains on during the evening. One removal, applied consistently, and biology will take it from there. It has been waiting for the signal. In biology, light is not decoration. It is instruction. More resources to dive into: Books: The Inner Clock – Lynne Peeples Life Time Indoor Epidemic by Dr. John La Puma | Healthy Living, Wellness & Nutrition Expert | Dr John La Puma Research: Exposure to room light before bedtime suppresses melatonin onset and shortens melatonin duration in humans - PubMed Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness - PubMed The inner clock—Blue light sets the human rhythm - PMC Influence of evening light exposure on polysomnographically assessed night-time sleep: A systematic review with meta-analysis - C Cajochen, O Stefani, I Schöllhorn, D Lang, SL Chellappa, 2022 Afternoon to early evening bright light exposure reduces later melatonin production in adolescents | npj Biological Timing and Sleep

Ten things worth reviewing before and during retirement. Planning for the years ahead involves more than the number on an investment statement. Through your work with Matt and Lori, you have likely discussed many, if not all, of the topics below. Let’s take a closer look at the everyday details within those conversations. A home repair allowance becomes more useful when we know how much life is left in the roof. Planning for healthcare becomes more specific when we ask about the crown our dentist has been watching or what our hearing coverage actually covers. Think of this as a companion to the planning you are already doing, with ten things to check, price, schedule, or update, wherever you are in retirement. Readiness is a whole balance sheet, not a single number. Make Sure Your Car Is Reliable Your car takes you to the people and places that make up your life. Give it a closer look. I’m asking you to look beyond “it seems to be running fine.” A trusted mechanic can help you distinguish routine maintenance from expensive repairs that may be on the horizon. Ask specific questions: How much life is left in the tires and brakes? Is any major scheduled maintenance due? What repairs are likely in the next few years, and what might they cost? You want enough detail to assign realistic numbers and timing to car expenses. Consider how well the vehicle suits the way you expect to use it. Is it comfortable on longer drives? Is it easy to get into and out of? Can you see clearly, reach the controls comfortably, and load whatever you regularly carry? A dependable car that makes every outing a minor inconvenience deserves consideration, too. If a replacement is on the horizon, bring the estimate and your likely timeline to your next appointment. Together, you can consider how keeping, repairing, or replacing it fits your plan, including whether to pay cash or finance. Reliability is the goal. Shiny is optional. The check: Have a mechanic assess your car, price any upcoming work, and consider whether it still suits your daily life. If replacement makes sense, review the cost and timing with Matt and Lori. Evaluate Major Home Repairs Walk through your home like an inspector. Look at the roof, the HVAC system, the water heater, the plumbing, the electrical systems, and the major appliances. We get remarkably good at living around things: the faucet with a personality, and the air conditioner we encourage through August. Give all of those things a closer look. Start with what you know. Gather installation dates, service records, and warranties. Then have qualified professionals assess the systems you are unsure about. Ask what needs attention now, what can reasonably wait, and what a replacement might cost. Age is a useful clue, but condition matters. Something does not need replacing simply because it has reached a certain age. Put the information in one place: the item, its condition, the estimated cost, and the likely timing. Separate routine maintenance from major repairs and optional renovations. A leaking roof and a kitchen you would enjoy updating deserve separate entries on the list. Consider your plans for the house. How well will it serve you in the years ahead? Look at the stairs, lighting, bathrooms, and entrances. Would the layout work if you were recovering from surgery or needed help for a few weeks? How much upkeep do you want to manage, and how easily can you reach the people and places that matter to you? A home can be beautifully maintained and still ask more of us than we want to give it. Your plans to stay or move should guide these decisions. If you are already planning a renovation, consider whether the same project could make daily life easier. Better lighting, a more accessible entrance, or a more accessible bathroom may be worth including in the design now. The goal is a home that supports how you want to live. Anticipate the expenses you can and leave room for those you cannot. A water heater may still surprise you on a Tuesday. Ideally, its replacement cost will not. The check: Review major systems, likely repair costs, and timing. Identify any changes that would make the home easier to live in and maintain. Outline your plans to stay or move. Plan for Hearing and Dental Needs Add hearing and dental appointments to your calendar. Ask your dentist what needs attention now, what may need attention in the next few years, and what can reasonably be monitored. If you have noticed changes in your hearing, schedule an evaluation. If you wear hearing aids, ask about their condition, ongoing service, and likely replacement needs. The goal is to replace vague possibilities with useful information. These expenses support what we want to keep doing: continuing the conversation, enjoying a meal, traveling comfortably, and spending time with the people we love. They deserve consideration alongside the plans they make possible. Then check what your coverage will actually pay. Original Medicare does not cover hearing aids and generally does not cover dental care such as cleanings, crowns, and implants. Some Medicare Advantage plans offer hearing and dental benefits, but the details vary. “Dental included” is a promising phrase, but it is not a cost estimate. Look closely at covered services, provider networks, annual limits, and your share of the bill. Whether retirement is ahead of you or already underway, review your insurance coverage before scheduling major dental or hearing care. If your coverage is changing, compare the benefits of each plan. Get a written treatment plan and estimate, and ask your clinician which needs prompt attention and which can safely wait. Let your health needs guide the timing, and have a clear understanding of the costs. The check: Know your anticipated hearing and dental needs, their likely timing and cost, and what your coverage will actually cover. Develop a Long-Term Care Plan Listen, this is the line item everyone would rather skip. “We’ll figure it out when the time comes” is an understandable response to long-term care. It is also a lot to ask of a future Tuesday. I approach this subject as both a gerontologist and a family caregiver. I know how personal these decisions are. Planning ahead gives us more time to consider what we want, what is available, and what we can afford before an immediate decision is needed. Start with the practical questions. If you needed help, where would you prefer to receive it? Could your home accommodate that care? Who could coordinate services, manage appointments, and make decisions if you were unable to? If family members are part of your plan, include them in the conversation. “My daughter will help” warrants a discussion with your daughter about what that would actually involve. Then put numbers behind the possibilities. Matt and Lori are your experts in exploring long-term care funding and coverage options, including eligibility, premiums, benefits, and the impact on your financial plan. I’ll help you understand housing and care options, their costs, and how care needs associated with different conditions may affect those expenses over time. Together, those conversations help connect the care you want with a plan to pay for it. Please complete Five Wishes and discuss it with the people who may someday need to speak for you. Five Wishes is a plain-language advance directive that covers more than medical orders. It asks who should speak for you, what treatment you would or would not want, how comfortable you want to be, and what you want your loved ones to know. It helps you express who you want to make healthcare decisions, which medical treatments you would or would not want, and what matters to your comfort, dignity, and the people you love. These preferences deserve