Long Live YOU!

A head-to-toe guide to staying strong, sharp, healthy, and happy well into your platinum years.

-  LIZ BRODY

I'm talking to you from the land of old," says Joan Price, 79, as we tuck into the topic of vibrators.

"The land of 'young," " I say reflexively, adding that she looks amazing.

"No, no no!" The author of The Ultimate Guide to Sex After 50 catches me, sharply. "We think of youth as the goal, but how about celebrating who we are now? Then we have more of a chance of going through our later years happy, zesty, and able to problem-solve."

She has a point. If you're always craning to see yourself in the rearview mirror, you're not looking forward to what you'll become. And that, experts would say, is the first step to kicking ass as you age.

Longevity is the word on everybody's lips these days, but it isn't just about adding more years. Over the past century, our life spans have doubled, thanks to advances in medicine, agriculture, and sanitation. The problem now? We are spending many of those extra years in hospitals and doctors' offices, sick with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's, conditions that typically start at around 60. So the question today isn't so much how to live longer but how to live longer well. It's the health span we're after-figuring out how to push off these diseases so we have more time for leisurely sex, as Price would have it, or sailing down the Nile, or being the last person on the planet to try pickleball.