Join me this time as I chat to author and health coach Susan Saunders as we talk about aging well and what we can do to reduce our chances of developing Alzheimer’s Disease.

Susan's determination to age well grew out of her personal story. She spent 12 years caring for her mum, who had severe dementia. When her mum was diagnosed, Susan was 36 years old with a toddler, a new-born and a full-time job. Her world was turned upside down – not only was she mum, wife, and boss, she was now a carer too. What made this even harder to bear was that, as a teenager, she’d watched her mum going through the same thing with her mother. 

Susan started researching everything she could about aging well. That led her to start The Age-Well Project blog and then a book of the same name, written with her friend Annabel Streets, plus a follow up book The Age Well Plan. Susan is only the third person in the UK to qualify as a coach with neuroscientist Dr Dale Bredesen, author of The End of Alzheimer's, and she now helps women across the world reduce their dementia risk through her coaching programmes. 

We talk about the influence of the APOE4 gene - which apparently 20% of the population carries - and how the impact of lifestyle is considerably more important to our risks of developing Alzheimer’s than our genetic make up. 

Susan’s next book is on post-menopausal health (due out summer 2023) and she talks us through the ‘window of opportunity’ post-menopause to take action to prevent the chronic diseases of aging - such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease and dementia. 

One new piece of information I learned in our interview was that our bones are constantly being remodelled and renewed - and that oestrogen and progesterone are critical to driving this process - so when our levels of these hormones drop away, our bone health can dramatically deteriorate if we don’t take action to counteract those changes.

You can find Susan at https://susansaundershealth.com and more info on her books at https://agewellproject.com/our-book/ or find her at https://www.instagram.com/susansaundershealth and https://www.instagram.com/agewellproject 

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