a place alongside your financial plan. The check: Meet with Matt and Lori to discuss funding and coverage. Complete Five Wishes, discuss your answers with your chosen decision-maker, and ensure the document is accessible. You can keep the documents you complete in your AdviceWorks portal. Invest in Everyday Comfort This is the line item that gets skipped because it feels like an indulgence. We will research a hotel mattress before booking a three-night stay, then spend another year sleeping in the valley of our mattress at home. Look at the things you use most. Do your shoes make you want to walk? Is your favorite chair still comfortable, or merely familiar? Are your glasses helping you see well, and do they look like something you would choose today? These purchases deserve a place in your budget because they support what you want to keep doing. Comfortable shoes make a walk more inviting. Well-fitting glasses make reading more enjoyable. A supportive chair lets you settle in with a book and get up again without negotiating with the furniture. A better fit, an adjustment, or a thoughtful replacement can improve something you do hundreds of times a year. That is a respectable return on an ordinary purchase. Did you know? If you walk 10,000 steps a day in the same athletic shoes, you could reach their typical replacement mileage in just two to four months. They may still look presentable long after the cushioning has done its best work. The check: Review your mattress, walking shoes, eyewear, and everyday furniture. Start with the change you would most appreciate. Review the Debt You Carry Ask whether the debt you carry still earns its place in your plan. A mortgage or other loan may have been a deliberate choice to preserve cash or support another priority. That reasoning may still hold. The key question is whether the arrangement continues to make sense for your income, resources, and plans today. Review each balance, interest rate, required payment, and payoff date. Know whether the rate can change or whether a substantial payment is approaching. A loan that has been quietly on autopay still deserves an occasional check-in. Give a low-interest mortgage its own consideration. Paying it off can reduce monthly obligations, but it also uses money that would otherwise remain available. Before making a substantial payment, consider where those funds would come from, any tax consequences of accessing them, and what you might need that money for later. The decision deserves a look at both sides of the balance sheet. Your preferences belong in the conversation, too. Some of us value having fewer monthly commitments. Others prefer to preserve accessible funds and carry a manageable payment. Either choice should fit the broader plan and leave room for changing circumstances. The goal is to understand what each debt costs, what it allows you to do, and whether that trade-off is still worthwhile. The check: Review the purpose, cost, and terms of each debt. Confirm which debts you intend to retain or pay down, and how those decisions affect your cash flow and available reserves. Never hesitate to ask Matt or Lori to review your debt. Build an Accessible Cash Reserve A strong portfolio is reassuring. Knowing which money you can use next week answers a different question. An accessible cash reserve gives you room to respond when an expense arises at an inconvenient time. It may reduce the pressure to sell investments in an unfavorable market or to make a hurried decision about how to cover an unexpected bill. That flexibility matters beyond the numbers. If you need help at home while recovering from surgery, for example, available funds can give you time to explore care options and make arrangements. Money you can readily use helps preserve your choices. Start by separating foreseeable expenses from genuine surprises. A renovation already on the calendar needs its own funding. Counting the same dollars toward both that project and your emergency reserve makes the cushion look more generous than it is. The appropriate amount depends on your spending, dependable income, anticipated withdrawals, and other commitments. Coordinate the reserve with your overall financial plan, including how much should be available for everyday spending and how much should be set aside for unexpected needs. Then make “accessible” practical. Know where the money is held, how quickly you can access it, and whether any restrictions or penalties apply. If someone may need to manage bills on your behalf, grant the appropriate authority in advance. After using the reserve, have a plan to replenish it. A reserve earns its place by giving you more control over when and how you use your remaining resources. The check: Confirm your reserve target, what it is intended to cover, how to access it, and how you will replenish it. Make sure planned expenses and emergency needs do not rely on the same dollars. Update Your Estate Documents A will can sit quietly in a drawer for twenty years while the family it describes changes significantly. Review your will, trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, and beneficiary designations. Do they reflect your current life, the people you trust, and your wishes? Estate planning also concerns the life you are still living. A financial power of attorney authorizes someone to act on your behalf, while healthcare documents address medical decisions and preferences. An estate attorney can explain how these documents work together and whether they provide the authority someone would need to help you. Look closely at the people you have named. Is each person still willing and able to serve? Have you named a backup? Someone who was the obvious choice fifteen years ago may now live far away, have substantial responsibilities, or need support themselves. Being named in a document should come with a conversation, not a surprise assignment. Review your beneficiary designations directly with the institutions that hold your accounts and policies. Updating your will does not update those forms. Ask your attorney to confirm that your documents, account ownership, and beneficiary designations align as intended. Then make the paperwork usable. Could the person you have chosen find what they need and understand where to begin? Organize current documents, essential account information, recurring bills, and contact details for your attorney and financial professionals. Include instructions for locating important digital records and for obtaining authorized access. Revisit these arrangements after a significant change in your family, health, residence, or the availability of a person you have named. This is practical capital: making your wishes clear and giving the people you choose the information and authority to carry them out. It is also a considerable kindness to anyone who may one day need to help. The check: Confirm that your documents and beneficiary designations reflect your current wishes. Ensure the people you have chosen understand their roles, know where to find essential information, and have the authority to act. Review Your Insurance Coverage Insurance decisions often outlast the circumstances that shaped them. A policy purchased while raising children, building a business, or paying a mortgage may still be in place years after those responsibilities have changed. Take a fresh look at what you own, what you need to protect, and the coverage you carry. Have property values or major possessions changed? Does your liability coverage reflect your current circumstances? Does each of your life insurance policies still serve its intended purpose? The goal is to understand how the policies fit together, identify any gaps or overlaps, and determine whether the coverage still makes sense for your life today. The check: Schedule an insurance review and confirm that your coverage reflects your current property, responsibilities, and priorities. Before your homeowners insurance renewal, ask an agent to shop your coverage for competitive pricing. Develop a Social Security Claiming Strategy Your last day at work and your first Social Security payment do not have to fall on the same day. One deserves a celebration. The other deserves some calculations. If you have not yet claimed, confirm how Social Security fits into your retirement income plan. Your own retirement benefit can generally begin as early as age 62, but claiming before full retirement age reduces the monthly amount. Waiting beyond full retirement age increases that benefit through delayed retirement credits until age 70. No additional delayed retirement credits are available beyond age 70. Start with your actual