Disrupt Aging Quotes

I recently read Jo Ann Jenkins' book Disrupt Aging: A Bold New Path to Living Your Best Life at Every Age on my Kindle and found myself highlighting so many great passages I just had to put them in a blog post to share with all of you. In her book, Jenkins reacts to TV and Magazine ads that say "50 is the new 30" and "60 is the new 40." She says 50 is 50 and she likes the look of it. 

I had the opportunity to speak with her about her book on the TODAY Show set before filming a segment about Agism for a TODAY Show Series to be aired Wednesday May 25th, 2016 and she commented, "From the day you are born, you are growing older." 

Here are 10 powerful quotes that stood out to me:

• Our ability to live longer, healthier, more productive lives is one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments. But aging is also one of life’s great contradictions. It’s everyone’s dream to live to a ripe old age, but many people fear growing older. Aging is often viewed as more of a problem than an accomplishment.  Page 5. 
• Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, says one of the true benefits of our increased longevity is having five to six generations living all at once. The impact of older generations with the ability to teach and influence younger ones is immeasurable.  Page 25.
• Did you ever stop to think how old you would be if you didn’t know how old you are? It’s an intriguing question.  Page 33
• Today it is socially unacceptable to ignore, ridicule, or stereotype someone based on their gender, race, or sexual orientation. So why is it still acceptable to do this to people based on their age?  Page 40
• One of the great benefits of an extended middle age is that it gives us more freedom and time to pursue happiness.  Page 60
• An estimated 9 million Americans ages forty-four to seventy are now engaged in encore careers, and another 31 million are interested in doing so.  Page 65
• 20 percent of a person’s health is due to genetics, and about 20 percent is due to the medical care we receive. The other 60 percent is due to social, behavioral, and environmental factors, many of which we can and do influence by the choices we make throughout our lives— what we eat, how much and what kinds of exercise we do, where we live, the quality of our relationships, whether we smoke, and our ability to handle stress.  Page 75
• When we look at aging as a time of growth and development instead of a long, slow journey into decline and diminishment, we begin to view health as a key driver of our quality of life as we get older. Page 80
• Lifestyle medicine is not just about how long we live but also about how well we live. It reframes the reason for making these changes from fear of dying to the joy of living.”  Page 84
• Today we can often live quite well with conditions that would have killed us fifty years ago. Page 96