Why your 40s & 50s are your most powerful years yet | psychologist Margie Lachman, Ph.D.

Welcome to the MyBuddyGreen Podcast. I'm Jason Wachib, founder and co-CEO of MyBuddyGreen and your host. This podcast is presented by Walden University. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career, and community. For over 50 years, Walden University has helped working adults turn ambition into action through flexible distance learning. With over 100 degrees and certificates, Walden's online programs are designed for working professionals. You'll gain hands-on skills from their expert faculty members who are scholars and practitioners with real-world experience to share. If you've been waiting for the right moment, this is it. Head to WaldenU.edu and take that final step. Walden University set a course for change, certified to operate by shove. Get business done with the new American Express Graphite Business Cash Unlimited card, with unlimited 2% cashback on all eligible purchases. 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We track our steps, sleep, and workouts, but some of the most valuable health signals happen in the bathroom where they get flushed away. Colors Dakota fits discreetly onto your toilet and captures biometric signals to provide insights into hydration, gut health, and more. That's data that our other wearables can't deliver. The info is securely delivered to the ColorHealth app. Learn more at ColorHealth.com. Use code MBG one year for a free one-year app membership with your Dakota purchase. What if midlife isn't a crisis, but actually the most consequential window of your entire life? Dr. Margie Lockman is a psychologist at Brandeis and the architect of the midlife in the United States study, which has been tracking thousands of adults for 30 years. She spent her career proving that what happens in midlife doesn't stay in midlife. And today's show she walks me through her concept of psychosocial anti-inflammatories. The three mindset she's shown are actually lower biomarkers of inflammation. We also get into why only about a quarter of boomers ever reported a midlife crisis. Why personality is no longer set in stone after age 30 and why middle-aged adults still be college students on vocabulary tests. Look, I'm 51 in this conversation at home. If you're anywhere near midlife, you're going to love this one. So you argue that midlife is actually prime time. So what is the science show here because it seems to contradict the cultural narrative of decline? Yes, there is certainly a narrative about decline and other problems that we associate with in midlife. And I call it prime time for many different reasons. It really is a wonderful period of time based on one psychological, cognitive, and physical health. It is a time when you have many opportunities, you have developed more self-confidence, higher self-esteem, you've accumulated a lot of experience. Yes, there are some things that are declining, but it's the time to do something about it. There are lots of things that we know happening with age and midlife is a perfect time to start addressing some of these changes. Well, things are still pretty good. And perhaps avoid some of the problems that might arise later in life. So those are some of the reasons I think that it's prime time. I love the perspective. You call it a hinge moment. I love the word hinge. Tell us more. Okay. So when you get to the middle of anything, it's really an opportune time to look back and to look ahead. I think of like students in the semester, we get to the midterms. And what we do is we do a midterm assessment to see how things are going. We look back to see how things are going. And then we want to look ahead to see, well, what do we want to do for the rest of the semester? Are there things we can change? Are there things we can do better? And I think that midpoint really applies to lots of other things in life. So when you get to the middle of your life course, which is typically 40s and 50s, it's a perfect time for you to think about where you've been and where you want to go. And so I think of it as a half time, sort of the time when you can see what you've done and what you want to do differently. And the hinge is really just this pivot point. I've called midlife a pivot point, which I can say more about. Yeah, tell us more, why is it a pivot point? So midlife is a pivot point for many reasons. First, from a personal standpoint, it's a pivot point between gains and losses. There's a lot of things you're gaining, as I mentioned, your experience, your confidence, your knowledge is increasing dramatically, your emotion regulation. On the other hand, there are things that you're losing. And many of these things you can do something about. So you may be losing a bone density or muscle mass or speed of processing. So many of these things are going downhill as part of the aging process. And so it's a pivot point in the sense that it really is a good time for you to use the resources you have, the confidence you've built the experience you have and the knowledge you have to address some of the problems that could arise later on in life. So that's one aspect of the pivot point. There are two others. And I can speak to those as well. So the second pivot point has to do with being in the middle generation. So here you are, in the middle, you have people who are younger, who are counting on you, people who are older, who are counting on you. That's in the family, but it's also in the workplace and it's also in the community at large. So you're kind of a bridge in a way. People are really looking to you. And it puts a lot of pressure on people in midlife because everyone is kind of depending on you and counting on you. And then the third aspect of the pivot point has to do with how what happens in midlife doesn't stay in midlife, as I like to say. There are long-term consequences for the things that you do. So your health in midlife, your blood pressure, your sleep habits, your