numbers. Review your earnings record and benefit estimates, then compare several claiming dates. Ensure the estimates reflect when you expect to stop working, as assumptions about future earnings can affect the projections. Then consider what will fund the years before you claim. If you delay, will living expenses come from savings, investment withdrawals, part-time work, or another income source? A larger future benefit deserves consideration alongside the resources needed to reach it. If you are married, consider what the decision means for both of you, including the income available if either spouse dies first. Have spousal and survivor benefits reviewed together, as their rules differ. If you plan to work while collecting benefits before full retirement age, understand how earnings could affect your payments. Your health, income needs, family circumstances, and preferences all belong in the discussion. Someone else’s claiming age is a topic for conversation over dinner. It is not a strategy for choosing your own. You do not have to sort through these choices alone. Matt works with a Social Security specialist and can help you schedule an appointment to review your benefits, compare claiming options, and explain how they fit your circumstances. Before you file, you should understand your options, the trade-offs, and what your decision means for your retirement income. The check: Review your earnings record and benefit estimates, compare claiming dates, and coordinate Social Security with your retirement income, work plans, and spousal or survivor benefits. BONUS: Create a Bucket List You have reviewed the accounts, the insurance, and the paperwork. Now, for a list that is considerably more fun to complete. What would you like more of in your life? What have you been meaning to do? A bucket list asks what we want to make room for. The grand trip belongs here. So does learning Italian, having a standing lunch with a friend, or spending an afternoon with our grandchildren without checking the time. Think about what you want an ordinary week to include. What do you want to learn? Who would you like to see more often? Is there work, volunteering, or a project you would enjoy giving your time to? Whether retirement is ahead of you or already underway, these questions deserve a place alongside the financial ones. Write these things down, then consider the money, time, and energy they will need. Otherwise, the calendar has a remarkable ability to fill itself with things nobody particularly looked forward to. The things we look forward to also deserve a place in the plan. The check: Write down three things you would like more of in your life. Put one on the calendar, whether that means booking it, inviting someone, or taking the first step. “Someday” is notoriously hard to find on a calendar. What It All Makes Possible An investment statement can tell us what we have accumulated, but it cannot tell us whether the house is ready, the care plan is realistic, our wishes are clear, or the people we love know what to do. That is why this review matters. Planning for what we can anticipate helps protect reserves for what we cannot. It also leaves fewer decisions for a moment when time is short and our options may be limited. At BROKERAGE™, we look at the rest of the balance sheet, too: our biological, psychological, social, and practical capital. The capacity to participate. The confidence to make decisions. The people we can count on. The arrangements that make everyday life work. These assets help us leverage everything we have spent years building. You do not need to check every box by Friday. Choose one. Walk through the house, open the document folder, make the appointment, or revisit a conversation with Matt and Lori. Some of this may already be settled, and some may deserve a fresh look. The value is in knowing which is which. And give that bucket list the same attention. The trip, the standing lunch, the thing we keep meaning to learn: these deserve a place in the plan alongside the expenses. We have spent years asking whether our money will last. Let’s give equal attention to what we want it to make possible. After all, isn’t that what all the planning was for? To Read More ● Medicare.gov, What's not covered? | Medicare

This week’s newsletter began with a cup of tea, far off the beaten path. About an hour into our drive, we left the paved road behind. The traffic and smog of Cairo gave way to a dirt road lined with date palms, as dense as the pine trees in East Texas. We followed it for another half hour, then traded the car for a mule-drawn cart and continued another twenty minutes into the grove. Getting there was becoming as interesting as the dates I had come to see. It was magical. Beneath the canopy, what caught my attention was the quiet. The occasional laugh of children and soft conversation among the harvesters were the only sounds I heard. I found myself listening as closely as I was looking. September marked the start of harvest season, and I had arrived in time to witness it. For once, my timing was perfect. I watched them climb the palms barefoot, secured to the trunks with straps and carrying baskets. They shook the ripe dates into the baskets, then made their way down. There was no machinery in the harvest, just practiced skill. People have been gathering and eating dates for the last 7,000 years. Watching the work by hand made that history feel a little less distant. The gentleman who welcomed us had grown up on the property. Over tea, he explained the date varieties, the harvesting process, and the care of the palms. I had come to see the harvest, and I was beginning to appreciate everything that went into it. I shared what makes dates remarkable from a nutritional perspective. He showed me how simply they fit into everyday life. We each had something to teach the other, in the most beautiful classroom I’ve ever been in. Before There Was Biohacking, There Were Dates Dates had a place in Egyptian life long before longevity had a marketing department. Standing in that palm grove, I wondered how often we overlook the ordinary in pursuit of the extraordinary. A food’s age does not prove its benefits, but several thousand years at the table deserve our attention. Sometimes the next thing worth trying is something we stopped noticing. In Sennedjem’s tomb near Luxor, painted more than 3,250 years ago, palms appear beneath scenes of him and his wife cultivating the Fields of Iaru, an Egyptian vision of the afterlife. Here, they belong to a landscape of abundance imagined beyond this life. Tombs are full of art that includes dates. I find it fascinating that before anyone could describe a date’s fiber or identify its polyphenols, people gave its tree a place in their art. Now we have different tools for understanding the fruit, but it still deserves a closer look. What Makes Dates Great Dates give us sweetness with something useful attached: fiber, potassium, and other plant compounds. The fiber supports digestion, and potassium helps our muscles and nerves work. They’re convenient, satisfying, and need very little fuss. Standing in a palm grove, watching a harvest with roots reaching back thousands of years, something became clear. A date offers more than the sweetness we notice first. This ancient fruit reminds us that sweetness and nourishment are not opposites. In a date, they arrive together. We have become very sophisticated about looking for the next thing that might help us age well. A supplement, a device, a protocol. I am curious about those things, too. But beneath the date palms outside Cairo, I found myself considering how much attention we give to what is new, and how little we sometimes give to what is enduring. Here was something ancient and simple, gathered by hand. Watching the harvest felt like looking into the world of the pyramids. It made me wonder what we overlook when we expect progress to arrive in a new package. Perhaps our enthusiasm for biohacking could make a little room for the basics. There is something compelling about a food that requires no reinvention to deserve our attention. Sometimes we need to look more closely at what we already have. Being ancient does not prove that a food is good for us. That is where the research comes in. But dates had earned my curiosity. Before I went looking for the next discovery, I wanted to understand what had been growing on those palms all along. Why This Matters for How We Age I find myself thinking about longevity differently when I step away from the research and watch how people live. We study it through blood tests, research papers, and increasingly sophisticated technology. But we