Culture Trip 60 Over 60: Health And Wellness

Tao Porchon-Lynch refers to herself as ’98 years young,’ which feels accurate when you see what her body can do. Born in India in 1918, Tao studied under master yogis like BKS Iyengar before founding the Westchester Institute of Yoga in 1982. She still teaches classes and workshops, accomplishing physical poses people a fraction of her age struggle to master, and holds the Guinness World Record for Oldest Yoga Teacher.

Ernestine Shepherd’s taut, defined body belies the fact that she’s just shy of 80. She credits her incredible physique to consuming 1,700 calories a day (mainly from eggs, chicken and vegetables), rising at 4am daily to run ten miles, and strength training at least four times a week. The Maryland resident has run multiple marathons and currently holds the Guinness World Record for Oldest Performing Female BodyBuilder.

In 2016 a Japanese cell biologist named Yoshinori Ohsumi won a Nobel Peace Prize for his discoveries of autophagy mechanisms — the process by which a cell eliminates or recycles its components. His research helped scientists better understand the role of this self-management in environmental adaptations (i.e. in the case of food scarcity) and the proliferation of diseases like cancer, when the process goes awry.

It was the death of her mother from a heart attack at age 63 that inspired Suzi Grant — then a ‘chain-smoking, hard-drinking’ reporter — to train as a nutritionist and pen a book called Alternative Ageing. Her blog by the same name is all about empowering older people to look good, feel great, and refuse to be invisible.

Deepak Chopra, 69, moved from India to the USA in 1980, championing an east-meets-west approach to medicine that made him a prominent figure of the new age movement. Thanks to his collaborations with Oprah — including an online 21-day meditation challenge — Chopra has moved beyond alternative health circles to capture the attention of mainstream America.