diet, your BMI, your blood pressure, all these things have long-term effects on things like dementia, cancer, cardiovascular disease later in life. So it's really a good time to start making changes to enhance those aspects of your health. Lots to unpack there. And I want to go back to this idea of looking back versus looking ahead. I think many of us, including myself, I've become a hell of a lot more reflective at age 51. And I think it started years ago, where I am a very optimistic person and 10, 10, 12, too much in the past. But as I've gotten older, I find myself looking back. What do I regret here? What could I have done differently? And trying and not always successful to make changes about what I do in the future. And in my view, there's really a mindset change in midlife. And there's a balance of looking, you don't want to always do all in the past. And you don't want to just ignore the past and just look entirely in the future. How do you think about that balance of, as you said, looking back, but also looking ahead in midlife, which in my view too also spans from like, let's get real, like midlife is like in the mid 30s to high 30s. It's not really 50 on the dot. There's a range here. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We could talk about when midlife is at some point. Is that is an interesting question that most people want to know? What do I mean by midlife? But yeah, so this balance, I think, is a really good point. So I think it is a natural thing when you get to a midpoint, we get to a decade change 40 or 50 to assess where you are. And perhaps that includes looking back because after all, who you are now is a lot determined, is largely determined by what you've done so far. And there are going to be things that you wish you had done differently. There are going to be things that you regret. But looking forward, you can think about, well, what can I do differently? Can I make changes? I mean, there are some things that may be irreversible. But you can certainly rethink about your way of processing them and thinking about them and not dwelling on the negative aspects of them. And so there may be ways that you can do things that you didn't do before is plenty of time left. I think one of the things that scares people when they get to 40 or 50 is they think, oh my gosh, time is running out. But it really isn't. You have half your life left essentially. That said, nobody knows how long you're going to live. But for the statistic show that you're going to live quite a bit longer. And so there's plenty of time to do things differently and to make up for things that you wish you had done. And you may have to put some of them on hold. Midlife is a very busy time where you're involved with so many different things. Sometimes you do have to put things on the back burner. I call it goal shelving because there are other people who may demand your time and you can't always do everything that you want right then and there. But there's still time for you to slowly but surely accomplish goals and new goals in the future. And so walk me through what happens when the midlife crisis occurs. Most people think they're going to have a midlife, a lot of people, let's say, think they're going to have a midlife crisis. And especially the millennials right now, many of them are expecting a midlife crisis as if it's a right of passage. And it's unfortunate that midlife gets such a bad rap that we think it's going to be a midlife crisis. So the midlife crisis is something that many people expect. And as millennials are now entering midlife, the oldest millennials are now in the early 40s. A large percentage of them are expecting to have a midlife crisis. But we did work with some earlier generations, largely baby boomers, and only about a quarter of them said they had had a midlife crisis. So we don't think everybody has a midlife crisis. But those who do, it's not something that you ignore. I mean, I don't like to call it a midlife crisis. People can have a crisis as they turn 40 or as they turn 50 or in their 40s or 50s. Very often, the crisis is determined by something other than midlife percent. The classic midlife crisis as originally conceived by Jax in 1965 article had to do with fear of death and fear that everything was going downhill, that you were aging, and basically your best was behind you. And there was nothing more to do. And he found this in some of his patients. He was a psychoanalyst who were afraid that they were not going to be able to accomplish anything, meaning they were artists. And so that's where we got the term. That's where the term was coined. In our study, a small percentage of people thought that when they had a midlife crisis, it was in fact tied to fear of death or fear that time was running out or upset about looking older or feeling like things like you were aging. But the majority of them were really related to things that were external, things like a divorce or a job loss or having some health problem. And that can really happen at any age. Now, if it happens to you in midlife, people will now call it a midlife crisis. When in fact, I don't like to blame midlife, it's basically a crisis. The other thing I would say is that there are a lot of crises going on right now in the world, right? We have a lot of things that do impact people. An economic crisis, a climate crisis, a healthcare crisis. I can name others as well. There's a lot of things externally in our environment, in a world that can affect people. And perhaps people in midlife may be affected more by those things because they have so many people depending on them. So the economic crisis, for example, might impact people in midlife more than people who are already retired, for example. It feels like there's this, you talk about this in the book, this theme of stability. Stability matters. How do you think about that? Okay. Stability in terms of in many different ways. So stability in terms of who you are, I think that is