also live it through ordinary decisions about what to eat, how to move, and what we make time for. Beneath the palms outside Cairo, I watched people gathering a food that had been nourishing generations long before anyone measured a glycemic index. I could not tell from one morning in a grove how that food influenced anyone’s health or lifespan. What I could see was continuity: a familiar food, skilled hands, and a harvest that still had a place in daily life. It made me think about the difference between knowing what might support our health and making it part of how we actually live. As a gerontologist, I am interested in what we can keep doing, enjoying, and participating in as the years accumulate. That is the healthspan connection. Food belongs in that conversation because eating is something we do every day. It is an opportunity to care for ourselves that also happens to involve lunch. The challenge is making that care practical enough to repeat. We can become so absorbed in optimizing our health that we turn an ordinary meal into another assignment. I would like us to leave room for foods we enjoy, understand what they offer, and find simple ways to include them. That is why dates caught my attention. They are familiar, versatile, and require very little of us in the kitchen. Their place in this newsletter rests on a straightforward question: what can they contribute to the way we eat? To answer that, we need to move from the grove to the biology. The Biology of a Whole Fruit Here is the part that surprises people. A food can taste very sweet without having a high glycemic index. Dates are a good example. In a 2011 study published in Nutrition Journal, researchers measured the glycemic index of five date varieties in thirteen healthy adults and ten adults with well-controlled type 2 diabetes. Average values ranged from approximately 46 to 55 in the healthy participants and 44 to 53 in those with diabetes, placing the tested varieties at or near the upper boundary of the low range. Their blood glucose response was lower than after an equivalent amount of carbohydrate from pure glucose. That is encouraging, but low glycemic index does not mean no effect on blood sugar. The amount we eat still matters. Another study Evaluation of some nutritional quality criteria of seventeen Moroccan dates varieties and clones, fruits of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) examining seventeen varieties found a wider range of values, so we should not assume every date behaves identically. Part of the explanation lies in composition. The sugar in a date does not arrive alone; the fruit also contains fiber. Dates contain both glucose and fructose, and fructose produces a smaller immediate rise in blood glucose than glucose does. The researchers pointed to fiber and fructose as contributors to the relatively low glycemic index they observed. Sweetness tells us how a food tastes. It does not tell us the whole story of how our bodies respond. That is why it helps to look beyond the sugar content and consider the food, the portion, and our own response. More Than Sweetness Dates carry polyphenols, including flavonoids and phenolic acids. These plant compounds show antioxidant activity in laboratory studies, although the amounts and activity vary by variety and ripeness. That makes them worth studying, without assuming that eating dates produces the same effects inside our bodies. They also contribute fiber, potassium, and magnesium. Potassium and magnesium help our muscles and nerves work and participate in blood-pressure regulation. These are useful contributions to our overall diet, though having those minerals does not establish that dates themselves lower blood pressure. The fiber does another job lower down. It supports bowel function. In a small human study, participants who ate seven dates, approximately 50 grams, daily for three weeks had more frequent bowel movements than during the comparison period. Researchers did not detect significant changes in the gut bacteria they measured, so describing dates as a proven microbiome booster would get ahead of the evidence. Dates offer more than sweetness. They give us fiber, minerals, and plant compounds in one ordinary food. That is enough to earn our attention without asking a date to do the work of an entire diet. The Case for Giving Dates a Chance My sense is that dates have a familiarity problem. Many of us weren’t raised eating them, so they rarely make the grocery list. We may associate them with holiday baking, mistake them for prunes, or simply wonder what to do with them. And frankly, a wrinkled brown fruit competing with beautifully packaged snacks could use better representation. Then there is the sweetness. We take one bite and assume something that tastes like caramel must require an explanation. Dates do contain plenty of natural sugar, so portions matter. But as we have seen, the sweet taste is only part of what we are eating. Standing in that grove, I began to think about dates less as an indulgence and more as a food with something to offer. Perhaps being delicious had made me underestimate them. We can enjoy the sweetness and still get something useful from what we are eating. Nutritional Data for a Date For one large Medjool date, pitted, approximately 24 grams: Nutrient Amount Calories 66 Total carbohydrate 18 g Natural sugar 16 g Fiber 1.6 g Protein 0.4 g Fat 0.04 g Potassium 167 mg Magnesium 13 mg Calcium 15 mg Iron 0.2 mg These are approximate values; size and variety affect the amount per date. Pustaka Medjool The nutritional value comes from the combination of nutrients, rather than a large dose of any one nutrient. A Date Has Range A date can be enjoyed just as it is, served alongside something else, or folded into a recipe. Its caramel-like sweetness works surprisingly well with salty, tangy, and savory flavors. Start simply. With a walnut or almond: Tuck a nut into a pitted date for crunch alongside the soft fruit. The nuts add unsaturated fat, a little protein, and additional fiber. With unsweetened nut butter: A spoonful of almond or peanut butter makes a creamy filling and adds protein and fat. Check the label if you want to keep added sugar out. With cheese: Goat cheese brings tang; a small slice of aged cheddar brings a sharper, salty contrast. Both contribute protein and calcium. In plain Greek yogurt: Chopped dates add sweetness and texture to a protein-rich breakfast. Add walnuts if you like a little crunch. In a salad: Scatter chopped dates over greens with cucumber, walnuts, and a lemon dressing. Small pieces carry sweetness through the salad without needing a sugary dressing. In oatmeal: Stir in chopped dates while the oats cook so they soften and sweeten the bowl. Oats contribute additional fiber; milk or plain Greek yogurt can add protein. With tea or coffee: A date makes a simple accompaniment to an unsweetened cup. Put it on a small plate, sit down, and give the pairing a moment. Perfect Pairings for a Date A Medjool date needs very little fuss. Split it, remove the pit, and add one or two ingredients. Stuffing Simple finishing touch Brazil nut Leave it plain or add a little dark chocolate Walnut half A pinch of cinnamon Pecan half A few flakes of sea salt Whole almonds A little unsweetened shredded coconut Pistachios Chop them and press into the center Cashews Leave plain or pair with dark chocolate Peanut butter A pinch of sea salt Almond butter Cinnamon or a few cacao nibs Cashew butter A little unsweetened coconut Goat cheese Chopped walnuts Cream cheese One or two blueberries Cottage cheese Cinnamon Ricotta A little orange zest Dark chocolate Tuck a small piece inside with an almond Here are some simple recipes for you to try out! And more date recipes if you want to find other inspiration! An Investment Hiding in Plain Sight Standing in that grove, eating a date straight from the tree, I was reminded how much attention we give the next discovery and how little we sometimes give what is already within reach. Dates have been part of human diets for thousands of years. Their history invites a closer look before we pass them over for something with a launch date and a subscription. Being in the palm grove made me pay attention to the fruit itself, and to the considerable human effort behind something I could eat in two bites. In investing, novelty and value are different questions. The same judgment belongs at our tables. Before adding something cutting-edge to our longevity portfolio, we might take inventory of what we have overlooked. Sometimes a good investment has been within reach all along. This one happened to be hanging from a palm. Keep investing in longevity.

