Healthy Habits for Women Over 50: Know Your Numbers, Then Live Your Life

Have you noticed how much longevity has become its own industry? Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I hear about full-body scans, extensive blood panels, IV infusions, new supplements, and memberships that promise to measure almost everything happening inside us. Women ask me what I think of them, whether they should be doing more testing, and whether they're falling behind if they aren't. My answer always starts in the same place, which is to talk with your physician and decide together what makes sense for you. I understand the interest, because I want to know what's happening with my own bone density, muscle, and heart as I get older, and some of that testing is incredibly useful when there's a reason for it. I just don't think testing is where the healthy habits for women over 50 that make the biggest difference begin.

So I want to show you what my evenings look like, because I think they say more than any list of services could. They follow the same unremarkable pattern most nights, built from an early dinner, a quiet house, a few minutes on the floor, and a warm bed. None of it would make a good brochure, and nobody is selling a membership around it. I'm usually in bed around 9:15, and further down I'll walk you through each step and why it matters.

I recently had dental surgery that took more out of me than I expected, and with several follow-up appointments still ahead, I knew I needed to think ahead and anticipate some future fatigue. My energy was low that day. I still saw a couple of clients in the afternoon, but I knew the evening would need to be about bringing my system down from the stress of the procedure, so I gave  thought to how I would spend it.

I started with a mild warm shower to help my body relax. I prepared a simple light dinner, and I took vitamin C to support healing.

Normally I would get down on the floor to roll out and stretch, but the pressure in my jaw made that uncomfortable. Instead, I placed a ball between my shoulder blades and leaned into it against the wall, which helped release some of the tension I’d been carrying since the surgery.

After that, I sat on my meditation pillow with my back resting against the bed for support and let myself breathe naturally, without trying to control it. I wanted to keep the evening easy.

I went to bed early and started banking my hours, knowing I would probably wake up several times during the night.

On a night like this one, I kept the same goal of calming my system before bed and simply changed the tools to fit what I could comfortably do.

At 67, I ask a lot of my body. I strength train, hike, mountain bike, garden, and travel, and I work with clients, run my businesses, and take care of my family. I want the energy and physical freedom to keep doing all of it, and over the years I've learned that what I do at night has a great deal to do with what my body can give me the next day. Longevity, to me, is about more than adding years to my life, because I care a lot about the condition I'm in when I reach those years. Before asking what else I should buy, test, or measure, I find it more useful to ask how well I'm taking care of the body I already have.

What Most of the Benefit is Made Of

Some of the strongest longevity research points us toward habits we have known about for a long time. A large prospective cohort study that followed more than 120,000 American adults for several decades looked at five lifestyle factors: not smoking, keeping a healthy body weight, getting at least 30 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous activity, drinking alcohol moderately if at all, and eating a good-quality diet.¹ Women who kept all five at age 50 were projected to live about 14 years longer than women who kept none of them, which is a remarkable difference for habits that need no appointment and no membership. The study measured lifespan rather than healthspan, the years we stay healthy and independent, and sleep wasn't one of the five factors. In my experience it's the one that holds the others together, because it's very hard to train consistently, eat well, or keep a steady weight on short, broken nights.

When Keeping Track Starts to Feel Like Worry

This is where I part ways with much of the longevity world, even though I'm not against testing. What concerns me is a pattern I see in women who start out wanting to take good care of themselves and end up watching every number and wondering whether there's another test they should be asking for. Another blood panel, or a marker sitting slightly outside the range, can turn into weeks of worry, and that worry often shows up in the body as tight shoulders and broken sleep, something I wrote about in When Pain Is Telling You More Than Where It Hurts. Over time, the body starts to feel like something to monitor rather than something to live in. I don't want to spend the next twenty years of my life looking for evidence of what might go wrong, because I want to live those twenty years.

My approach is to get the screenings that are appropriate for me, know the numbers that matter, keep a good relationship with my physicians, and pay attention when something changes. Testing has real value when there's a reason for it. A DEXA scan can tell you what's happening with your bone density and lean muscle in a way the bathroom scale never could, and I explain how to prepare for one in my post on Ozempic and muscle loss. A woman with a diagnosed condition, a strong family history, unusual symptoms, or a medication to manage belongs in the right medical care. If you snore loudly, wake up gasping, or can't sleep no matter how carefully you set up your evenings, that's a conversation for your doctor, because a better routine won't solve it. My concern is only with testing that replaces the daily habits instead of supporting them, or that leaves a woman more anxious than informed. Once the right checks are in place, I go hiking, meet a friend for lunch, take the trip, and lift my weights.

Why I’d Choose The Tai Chi Class

You can go somewhere once, have a treatment, and walk out feeling terrific. Perhaps it helped, or perhaps part of what felt good was simply taking time for yourself, and there's no way to know yet whether the benefit will last. Compare that with taking a Tai Chi class once a week, where you learn to slow your breathing, shift your weight, and control your balance, and you leave with a skill you carry with you. You go back every week, even when you're busy and would rather stay home. That's the harder choice, and it's the one that changes how you move. The same is true of strength training, walking, mobility, eating well, and sleep, because their value comes from repeating them week after week.