not necessarily what people experience. So people assume that there's stability. Psychologists for many years, it's really only in recent times that we believe you can change after adolescents or early adulthood. We used to think that personality was fixed early on set in plaster. This was kind of a standard view of personality or identity. But now we realize that there's possibilities for changing personality and identity really throughout life. And I think that that's so important for people to realize that you're not necessarily set in who you are. You can make changes. So let's talk about that. That is interesting. So you're saying someone's personality can change in midlife. Walk me through what's an example of what I look like. The most standard way to talk about personality is the big five traits. So those big fives are extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and being open to experience. Those are what we typically think of. The core of personality. And these tend to be relatively stable. So if you're extroverted and it's usually we think of it in terms of relative to other people. If you're outgoing and friendly and energetic, you know, you typically will stay that way for most of life. But what if somebody's really not happy being introverted? So the opposite of extroverted, they really want to meet more people. They don't feel like they speak up in class. I had a student in my class recently even talked about how she was an extreme introvert. Now she's younger than midlife. But it's a good example. Talked about how she never spoke up in class. She was always shy and afraid. And she just made a point of changing her behaviors. That's what personality is. It's really how you behave and how you think and feel. That's our definition of personality. So you can change those behaviors. So you can become more outgoing, be more friendly and make more go out and try to meet more people or speak up more in a class. Another example is conscientiousness, which is a key personality trait for health and well-being. Many of the longitudinal studies have found that people who are high conscientiousness, which means being organized and working hard and dedicated, those people live longer. They have higher longevity. They have fewer diseases in later life. So it's a really important personality characteristic. It's also related to cognitive functioning. And so people who are not conscientious may slack off on things. They're usually late to appointments. You can change those behaviors. You can make sure you set your alarm clock and put on the GPS and figure out how long it's going to take you to get to your appointment and factor in time to find a parking space. So there are things you can do to become more on time, which is a form of conscientiousness instead of being late. Or make sure you set a time, set aside time to do the work you need to do so that you're doing a good work in your job. So those are just two examples for conscientiousness and extroversion. But we can also talk about the other traits as well. All of these things, if you're unhappy with who you are, you can change on your own. It's called the "olitional personality change." Or many people want to seek help and people can go to therapists or other counseling or changing. If you're neurotic, that's probably the one that people want to change the most. Naroticism, which is high in anxiety and depression. And that responds very well to clinical interventions. So you've done extensive work studying midlife. And I'm curious in your view, what are the common traits of people who thrive versus those who do not? Yes. Well, that's a great question. That's really the main focus of what our longitudinal study is, the Midlife for the United States studying, which is now going on for 30 years. And we've been following people going into midlife and moving from midlife into later life. And our burning question, our major goal was to understand why some people age well and other people not so much. And we looked at aging in terms of many different dimensions. So when you say thrive, I think about it in terms of your cognitive health, your physical health, and your psychological health. So those are some of the things. And we could even broaden it to look at social well-being and other things. So there are many things that contribute to why some people do better than others. Some of it certainly is genetic. But a relatively small part, the absolute percentage varies depending on the study that you read. But most people think at least half or close to half of how things work out, whether you can thrive or not, is due to things in your control. things that you can do, lifestyle factors, personality factors and certainly health behaviors. And so those are the things that we look at, we look at different personality characters. I mentioned conscientiousness, that's one of them. I am very interested in this sense of control, which basically is the attitude that you have about whether or not you can bring about desired incomes. It's a sense of mastery, even knowing that there are constraints and obstacles. To what extent you believe you can overcome those obstacles, and that's an important construct. Other things that people talk about quite a bit and we find in our study, this is really an important purpose in life. This has gotten a lot of attention lately in many different domains. And in our study, and many other studies, they find that those people have a higher sense of purpose, sense of meaning in their life. They know what it is and why they wake up every day, what it is that they contribute, what they can bring to the world. They have a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive impairment. This has been found in a number of different studies. But they also have better health and well-being. Another thing that is really critical is social relationships. Positive social relationships seem to predict health and longevity to a great extent. It's not