We are about to enter the holiday season. I’d like you to think about the upcoming family gatherings. Families usually notice subtle shifts before a parent says a word. Someone sees Mom reach for the counter when she gets up. Someone notices the second trip to the doctor that never got mentioned, and someone saw that Mom took the long way around the rug. Nobody announces, I think something has changed. But the room has already registered a change. You know what happens next. The potatoes are passed, and the conversation moves on. That gap, between what is witnessed and what is admitted, is where falls quietly become dangerous. Half of Falls Are Never Mentioned to a Doctor Here is a number that should stop us. Only about half of falls are mentioned to a doctor. Not half tell no one. Half tell the one professional whose entire job is to catch this early. A fall is not a private event. It is a family system event. Keep in mind that the silence is not stubbornness, and it is not vanity. It is one of the most human instincts there is. Our instinct is not to be a burden. We don’t want to be managed. We don’t want to watch the people we raised start speaking to us in the careful voice used for the fragile. Falls prevention material tends to treat the conversation as logistics. It is not logistics. It is identity. And that is exactly why it gets avoided. The people around us matter Falls prevention is not something we have to do alone. The people around us are often in a position to notice small changes we may not see ourselves, sometimes well before a fall ever happens. The Falls Free materials lay out how to actually have the conversation, and the moves are smaller than people fear: Start small and one-on-one. One trusted person, one honest sentence about a worry. Not a family intervention around the kitchen table. Be specific about the help. "Can you come with me to the medication review" is easier to say and easier to answer than "I need help." Bring the family into the facts. Upcoming appointments, current medications, and yes, any fall that already happened and what came after it. Keep talking. One conversation is almost never enough. Needs change, and the door has to stay open Be assertive about the home. Removing a throw rug or adding a grab bar is a shared project, not a confession of decline. Many of you know I became a family caregiver long before I became a gerontologist. I remember noticing how quickly a stumble or a fall could change the way everyone around someone behaved. Suddenly it was, I’ll get that. Let me carry this. Don’t take the stairs. I’ll do it for you. It comes from exactly the right place. We want to keep someone we love from falling again. But preventing the next fall isn't always about removing movement. Sometimes it is about preserving it. If we carry the plate, get the mail, bring the laundry upstairs and remove every reason to reach, stand, carry, walk or climb, we may also be removing small opportunities to use the very systems that help prevent a future fall. That doesn't mean we ignore risk. Anchor or remove a loose rug. Fix a poorly lit staircase. Help should be there when help is needed. But there is a difference between making an activity safer and making it disappear. Sometimes protecting someone from the next fall means changing the environment. Sometimes it means making sure our desire to protect them doesn't quietly take away the movement that helps keep them steady. When Safety Becomes Shared For families supporting someone with cognitive decline, the stakes climb, because the person may not be able to self-report a hazard or remember to go slow. Changes in memory, attention, judgment, visual-spatial processing or reaction time can make it harder to recognize a hazard, remember what happened, or explain why something suddenly feels different. NCOA's guidance for these caregivers is refreshingly grounded: focus on what you can control. You cannot control the disease. You can control the lighting, the clutter in the walkway, the routine and how you approach the person. When it comes to fall safety, it does not matter whether the person is fully oriented to the present moment. What matters is your tone of voice, the words you choose, and the empathy you bring. The goal is not to make the person understand the risk. It is to make the environment safer when they cannot. The goal is keeping them upright. “Be careful” shouted from across the room may not be nearly as useful as walking over, making eye contact and saying, “I’m right here. Let’s do this together.” That is not just kindness. It is part of creating an environment in which the person has the best chance to use the abilities they still have. The people doing the noticing need a plan too. Not a plan for taking over, but a plan for knowing when to step in, what to change around the person, and when the best thing they can do is simply stay close. I have watched this happen in memory care. A resident starts to stand, becomes uncertain, and reaches for whatever is closest. The instinct is for a caregiver to call across the room, “Wait! Be careful.” But I have also watched what happens when someone walks over instead, gets into her line of sight, says her name, offers a hand and gives her a moment to understand what is happening. She settles. She looks up. Then they safely stand and walk together. Nothing about her fall risk changed in those few seconds. What changed was the way she was supported through the moment of risk. Sometimes fall prevention isn't another instruction to “be careful.” Sometimes it is another person slowing down enough to help someone move safely. The Conversation Is the Intervention I want to reframe the question, because "talk to your family about falls" sounds like a chore, and it is not. I should also share that, as I write this, I'm reacting to the thought of sharing my falls with Cullen and Avery. I feel that my fall is my business. Truth is, my falls will be our business. If you are the one who had the fall, mention it. Even if you weren’t hurt. Even if you know exactly what you tripped over. Even if it seems too small to bring up. Let the people around you have the information. Bring in the people who love you before the crisis, not after. And if you are the one doing the noticing, notice out loud. Gently, early, and more than once, without turning every hand on a railing into a family meeting. Sometimes the most useful sentence a caregiver can make is simply, “I noticed that. Have you noticed it too?” That opens a very different conversation than, “You need to be more careful.” Falls prevention is personal, but it doesn’t have to be solitary. The people around us can notice things we cannot see from the inside. They can help us make an activity safer without automatically taking it away. And sometimes they can connect a few small dots before those dots become a fall. The conversation is not about taking away independence. It is one of the ways we protect it. SOURCES Nabors E, Ring V, Zahm K, Vafiadis D. (2026). "The 2025 National Falls Prevention Action Plan." Clinics in Geriatric Medicine. doi:10.1016/j.cger.2026.08.001 National Council on Aging. "Let's Talk About Falls: 5 Easy Ways to Talk to Your Family and Friends About Preventing Falls." Falls Prevention Awareness Week handout, 2023. National Council on Aging. "6 Steps to Help Prevent Falls in Older Adults." Falls Free Initiative, 2024. Krisher A. (2026). "How Caregivers of Older Adults with Dementia Can Help Prevent Falls." NCOA Center for Healthy Aging