After more than 30 years of working with women, I've become far more interested in what someone can sustain than in what she's willing to try. The women I see doing well over time have slowly put together habits that suit their body and their life, they adjust when something stops working, and they don't jump ship every time someone in their circle discovers something new. When you want to change something, choose one habit and give it time to settle before adding the next. Move dinner a little earlier, go to bed 30 minutes sooner, or add one strength session a week and keep it there until it belongs in your schedule. Our bodies adapt to what we repeatedly ask them to do, and trying to change everything at once usually means nothing sticks for long.

My Evening, Start to Finish

I don't think of my evening routine as separate from my training, because it's what makes the next day's training possible. First comes a hot shower after work and walking my dog. Dinner comes early enough that my body has time to digest before I lie down. The house gets quieter as the evening goes on, I dim the lights, and I usually choose something calm to watch or read so the last hour of my day isn't more stimulation. Then I get down on the floor and spend about ten minutes with my vibrating foam roller, slowly working through the areas that feel like they carried the day. My breathing lengthens, my muscles start to let go, and the vibration helps settle my nervous system as I move out of the pace of the day.

There's a practical benefit hiding in that habit, too. Every night I get down to the floor, move around, and then have to get myself back up again, which is a skill many of us slowly lose without noticing. Getting up off the floor without using your hands is what lets you play with a grandchild on the rug, kneel in the garden, reach under a bed, and get yourself back up calmly if you ever lose your footing. Rolling and releasing tissue is also the first step in the foundation I build for every client, before mobility, stability, or strength, which I explain in more detail in Strength Training After 50: The Step Most Women Skip.

Once I'm in bed, gentle warmth from my neck wrap helps my neck and upper shoulders relax. I don’t look at any screen in bed at any time. I sleep on a temperature-controlled mattress cover (mine is an Eight Sleep) that can keep the bed cool or warm, which matters to me because many of us run warmer at night in this chapter of life. The room is dark, and I use an eye mask or earplugs when I need them. I also take magnesium glycinate as part of my nighttime routine, which is a personal choice I made with my own needs in mind, so please talk with your doctor before adding any supplement. Most nights I fall asleep early enough to give myself seven to seven and a half hours before I get up between 5:30 and 5:45.

I also wear an Oura ring and check my sleep, recovery, and exercise scores regularly. This gives me feedback on the night and helps me prepare for the day ahead. 

Why the Evening Matters So Much After 50

A joint consensus statement from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommends that adults through age 60 sleep seven or more hours a night on a regular basis.² I use seven hours as a guide and don't worry about hitting it perfectly every night. Reaching it depends on more than the time you turn off the light, because our bodies have their own evening rhythm, with a drop in core body temperature and a rise in melatonin, the hormone that signals it's night. When we eat late, sit in bright light, or stay on a glowing screen until the last minute, we work against that rhythm instead of with it. In a small randomized crossover trial, adults who read on a light-emitting tablet before bed took longer to fall asleep, released less melatonin, and were less alert the next morning than when they read a printed book.³ The participants were young and the study was small, so I hold it lightly, but it matches what I notice in my own sleep when I stay on my phone too late.

Warmth works in a similar direction. A systematic review and meta-analysis found that a warm shower or bath one to two hours before bed helped people fall asleep faster and improved how they rated their sleep.⁴ The idea is that warming the skin draws blood toward the surface, which helps the body release heat and lets core temperature fall on schedule. My neck wrap isn't the same thing as a bath, and my foam roller isn't a longevity treatment, so I won't pretend a study proved that either one works. They are simply pieces of a routine my body responds well to, and the reason they help is that I do them consistently, night after night.

Try This This Week

Before you spend money on anything new, spend seven nights measuring what you already do. Each evening, write down four times: when you finished eating, when your last screen went dark, when your light went out, and when you woke up the next morning. At the end of the week, count how many nights you were in bed long enough for seven hours of sleep, and look at the gap between your last bite and your lights-out. Add one physical check by sitting down on the floor each night and standing back up without using your hands, noting whether you did it cleanly, needed a hand on one knee, or needed the furniture. This log gives you real numbers instead of a vague sense of how you're doing, and those numbers usually point to the one change that matters most right now.

Healthy Habits For Women Over 50 Start Tonight

The women I most admire at this stage of life care for themselves in steady, simple ways. They carry their own luggage through the airport, walk through a new city all afternoon, get onto the floor and back up, lift weights, hike, garden, and keep learning something new. I want good medicine available when I need it, but I don't want the excitement around what's new, or the fear of what might happen, to distract me from the life I'm trying to extend. Pick one piece of your evening, protect it for two weeks, and see what your body tells you. If you'd like to feel the floor and foundation work I build my evenings around, start with my free Video Sampler, which is five simple exercises with no equipment needed.

Longevity starts here, with the body you already have and the evening you're about to spend.

References

1. Li Y, Pan A, Wang DD, et al. Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population. Circulation. 2018;138(4):345-355. doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.117.032047.

2. Watson NF, Badr MS, Belenky G, et al. Recommended Amount of Sleep for a Healthy Adult: A Joint Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society. Sleep. 2015;38(6):843-844. doi:10.5665/sleep.4716.

3. Chang AM, Aeschbach D, Duffy JF, et al. Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2015;112(4):1232-1237. doi:10.1073/pnas.1418490112.

4. Haghayegh S, Khoshnevis S, Smolensky MH, et al. Before-bedtime passive body heating by warm shower or bath to improve sleep: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 2019;46:124-135. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2019.04.008.

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