necessarily how many relationships you have, but making sure that you have some support. Someone or some people who are supportive in your life is really critical. It feels like purpose, paramount, some sense of mastery, being conscientious. So what not to do, I think, is you don't want to retire, have no sense of structure and be lonely. Loneliness is actually a really important construct. The Surgeon General several years ago released a report and said we have an epidemic of loneliness. The jury is still out on who is most lonely. Some studies say it's the young, some say it's the old, some say it's those of midlife. That I don't think is as important as within any group of people. Some people are lonely than others and it doesn't have anything to do with how many friends you have or how many supports you have. People can feel lonely even if they're married or have a good relationship. And so, yes, loneliness seems to be important as a stressor for people that is negatively associated with negative health outcomes. Now, you mentioned retirement. When I talk about retirement, I tell people that there are really three things, at least, that you need to replace when you retire, that you took for granted when you were working, typically. And one of them is making sure that you keep some social network going, because usually when you work, I mean, some people do work at home, but even when you work at home, you're on Zoom interacting with other people and other people are counting on you and you have some social network. So, when you retire, that may go away. And so, you need to find a substitute for that and there are any ways you can do that. The second thing you lose is the cognitive stimulation. Even if you're not in a high-power job that requires a lot of adult analysis and analytic thinking, just making sure you stick to your schedule and get the things done that you need to do, that demands cognitive processing. And so, you certainly lose that when you stop working. And then the third thing is the physical activity. Again, even if you're not in a physically demanding job, you still have to get out of bed, go down and get to your workplace, whether it's by car or walking or riding your bike or taking the bus, and you have to get to the place that you work and maybe walk from the parking lot, maybe walk upstairs. So, you have physical activity as part of your job. When you retire, all those things can go away and it's really critical to address them so that you're not lonely, so that you are still stimulating your brain and that you still have some sort of movement and physical activity in your life, since those are really critical for health and well-being. Walden University said a course for change, certified to operate by shove. Get business done with the new American Express Graphite Business Cash Unlimited Card with unlimited 2% cashback on all eligible purchases. Unlimited 5% cashback on flights and prepaid hotels, book through American Express Travel Online and a flexible spending capacity that can grow with your business. Terms apply. Learn more at Go.Amix/Graphite. Learn more at colorhealth.com/usecode/mbg1year for a free one-year app membership with your Dakota purchase. Occasionally flying. It's hitting your favorite trail with your favorite people who showed up for the same on hinge reason. And it's not just about fast snowing times, but finding the funnest times. Because this isn't running. It's trail running. Get your gear for the trail in store or at REI.com. I want to come back to what you talked about things that matter to people in midlife is this idea of no one wants to look older. And that is a variable. And if I think of the world today in 2026, cosmetic dermatology is moving fast at the say the least. And so in my view, you see, you know, some people say, you know, 70s and new 60s, 60s and new 50s and so on. And I just see the technology getting better and better and treatments getting less invasive and more accessible in terms of price. I kind of think that's going to play a role. So what's your take on how important that is to people? They look in the mirror and they say, you know, I'm getting old versus like, you know, damn it. I look great. I feel young. Let's go. Yeah. Well, you know, physical appearance is the first thing people notice as they enter midlife. There are things that people really upset about, you know, you see your gray hairs, you hair's thinning, you see wrinkles, you have to wear reading glasses. So a lot of those physical changes that may happen as people are entering midlife can scare people and they think I'm old. But those are really obviously just appearance based, you know, that said, as you point out, it's a multi billion dollar industry in plastic surgery, Botox, hair dye, hair transplants, all of these things because people do want to look young. They feel better when they look young. We are society really values youth and young appearance. And so it's not surprising that people want to look younger because that's how people get judged. You don't know how old people are, but the first thing you see is they're how they look and that is what people are upset about. They want to look young because being young is what's desirable and makes people feel good. And I have no problem with people wanting to look younger. I think that's fine. If it makes you feel better, I'm all for it. Something else I think is understated or not widely discussed, which you talk about, something we get better at in midlife is better emotional regulation. So that's a win. Can you talk about that? What's changing neurologically or psychologically that we do better there? Right. So emotion regulation has to do with being able to avoid the hot, the real highs and the real lows in the sense that not getting too upset about something and making sure that you're sort of more on an even keel experiencing emotions is something we all do throughout life. But you learn from experience. And so what's mine that upset