Here is the honest truth about your body. It will not mail you a yearly notice telling you where you stand and what to shore up. You have to ask for it. And the genuinely good news is that asking takes about five minutes this week, and it costs nothing. Falls prevention is not one big fix. It is a maintenance system we should run on a schedule. Step One, Get Your Number Before you change a single thing, get a baseline. NCOA's Falls Free CheckUp is 13 short questions about your history, your balance, your medications, and how steady you actually feel. It gives you a personalized risk score and next steps at the end. That is your starting point. Begin there, today, at https://www.ncoa.org/tools/falls-free-checkup/ Why start with the number? Because we cannot manage what we have not measured, and because the questions themselves will surface risks we might have stopped noticing. The Six Steps, Ordered by Leverage NCOA gives six steps. I want to give them to you in the order I would actually run them, highest-leverage first, because a flat list makes everything look equally urgent and it is not. Build strength and balance. This is the one lever that adds to the account instead of just protecting it. Find a balance and exercise program through your local Area Agency on Aging, a senior center, or a YMCA. Find one you like and take a friend, because the one you attend beats the perfect one you skip. Review your medications. Sit down with your doctor or pharmacist and go through everything, prescription and over-the-counter. You are checking for side effects that affect balance or blood pressure. Take medications only as prescribed, and never adjust them on your own. Check vision and hearing every year. A dilated eye exam once a year catches the changes that steal depth perception. A hearing test protects the balance system most people do not know they are losing. Update your glasses. If you wear bifocals, tuck your chin to look through the distance portion on stairs and curbs. Make your home safe. This is the highest-return afternoon you will spend. Clear tripping hazards, throw rugs, cords, and clutter. Add bright, non-glare bulbs and nightlights in the bedroom, bathroom, and hallway. Put a chair in the bedroom for dressing. Add a grab bar and a shower seat. Keep daily items between waist and shoulder height so you are not reaching or climbing. Talk to your family. Falls don't belong to an age group. Bring the people who know your routines, notice changes, and see things you may not into the plan. Keep the conversation going. Keep the baseline current. Re-run the CheckUp and the eye and hearing exams yearly. Drift is normal. Catching it early is the whole game. Routines can check the system. Matt and I have had a version of the same morning ritual for years. Two chairs, coffee, and, especially when the children were still at home, a few quiet minutes before the day got loud. We would work through the day ahead, what each of us had coming up, and the occasional, “Have you considered…?” It wasn't a meeting. It was simply a rhythm we built into an ordinary morning. We never called it a system. It was just something we did regularly enough that important things had a place to surface. I think about fall prevention the same way. The things that keep us steady are easier to protect when we don't wait for a problem to remind us to check them. The One Thing, If You Only Do One Thing If the list feels like a lot, do not do the list today. Do one thing. Take the check up this week and let your score tell you which step to run first. I want you to hold on to something worth remembering on the hard days. A single day is a data point. What matters is the pattern. You are not going to fall-proof your life this afternoon, and you do not have to. You should find your number, read it, and make one move. Then another tomorrow, next week, and next month. Make Movement Part of the Day There is something I really like about the Blue Zones approach to movement: much of it doesn't look like exercise. People walk. They garden. They take the stairs. They carry things. They get up and down. Movement is woven into the architecture of the day rather than saved for the hour we call a workout. There is good sense in that. But when we are specifically talking about protecting ourselves from falls, I would add something to it. We need to practice the movements we want our bodies to keep being able to make. Current exercise recommendations include aerobic activity, strength training and balance work. So yes, walk. Garden. Carry the groceries. Take the stairs when you can. But also give your balance and strength a little deliberate attention. Here is a simple place to start: ● Walk. Take a brisk 10- to 20-minute walk. Outside is wonderful, but the hallway, treadmill or grocery store counts too. ● Get out of a chair. Sit down and stand back up 8 to 12 times. If you can do it safely without using your hands, even better. That ordinary movement asks quite a lot of your legs. ● Step up. Using a stair or low step, step up and back down 8 to 10 times on each leg. Keep a railing or sturdy support nearby. ● Rise onto your toes. Holding a counter or sturdy chair if needed, slowly rise onto your toes and lower back down. Try 10 to 15 repetitions. ● Carry something. Groceries count. So do dumbbells. Choose a manageable load and walk with it for 30 to 60 seconds. Carrying asks your legs, core, grip, and posture to work together. ● Challenge your balance. Stand with one foot directly in front of the other, or on one leg if that is appropriate for you, with a counter or other sturdy support within reach. Try 20 to 30 seconds on each side. Then keep looking for the little repetitions hiding inside your regular day. Get the mail. Carry the laundry. Take the stairs. Stand up from the chair. Walk while you are talking on the phone. Put something away yourself instead of asking someone else to get it. None of those things feels particularly impressive. That may be precisely the point. The body doesn't know whether you called it exercise. It knows what you asked it to do. And if we want our bodies to keep catching us when we lose our footing, we need to keep giving them opportunities to practice strength, balance and movement before the moment we need them. Why Any of This Is Worth an Afternoon Because the scale of this is not small, and because it is not fixed. Among adults 65 and older, a fall leads to an emergency room visit every 11 seconds. More than 95% of hip fractures are caused by falls. And yet the entire premise of Falls Prevention Awareness Week, the reason the message reaches more than 17 million people each year, is three words long. Falls are preventable. So, get your number this week. Read it. Make one move. That is how we broker age into strategic advantage. Take the check up: https://www.ncoa.org/tools/falls-free-checkup/ SOURCES National Council on Aging. Falls Free CheckUp (13-question falls risk self-assessment tool). ncoa.org/tools/falls-freecheckup National Council on Aging. "6 Steps to Help Prevent Falls in Older Adults." Falls Free Initiative, 2024. ncoa.org/FallsPrevention National Council on Aging. "Avoid Falls at Home: 5 Easy Ways to Make Your Home Safer" and "5 Ways Taking Care of Your Vision and Hearing Help Lower Falls Risk." Falls Prevention Awareness Week handouts, 2023. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hip fracture and falls data, cited via NCOA Falls Free CheckUp. National Council on Aging. "Falls Prevention Awareness Week 2025 Impact Report."