you the first time it happened to you. So, you know, maybe you don't get the job you wanted. I mean, I think of my students. They didn't get into the graduate school that they wanted and they're very upset and they just think life is over. They're, you know, they're never going to get in. I had an example of a student recently who persisted and she wound up after two years getting into one of the top graduate schools and getting a fellowship. But she kept at it. And so that is really the beginning of developing emotion regulation rather than just giving up and feeling depressed and upset about it, get over it and stick with it and persist and keep going. And so as we get into midlife, we've had a lot of these failure experiences, we've had a lot of difficult interactions with other people. And we may have blown up the first time or really lost a friend because of how we reacted. But we learn from that and we can correct it and we can realize it wasn't worth getting so upset over it. I just need to calm down and teach the younger people in our lives how to handle these difficult situations because stress is going to happen throughout life. And so as we experience more stress and more failures, we begin to realize that feeling extreme emotions doesn't necessarily get to what you wanted in the first place. It feels like building resilience is very key. And even at 20, 25, 30, don't wait for midlife. But if you're resilient, you're going to be in a better position. Exactly. And the student I just described, I think that's a good example of resilience. But she had social support. She had her mentor there saying, "Don't give up. You can do it. You're a brilliant student," which she was. And the reason you didn't get in is because a lot of the graduate schools were cutting because of COVID. They lost funding. And so they lowered their enrollments and so it wasn't you. It was really circumstances. So she had the social support there to help her rather than give up to keep going. And that's really critical in midlife is having some social support. People you can talk to who can help you through the difficult times. And so one of the things that feeds resilience really is social support. People who are resilient report that there are people who are there for them, who they can rely on, who they can count on. But then there's other things too that are more internal. Things like having optimism seems to be very important for resilience. Being optimistic and looking at a bright future rather than a doom and gloom, even though they might have been a difficult situation. You mentioned circumstances. I'm curious how much of it is this you mentioned mastery to this idea that I am in control. I am in the driver's seat, but also not being naive to the fact that there's the illusion of control. You can change things that are in your control, but there are things outside of your control and that balance. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, so when we look at such a control, we look at the balance between what you think you can do to reach the goals that you've set in relation to the constraints and the obstacles because there always are things that are obstacles and constraints. And so if there is something that you just really cannot accomplish, and I'm sure there are lots of examples, one way to deal with it is what we call secondary control, which is change the goal, modify what it is that you're wanting to achieve, doing it tweaking things so that you will be able to accomplish it. And so rather than dwelling on what you can't do, try to find a way that maybe changing it a little bit so that you are, in fact, able to do it. And what's your view? In my experience, what's key in this age period is really mastering the ability to let go and move on and those who can do so end up thriving. What's your take on being able to master that quality or balance? I do have certain circumstances in mind because it really depends on the circumstance. If you're talking about a health problem or a relationship problem, I think that. I think relationships for a lot of people can get hung up on or circumstances. I think with relationships, especially if you've been married for a long time and you wound up getting divorced, I mean, that's difficult for everybody. But one way to look at it is it's an opportunity to move forward. For something, wasn't working in the relationship, you weren't happy in the relationship. And rather than dwelling on, oh, I made a mistake, I shouldn't have married that person. That's. You can't do anything about that. You did. But learn from your mistakes. That's, I think, the key. It's like, what didn't you like about the relationship? What was the problem that you felt was no going back and used that to try to change things in the future, either changing yourself. You can't change other people necessarily. That's part of the reason that maybe relationships break up because you're not happy with how someone is and you can't change that person. But you can change yourself. You can change how you see that person or how you feel about this situation. And you can use that as you move on to look for new opportunities that are more in line with what it is that you are looking for. So, what does your research say about relationships at this stage? What works? What doesn't? Yeah. Well, the relationship work that I've done really looks at the balance between giving and receiving, and also between support and strain. And so, what we found in our research is that both the closest relationships that you have are the ones that give you the most support, but typically the most strain. And that's not surprising because that's the people that you're seeing on a regular basis and involved with for most of things that are going on in your life. So that's something you have to keep in mind is that even though the person that you spend the most time with family members, partners that may be very supportive, there's also going to be strain in the relationship. And the goal is really to try to balance so that there's more support than strain, but you can't write off the fact that there's going to be some strain and have different ways to deal with it. So people may argue and there's ways that you can then move on. And the other thing that we look at beside the support and strain is the balance between giving and receiving support. And in midlife, people tend to give more than they receive because there are so many people depending on their children, their older parents, people at work. So people in midlife really are giving a lot of support. And what research has shown is that it's really important to make sure you receive support as well. It's when there's a balance between giving and receiving that your health is benefits the most. So it's important to take support from other people as well as giving it. Feels like this Navy impacts women more than men. Yes. The research shows that women give more, are more likely to be caregivers, for example. And they're more likely to spend more time with taking care of children. That changes and there are differences in certain couples. I mean, many couples try to have an equal balance between how much the husband and wife will take care of children. But typically, at average, I would say women are giving more care for their older parents. They're also giving more time and energy to caring for children. That said, men are certainly stepping up too in more recent generations. It's things have changed in that regard. So something else you mentioned is that the U-shaped happiness curve, you argue it's overstated. Tell us more. The U-shaped curve was really got a lot of attention because it was found in so many different large studies in the U.S. and in other countries as well. Basically, what it showed is that if you compare the young, middle, and older adults on a scale of 0 to 10 with 10 being the best possible life and 0 being the worst possible life, middle age adults typically and pretty consistently looked a little lower than those who were younger and older. This is for a long time for many years and very consistently. Well, the work that I did with my colleagues showed, first of all, that the difference between the middle age adults and the other two age groups was really very small. On the 10 point scale, it was something like 0.4 to 0.6. So it might have been a 7.2 for mid-life and 7.8 for the young and the older adults. So although, because the samples were large, those were statistically significant differences, for all intents and purposes that doesn't make a whole lot of difference in people's lives. So that was one of the arguments that we had about why the U-shape was more than it was cracked up to be, and the second reason was because people misinterpreted to say that that's evidence of a midlife crisis because people have slightly lower score or unlife satisfaction in midlife. That said, what's really important to know is that the proponents of the U-shape now have taken it back and they say it's no longer there because, and this is unfortunate, it's the younger people who now have the lowest levels of life satisfaction. And that's really sad in many ways. And so it really is true that younger generations, Gen Z, and maybe the youngest millennials, and who knows, Alpha, coming up, they have high levels of anxiety and depression and low well-being. And so their conclusion now is that, no, midlife isn't the worst, it's the young people who are the worst. And that whole approach, I don't like that approach to comparing people of different ages, what we do in our work, the longitudinal work is following the same people over time. And typically people maintain their levels of well-being over time with some minor fluctuations, if there's something like a crisis that happens with health or employment or divorce, and so on, that may be some fluctuations. But people over time tend to maintain their level of life satisfaction and low being. - So something else in your lab, I thought was interesting, is getting many people with fear of cognitive decline in midlife, and you looked at inventors and age ranges, and many inventors are on their peak in midlife. - Exactly, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, we know that there are lots of different aspects to your cognitive abilities and your intelligence. And we tend to focus on the things that decline, like memory does start to go down, your speed of processing does start to go down, but really slowly, and not that it doesn't really have much of an effect on your everyday life. Even though in the lab, we may test people's in a limit to see age differences. But what we've hostulated was that midlife is really the best of all times cognitively. On the one hand, yes, there are these things that are going down, we call it fluid intelligence. And it has to do with your problem-solving and your memory and your speed of processing and reaction time, and so on. And on the other hand, what's going up, and it hasn't even reached its highest point yet in midlife, is your crystallized intelligence or your knowledge and your experience. And so people are gaining so much just by living and learning. And for example, if you give a vocabulary test to a person in midlife and compare it to a college student, the middle-aged adult is always going to do better. And even older adults will do better than college students on a vocabulary test. Because they learn more, they've read more, they've learned more words. So that's just an example. And so what we've hostulated was that perhaps, outside of the lab, most of the tests that we gave are in the lab, right? So we could see what happens to your abilities. We wanted to look at something in real life outside of the lab. And so that's why we picked inventions with patent holders. And as you say, what we found, we had millions of patent holders. And we were able to get their ages. And then we looked to see when patenters were