It is Falls Prevention Awareness Week, and I want to talk about the part of falling that almost never makes the checklists. Not the rug, not the lighting, and not the grab bar. Let’s focus on what happens afterward. Here is what I have watched happen, over and over. Someone has a fall. Maybe they are not even hurt. But something shifts. They hold the railing a little longer. They skip the evening walk. They stop going to the thing across the uneven parking lot. Every one of those choices feels careful. Every one of them makes sense. Something happened, and the brain took note. But those small decisions can lead somewhere if nothing interrupts them. It is one of the most studied patterns in falls research, and it does not go the way most people would guess. The Fear of Falling Is a Risk Factor in Its Own Right I want to be careful here, because the fear of falling is not something we should simply try to talk ourselves out of. The fear is rational. After a fall or even a near-miss, becoming more cautious makes sense. But caution can quietly become restriction. People who fall, even those who are uninjured, may develop a fear of falling. That fear can lead them to limit their activities. Reduced activity can lead to weakness, and weakness increases the likelihood of a future fall. We can call this the activity-restriction spiral: A fall, or even a near-miss, with or without injury A fear that is completely understandable Fewer walks, fewer outings, less standing, less reaching Muscle and balance quietly deconditioning A higher chance of the next fall, which can deepen the fear Each step is measurable. Here is the part that really matters: each step is addressable. This is not a trapdoor. It is a loop, and loops can be interrupted at any point along the ring. I think about our bodies’ aging a little like an airplane flight. We spend so much of our lives climbing, like that long ascent when I’m patiently waiting for the flight attendant to bring me a nice, crispy Diet Coke. Then the plane levels off. There is a little bounce, a little settling, that moment when you realize you are no longer ascending, but you are not descending either. I want us to live on that bounce for as long as we can. This is where falls prevention becomes about much more than preventing a fall. Sometimes we begin giving up capacity because we are afraid of losing it. That is how we can start the descent before our bodies actually require it. I don’t want my fear to make decisions for my body before my body has made them for me. Why the Alarm Outlives Its Usefulness Fear is not the enemy. Fear is information. After a fall, your nervous system does exactly what it is built to do. It takes note of the threat and tries to protect you from encountering it again. That alarm serves a purpose. But our brains are very good at remembering what frightened us, and not always as good at recognizing when the circumstances have changed. The ankle heals. The hazard gets fixed. Strength returns. The alarm may still be there. The trouble is that the alarm sounds louder than the actual threat. What began as useful caution can start influencing what we are willing to do long after the immediate danger has passed. The distinction matters. The goal is not to ignore fear. The goal is to keep checking whether the alarm is responding to the risk in front of us today, or the memory of the risk that was there before. That is what makes this the hardest of the four lenses to see from the inside. No one wakes up and decides to become less capable. We simply begin choosing, little by little, the version of the day that asks a little less of us. What I Would Like You to Notice I am not going to tell you to stop being afraid. That is not how fear works. I would like you to notice something smaller. I would like you to notice the trade you are about to make each time you choose the easier version of a moment, and to ask one honest question. Am I protecting myself, or am I pulling back further than my body actually asked me to? Sometimes the honest answer is that you genuinely need to sit this one out. Sometimes it is not. The goal is not to push through something that is unsafe. It is to make sure the restriction matches the actual risk. If concern about falling is keeping you home or changing how much you move, that is worth a conversation with your physician. The goal was never to feel no fear. The goal is to stay in motion for as long as our bodies allow. Sometimes that means pulling back. Sometimes it means finding a safer way to keep going. And sometimes it means recognizing that our perception of what we can do has changed before our actual capacity has. The strategy is knowing the difference. SOURCES Nabors E, Ring V, Zahm K, Vafiadis D. (2026). "The 2025 National Falls Prevention Action Plan." Clinics in Geriatric Medicine. doi:10.1016/j.cger.2026.08.001.

Last week, getting off a boat at the Temple of Philae in Egypt, our guide said, “Watch your step.” I didn’t hear him. I was one missed sentence away from a twisted ankle, a fall, and potentially the start of an injury cascade in another country. It was that simple. The very steps I almost tripped on at the Temple of Philae in Egypt! This week is Falls Prevention Awareness Week. Every year the National Council on Aging uses it to say one quiet, hopeful thing to millions of us: there are things we can do to reduce our risk of falling. I want to start somewhere small. Think about the last time you reached for a railing you did not used to need or paused at the top of a dark staircase a few seconds longer than you once did. Most of us have had moments like that. And most of us file it under clumsiness, distraction, or a bad night's sleep, and move right along. I would like you to file it somewhere else. Staying upright isn't a skill we either have or lose. It is the result of several systems working together: our eyes, inner ear, muscles, and blood pressure, each one of them shifting a little with age. Often, those changes are gradual and almost imperceptible. A fall is an indicator of how ridiculously fast our bodies have to solve a problem. What Is Actually Happening When You Lose Your Footing Think about what happens when your foot catches the edge of a rug. Before you have time to think, I’m losing my balance, your brain is already taking in information from your eyes, inner ear, feet, and joints, figuring out where your body is in space, and asking your muscles to make a correction. Most of the time, they do. What usually happens is we take that funny little recovery step, straighten ourselves up, and keep walking as though nothing happened. That little save is balance Balance is not one system. It is several systems working together, very quickly. All of our systems drift a little with age, and each drift is normal on its own. No single change is usually enough to make us fall. What matters is what happens when several small changes begin to overlap. Vision: Depth perception softens, contrast fades, and the eyes adjust to dark more slowly. The Falls Free materials are blunt about it: your eyes and ears are key to keeping you on your feet. Hearing and the inner ear: Hearing and balance are closely connected, although not quite as simple as “hearing declines, and therefore balance declines.” The vestibular system in the inner ear helps tell the brain where the head is in space and whether it is moving. Hearing loss can also mean missing information from the environment. Remember, I learned that firsthand when I didn’t hear the guide say, “Watch your step.” Muscle and flexibility: This is where we have enormous leverage. Strength, balance, mobility, and flexibility are the holdings you can add to at any age. That is why the first of NCOA’s six steps is a balance and exercise program. Blood pressure: Stand up too fast and pressure can drop. It's a shift called postural hypotension. It is a common, documented reason why falls tend to cluster in the early morning. Medications: This is the line-item most of us miss. A drug that helps one system can pull margin from another, and side effects that increase fall risk are common enough that reviewing your prescriptions with a doctor or pharmacist is its own step. Never stop or change a medication without talking with your clinician first. The Instinct to be Careful If you have felt a little less sure on the stairs, or reached for the wall in a dark hallway, that is useful information. These shifts can be gradual, and gradual changes are easy to accommodate without giving them much thought. You take the elevator instead of the stairs. You shorten the walk. You choose the smoother path instead of the uneven one. Each decision makes sense on its own. We are trying to be careful. But here is where psychology gets interesting. When we ask less of our balance, strength and coordination, those systems get less practice. Muscles can lose strength. Reactions can become slower. Balance gets fewer opportunities to do exactly what we need it to do: recognize that we are off course and make a correction. What begins as reasonable caution can quietly become an activity-restriction spiral. More than one in four adults 65 and older reports a fall every year, and a first fall doubles the risk of a second. Read that again. The single biggest predictor of a fall is a fall you already had. That is not a reason to do less. It is a reason to pay attention sooner. A stumble, a wobble, or a fall gives us information about where the system may need support. The goal is not simply to become more careful. It is to keep our bodies as capable as possible of catching us when being “careful” isn’t enough. We Are Already There I understand why a piece about falls can feel premature. If I saw the title, I might think, Not for me. I’m not there yet. The truth is, we are already there. Falls prevention does not begin when we become unsteady. It begins much earlier, while we are building and maintaining the systems that will one day help keep us on our feet. That means some of what you are reading here belongs just as much to the twenty-somethings in our lives as it does to us. Strength built now matters later. Balance challenged now matters later. Vision and hearing protected now matter later. The habits that preserve capacity compound too. So, I am not going to hand you a to-do list here. Where your specific number is, and the exact order to rebuild in, belongs in the practical piece in this series. What happens when concern about falling begins to change how much we move deserves its own piece too. This one has a single job: to change what you think a fall is. A fall is a drawdown across systems you may not have been watching. And the good news lives in that same sentence, because many of those systems are not fixed in place. They respond. You can add to them. You can protect them. And you do not have to wait for a fall to start. We will age. That part is not up for negotiation. Whether we age with margin or without it is the part we still hold the pen on. SOURCES National Council on Aging. "6 Steps to Help Prevent Falls in Older Adults." Falls Free Initiative, 2024. ncoa.org/FallsPrevention National Council on Aging. "5 Ways Taking Care of Your Vision and Hearing Help Lower Falls Risk." Falls Prevention Awareness Week handout, 2023.

The question I hear most often is some version of, "What do I need to know?" We want to know what's coming and what deserves our attention. I’m always curious about what’s worth acting on now and what can wait for more research. The honest answer is usually, "There's a lot you need to know." While I enjoy a deep dive into a single topic, I've come to believe we don't always need long-form articles to learn something worthwhile. Matt knows this better than anyone. When he spends a few minutes at my desk, he never makes it out without a question. He sees a paper here, a folded page there, and the next thing I know, he’s texting me a “remind me to ask you about…” and that usually becomes our dinner conversation topic. That's the idea behind What’s on My Desk. I’d like to give you a glimpse of what has my attention right now. I’d like for you to know the book I’m looking forward to reading, the research I think is worth following, the podcast that is teaching me something new, and the small action I’m going to take that I’m hoping we can all take together. Think of it as pulling up a chair in my office and glancing at what's on my desk. You don't need to read everything I read. That's my job. I promised to be your curator. My goal is to help you identify things worth your time, translate science into something useful, and every now and then inspire you to try something new. Welcome to my desk! Click these button below to read the content: Thank you for pulling up a chair. Looking back at the pile, it strikes me that almost none of it promises a breakthrough. A book about cells most of us have never heard of. A podcast that keeps saying we don't know yet. One class of medications that may turn out to be the exception. A week spent counting vegetables. That's the nature of this work. Nobody builds a portfolio on one spectacular position. They build it on ordinary decisions, made consistently, compounding quietly while everyone else chases the headline. Health and life both work that same way, and the timeline is more forgiving than we've been told. We spend our lives managing assets we can replace. This one we can't, which is exactly why it deserves the same attention.

Count Plants, Not Calories This week's challenge is almost embarrassingly simple. Count your plants. Not calories, not carbohydrates, not grams of protein. Just how many different plant foods you eat over the course of a week. The goal is thirty. Fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and yes, the herbs and spices you scatter across dinner. We’ve included PDFs containing the full breakdown of what counts and how to tally it. Here's my confession. As a longevity expert, I don't know my number. If I’m not at 30, I think I’m pretty close, but I've never counted. I’ll also share that I've watched some of the world's leading nutrition experts sit on conference panels, and when someone asks whether they're getting thirty, they smile and admit they aren't sure. I love that answer. It reminds me that knowing about nutrition and measuring your own habits are two very different things. Most of us assume we're doing fine. Knowing is better than assuming. The thirty comes from the American Gut Project, which found that people eating thirty or more different plant foods each week tended to have a more diverse gut microbiome than those eating fewer than ten. A diverse microbiome has been associated with better metabolic, immune, and digestive health. Thirty isn't a magic number. The principle underneath it is what matters. Research tells us that variety matters. Curiosity matters too. So this week, don't worry about eating perfectly. Don't worry about whether you'll make it to thirty. Just find out where you are. I'm doing the same thing, and I have no idea where I'll land. Maybe you'll surprise yourself. Maybe you'll spot a few easy places to add more variety. Either way, at the end of the week we'll each know something we didn't know before, which is worth more than a perfect score. We'll have a baseline. That's where meaningful change begins. This week, let's count. Why it's on my desk and why it’s worth trying this week: The first step toward improving anything is understanding where you stand today. Let's find our baseline together.

The Podcast That Cuts Through the Headlines I carry a healthy skepticism of headlines. One week they say coffee is good for us. The next week it isn't. Eggs are in. Eggs are out. A supplement gets hailed as the next breakthrough, then quietly questioned a few months later. That's why Science Vs has earned a permanent spot in my car. Host Wendy Zukerman and her team of researchers and fact-checkers take a topic everyone's already arguing about and ask what the evidence actually says. They’ve covered protein, creatine, menopause, fasting, forever chemicals, raw milk, AI companions, and many others that dominate news and social media. What I appreciate most is that they aren't trying to convince you of anything. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it's not. Often, we just don’t know yet. I find myself drawn to people willing to change their minds when better evidence arrives. That isn't a weakness. That is good science. Science Vs is available wherever you listen. Not sure where to start? Here are some interesting episodes to check out first: Caffeine: How Much Is Too Much? Seed Oils: Should You Switch to Butter? The Real Anti-Inflamatory Diet Why it's on my desk: It treats “we don’t know yet” as a finding, rather than a failure.

Brain Defenders: Harness the Power of Your Immune Cells to Protect Your Brain for Life by David Perlmutter You all know I'm fascinated by the question, “How do we protect our brains long before something goes wrong?” That's why I've been waiting on Dr. David Perlmutter's newest book, Brain Defenders, which is out this month. For years, we've thought about brain diseases by focusing on the neurons that die. Dr. Perlmutter asks us to look somewhere else entirely, at the brain's immune cells, called microglia. Think of them as your brain's first responders. When they're working well, they protect, repair, and clean up damage. When they're chronically activated by inflammation, poor metabolic health, environmental exposures, or other stressors, they can begin harming the very brain they're built to defend. It's a real shift in thinking, and one that may reshape how we approach Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, depression, and healthy cognitive aging in the years ahead. What I appreciate most about Dr. Perlmutter's work is that he doesn't simply describe science. He asks an empowering question. If lifestyle influences these remarkable cells, what can we do today to help them protect our brains tomorrow? That's exactly the kind of question I want us to ask! I'm including a sneak peek of Chapter One with this newsletter because I think you'll find it as interesting as I did. And because I believe this conversation is so important, I'd love to send you a copy of the book! If you'd like one, text me (713) 899-1384. Why it's on my desk: We've spent decades studying the cells that die. This asks about the ones that were supposed to keep them alive: the microglia.