most productive. And it was in the early years of midlife. That said, many people started patting after age 50 and had their first patent well into the 50s in early life. So creativity, invention, certainly is possible beyond the middle years. - And so in your lab of all the work you've done, what are you most proud of? What surprised you the most? - Yes, that's a really happy to answer that question. One of the things that I think is most satisfying to me is finding how your mindset, your attitudes and your beliefs have so much impact on your health, your cognitive health, your physical health, as well as your psychological wellbeing and health. And so recently we have found that sense of controls I mentioned earlier, purpose in life and social support. All of those things are related to your health. And one of the ways that we believe they're related to health is through inflammation. So looking at mind and body is really exciting. So we have this, we have mindsets that we look at and we assess over time. And people maintain their sets of control into midlife. In fact, it peaks in midlife. And people who had a higher sense of control, higher purpose in life and a higher social support had lower levels of inflammation. And we measured this with a lot of different indicators, biomarkers of inflammation. And we know inflammation is a culprit for a lot of aging related diseases. So we found that if you are able to maintain these mindsets, you have lower levels of inflammation. And that can help to understand why people with these higher levels of control and purpose in life and social support have been our health and cognitive outcomes. So that was very excited to me. And we came up with a tour, which I'm very proud of, called the psychosocial anti-inflammatories. - Let's hear it, tell us more, you can't leave without. - Okay, so the psychosocial anti-inflammatories that we've studied so far are having a high sense of control, believing that you can bring about the desired outcomes in your life despite the obstacles, having purpose and meaning in your life. And also feeling that you can count on other people, that there are people there for you in a crisis or when you need them. And those three things are what we found have associations with lower inflammation. And one of the reasons we think, and we're actually examining this right now, is because having those psychosocial anti-inflammatories lowers your level of stress. You think that you've perceived less stress in your life. And stress is one of the major fuels for inflammation. And so those are the things that we're really working on right now that I'm very excited about. - What have you, I'm curious in writing this book and in all your research, what have you changed in your personal life? - So one of the things that I think about is when I'm no longer in midlife and I look back on midlife as a really wonderful period of life. I'm still in a great period of life. And when I think about things that I could have done in midlife, I think I did things well, but I probably could have done things differently. I would say that when people ask me, are you happy with what your midlife was like? And I say more or less. I could have done more exercise and I could have done less eating. And those are two things that I'm really changed. I developed a center where we tried to help people who are inactive, it's sedentary in midlife, to help them to become more active. Because exercise is really what I call a panacea for health. It's really the thing that we consistently find is related to everything in midlife and beyond. Exercise in midlife, physical fitness in midlife is critical for later health. So those are the things that I've changed. I've exercised more, I eat more healthy than I did in my early years, earlier years. And I think what's really important, what we did in our study was to help figure out what are the things we can do to motivate people to exercise more. And one of the biggest obstacles we found in midlife was time. So we found time was a big obstacle. People in midlife are very, very busy. So we found ways to help people to carve out the time in their lives to make sure that they were able to get physical activity into their lives. And there were other things that we found that were helping people, they were motivated to exercise, but they weren't able to do it for a variety of different reasons. So those are two things that I've changed. I exercised more and I'm eating more healthy 'cause I can really, and I really see the benefits. The other thing that I have changed is, as you move into midlife and beyond, you really realize how important it is to mentor people who are younger. And so generativity or being concerned with younger generations is something I've always been interested in as a professor, of course, we're always interested in young people, but that has become a real focus of my life. I'm not as focused on my own accomplishments or what I can do. I find that mentoring and helping people who are my graduate students, my postdocs, my own children and grandchildren, that's really where my focus is. And that's most satisfying is being able to see how we can help those younger people age well. And so I try to share the knowledge that I have the expertise. piece that I have without boring them too much. I love it. I think giving back is something that can bring so much meaning, purpose, and joy, and there's in some ways it's selfish because there's so many health benefits to it. That's true. But as long as it benefits other people as well, you can, you can be selfish in that way. But you're right. There aren't all benefits absolutely. Well, Margie, thank you so much. Thank you very much. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go! A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only pure thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. There will be an adventure for the whole fam. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick!