Turning 50: Practical Strategies For Healthy Aging And Meaningful Birthdays

Ever looked at a birthday and felt more dread than delight? 

We flip that script by separating the number on the cake from the real story your cells are telling. As a holistic cancer dietitian turning 50, I break down why biological age—not chronological age—drives energy, resilience, and long-term cancer risk, and how simple daily habits can slow the clock from the inside out.

We map the biggest accelerators of aging plus the five high-impact pillars you can leverage today to start slowing your biological clock.

We also discuss the importance of making birthdays meaningful (+ 2 ideas to help you do this) and how to look at the passage of time as the gift it actually is.

Give it a listen and then if this helps you see aging differently, subscribe, share with a friend who needs the reframe, and leave a quick review.

I'd also love to hear from you! What’s one birthday ritual you’ll try this next year?

🌿 Let's Connect 🌿

Explore Coaching

Join Us On Substack 

Watch Episodes on YouTube 

Follow Us on Instagram

Transcript

Framing Aging And Birthdays

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Ground and Root Podcast, where we are exploring the world of holistic strategies and root-cause medicine to enhance your recovery and help you stay cancer free. I am your host and holistic cancer dietitian Dionne Detrez. I have a fun episode for you today, at least I think so. This month, it's November, as I'm recording this episode. This month I am celebrating my 50th birthday. And although it's a bit hard to believe I've already arrived at this age in my life, I am also very excited about what lies ahead and about embarking on this next decade of my life. And I decided let's use this opportunity to talk more about birthdays, about healthy aging, about why it's so important to celebrate your special day. So in both today's episode and in next week's episode, that is gonna be the focus of our conversation. So here's what I'd like us to talk about today. I have three main things I wanted to share. One is just around aging and how your chronological age is not as important as your biological age and what that means. We're gonna talk about my top five tips for healthy aging that are foundational practices we can all do before we venture into the fancier biohacking strategies to help us live to 100. And then finally, I want to talk about why it's so important to celebrate your birthday and to make your birthdays meaningful, especially if you're someone who doesn't really like to, or you kind of dread your birthday, or you dread the idea of getting older, how we can put a different spin on this. And that is also what we're gonna talk about in next week's episode. And I'll have a special guest on to help give us some perspective and some ideas around how we can make our birthdays more meaningful. So, first off, let's talk about aging in general and how your chronological age is not necessarily the same as your biological age. So, just to clarify, your chronological age is just, you know, your the actual number of years you've been on this earth. So, whenever your birth date was to today's date, that is your chronological age. I'm about to turn 50. That is my chronological age. Your biological age is actually the age of your cells. So, how quickly or slowly your cells are aging. And especially when we think about cancer prevention, this is obviously a really important piece. Because as I've talked about in other episodes, when the real crux of cancer developing and what causes cancer to develop, is an accelerated aging process of the cells. And as the cells age, there's more risk that DNA will mutate or get damaged. There's more risk of cancer cells developing. This is why historically cancer was a disease of aging, that we saw it in older people. But the concern now, and as I've spoken to already on this podcast, is that as a people, as a human race, we are aging quicker. And so therefore, we are seeing cancer more common in younger and younger people. So as I'm approaching this birthday, I'm about to turn 50. Of course, like aging is top of mind. And yes, I have signs of aging. If you're watching the YouTube video here, you can see I have some gray, I have some wrinkles, right? Like I don't necessarily feel exactly the same in my body as I did 10, 20, 30 years ago. But I know that my cells, like keeping my cells young is what's going to be most important. And that's what we're gonna talk about next, as far as like tips for healthy aging is really this idea of slowing down cellular aging. Like, what can we do to help keep our cells young? I will also say, and we'll speak to this a little bit more, but I will also say that your mental and emotional state is just as important as your physiological state, right? So how you feel mentally, emotionally, is also going to impact your age. I know for me, anyways, I love celebrating my birthdays. So that has never been difficult for me to do. But that's because I still have this sort of youthful, playful side of me that it's fun. Like it's fun to have a party, it's fun to celebrate, it's fun to do special things for your special day. And that is definitely more of a mindset than it is so much just in my physiology, right? Like how my body is aging. So part of it is our mindset. And are we feeling youthful and playful and young at heart, so to speak. The other thing, too, I think that can happen is as we get older each decade that goes by, we we see our timeline decreasing, right? Instead of when we're young, we're thinking about all this time we have ahead of us. And as we get older, we're like reflecting more on what we've done, how much time has already passed, not knowing how much time we have left, that something none of us know, right? Some of sometimes there's this a mental emotional factor where we just feel like we're running out of time, running out of time to do the things that we wanted, or we're running out of time to experience X, Y, and Z. And especially as we start moving into our 50s or into our later 50s, we start seeing even our work in the world, right? Like nearing its end. We start looking towards retirement and what does this mean for me? Who am I without my work, et cetera, et cetera? So this is also another concept to consider. We'll talk about this more with my guests too next week. But one perspective I want to put out there, and this is why I love incorporating a lot of different philosophies, just even into my own spiritual practices and self-development and self-care, is when we look at things like astrology or specifically human design, if you're familiar with that, there's actually this really powerful concept that as we get older, as we move into these later decades of our life, that our purpose only becomes grander. It only becomes more. Our contribution to the world only becomes more. And for some of us, that means like we're just beginning. We spent our 20s, 30s, and 40s laying the foundation so that in our 50s or our 60s, we're really reaching the peak of what we've been working towards. And to me, that's even just again, mindset-wise, that is exciting, right? That gives us something to keep working towards. That what if we're just beginning to see the realization of what we've been working towards, whether that's in our work or in our relationships, our own personal lives, our contribution to the world. There's so many different ways you could look at this, right? I think there's the idea that as we age, we have more to offer, we have more wisdom, more experience, we can have more impact. There's so much still ahead of us as opposed to feeling like, you know, we've already passed so much. Now, that is the mental emotional side of things, which I as because we talk about this a lot on this podcast, that is just as important as the physical, as your body and the physiological processes that we're trying to support. But there are some physiological reasons we're aging as well, right? And again, we think about cellular, not chronological, cellular, because I could be just as an example, I could be 50 but have a cellular age of 30, or vice versa. You could be 30 and have a cellular age of 50. And a lot of that has to do with our diet, our lifestyle, our exposures, our environment. So I wanted to list off a few of the things that we know contribute to accelerated aging, and then we'll talk about the things that can help reduce that, right? That can slow down aging, help us have a longer, healthier life. So, what causes accelerated aging? Number one, first and foremost, is smoking. Smoking does age our cells very quickly. Alcohol is pretty close behind that. Now, another piece here is stress, burning the candle at both ends, right? Like just trying to do too much constantly in like a fight or flight state. That is aging our cells. And of course, our diet. So a diet rich in processed foods or sugar or inflammatory fats, right? This is going to produce more inflammation in the body, more oxidative stress in the body. Both of these things are going to accelerate telomere shortening. Telomere, telomeres are part of our cellular aging process. So we know that the choices we're making, the habits that we have, the stress that we're under is 100% influencing how quickly our bodies are aging. And all of those things influence our risk for cancer too, right? Like we can't have this conversation in two separate voids. Like what is impacting one is absolutely impacting the other as well. So there's more we could get into other sort of chemical exposures, UV rays, et cetera, that could be contributing to aging. But I would say those are the main ones: smoking, alcohol, stress, like chronic, right? High stress, and inflammatory diets that are creating a lot of oxidative stress in the body. So, what do we do to help decrease the aging process? How do we help slow down the aging process? So nowadays there is so much available, like the anti-aging longevity niche, so to speak, is vast, right? I'm sure you've seen it. I'm sure you've heard it. It's like all over the place. There's so many things we can do to help ourselves slow down the aging process and age more healthfully. But before you get too fancy, before you go out and buy a bunch of supplements, before you invest in the sauna and the cold plunge and all the things, which I'm not saying those aren't helpful. Okay, we'll have other episodes dedicated to all those extra, like what I would consider boosters. They certainly can be helpful, but they're never going to replace the foundation. And before I always say foundation before fancy. Okay. So first we're going to go through the five things that we want to make sure in place before we get any fancier. All right. Number one, enhance your emotional wellness, right? Work on nervous system regulation. So getting out of that constant chronic fight or flight state and giving ourselves more time in calm, grounded, peaceful repair states, right? So think less stress, more fun, more love, right? More time to do things that bring you joy, that give you pleasure. That goes a long way to slowing down the aging process. And of course, there's a lot of tools, tips, and tricks you can do to help with this. We've already talked about some of those things on the podcast so far. Of course, we will cover more, but that would be first and foremost is just enhancing emotional wellness, nervous system regulation. Okay. Number two, as you can maybe guess, knowing that I'm a dietitian, is how you're nourishing yourself, right? Nourishing yourself deeply. And this doesn't mean following a very specific rigid diet. Okay. We'll talk more about food on here. We'll get to that soon. But it just means nourishing yourself in a deep way. Are you eating nutrient-dense, real, whole foods? Are you getting enough of the right foods, the foods that are rich in vitamins and minerals and antioxidants? Are you getting enough protein to help maintain your muscle mass? Are you getting enough healthy fats to support the cellular membranes to keep your cells healthy? So nourishing yourself as opposed to just following one strict specific diet is just are you eating in a way that's truly nourishing your cells? And I would include hydration in this because of course hydration plays a role too in aging, not just in how we look, right? Like our external aging, but also in our internal aging. Are we meeting our hydration goals? Are we drinking enough water? Are we, you know, drinking nourishing beverages like green tea and herbal teas and broths or soups, right? So I would put those together: nourishment and hydration. Number three would be limiting our exposures to toxins as much as we can, as much as we have control over, right? Knowing that our toxic burden does speed up cellular aging. So of course that includes smoking. But I imagine many of you, maybe if not most of you listening to this, probably don't smoke. So that's not the only one, right? But that's a main one. Smoking, alcohol consumption, also just what you're exposed to in the environment, right? Air pollution, what you put on your skin, all those things. All of that can build up over time and cause cellular aging. Now, another one is movement. And I'm very cautious to not say exercise, even though exercise, of course, is one form of movement that is important. But movement in general, moving our bodies, not sitting all day, right? Like I'm doing actually right now. I'm sitting at my desk, but I definitely have a standing desk. I definitely take breaks and I take walking breaks and stretch breaks and all these things. So movement is important for a few reasons. When we think specifically about aging, obviously exercise has a lot of benefits, but as it relates to aging, the more we move, the more we keep our bodies fluid and flexible. I remember speaking once with a physical therapist, and that was actually her recommendation was the number one thing you could do to have healthy aging, especially in your body and like how you feel in your body is to keep your body flexible. So we would we could also argue that keeping your body strong is important for aging, but flexibility is going to be just as important. So stretching, movement, doing full range of movements so your body stays limber is important when we think about aging and just how comfortable we are as we age. Of course, the more cardio we get, then we also get heart and lung support too, which keeps those strong. As we using strength training as well to try to help maintain muscle mass as we age, that has also been shown to be a direct link with healthy aging. The more amount of muscle mass we're able to maintain as we age is directly linked to longevity. And I would say healthy longevity, right? Because we could live a long time and not be healthy and not be comfortable in our bodies. But obviously, we're talking about living a long time and feeling good for as long as we can, right? Being healthy. And then number five would really be around sleep and prioritizing your sleep. This becomes more important as we get older. And it's sometimes harder to do. Particularly, I'm thinking too, as I'm aging, I'm getting to 50, I'm moving into pre-menopause. Sometimes sleep is elusive, right? A lot of people struggle with difficulty sleeping. But sleep is when our bodies heal. It's when they repair, it's when they detoxify, it's when the immune system regenerates. It's when all of these essential systems that keep us healthy and keep us cancer free are happening. And if we're not getting deep restorative sleep most nights, maybe not every night, but most nights, that is going to age us quicker. Okay. So those five things before anything else fancy would be my suggestion. And it's what I do as well. It's like what I really try to prioritize and practice what I preach, right? So enhancing emotional wellness, nourishing yourself deeply, including your hydration, right? Meeting your hydration goals, limiting toxic exposures as much as you can, having healthy movement every day, movement that keeps us flexible, movement that keeps us strong, and prioritizing sleep and taking the steps needed to get deeper sleep if we're struggling there. One thing I would suggest if you wanted to scroll through some of our other episodes, if this is your first time hearing me, we do have an episode on circadian rhythm support. And that would probably be the best place to start in beginning to enhance your sleep cycles. Okay. So finally, before we wrap up, I just want to talk for a minute. And then, like I said, we're going to spend more time on this in next week's episode with my guest. But why it's important, or even just how, maybe not the why, but how do you make your birthdays meaningful? And I would love to hear from you if you want to reach out and share, if you've listened to this episode and you want to share how you like to celebrate your birthdays. How do you make your birthdays meaningful? I'd love to hear from you. But I wanted to give you a few ideas, especially for those of you who have been maybe avoidant of your birthdays or you don't notoriously like to celebrate your birthdays. So, first off, I just again want to take a moment to shift the perspective and to shift the narrative. Yes, it can be hard to age, to get older. It can be scary to know that we're moving away from our younger years. And especially when we really don't have, I don't think anybody is able to predict how many years they have left. So, my suggestion for you is to just take each birthday as such a gift. What a gift to have another year of life and to really take some time to appreciate all that you've been lucky enough to receive and experience up until this point in your life. This is an exercise I like to do just personally for myself and my journal. On my birthday each year, I do two little exercises. So, first I like to do a reflection exercise of just reflecting on where I am in my life and what happened over the last year, what I'm most grateful for, right? At this point in my life. And I think there's nothing like cancer to really put this in perspective to. And it's also maybe why I appreciate it in a different way because this is the world that I'm working in. And when you get a diagnosis like cancer, it's really just a wake-up call of wow, none of us know how much time we have here. And what matters most? How are we going to make the most out of whatever time we have? I hope I still have many decades ahead of me, but we don't know, right? So can I have full and complete gratitude at this point in time for what I do have, for what I've had in my life, what I've been able to experience, et cetera. And then on the flip side of that, I also like to write a letter to myself to be to open the next year. So next year on my birthday, I reread the letter I wrote a year ago, and I really write it to myself. I say, dear Dion, happy birthday. And in that letter, I'm writing out all my wishes, all the things I hope and desire for myself over the coming year. And it's such a fun exercise because A, it gets you focused on what's possible and what am I actually calling in and desiring over this next year of my life. But then it's also fun to reflect back, to reread that letter to myself and see how much of that actually happened or what shifted, what changed. So if that resonates with you, of course, feel free to grab that idea. Another thing I like to do, I mentioned pulling in a lot of different philosophies and strategies just for my own personal wellness and well-being, as well as what I share with my clients and our the members of our programs. But I really love astrology. I'm a fan, even though I'm not an astrologer, like I that is not my training at all, but I'm it's definitely one of my hobbies. And so one of the things I invest in each year on my birthday for just the past few years, because that's really how long I've been more in tune with this, is I gift myself an annual astrology reading with an astrologer. Yeah, I sit down, she pulls my chart for the next year, and I get this like map of what to expect over the next year, what times of the year are for certain things, what to be careful of, what to go for, et cetera. And I love that. Now, obviously, that's not gonna resonate with everybody, but it is a fun way to just look at the bigger picture too, right? To also think about all the different aspects that could be influencing you in this next year of life. And then, of course, celebrate. Celebrate you, let others celebrate you, even if you don't like being the center of attention one day a year, really try to receive that from the people who love you. Because as much as I love being celebrated on my birthday, I also love celebrating others on their birthdays. So it's like a it's like a reciprocal giving, right? Giving and receiving, it feels good for both people involved. And to really celebrate, you you are still here, you had another year of life. There's still so much ahead of you, so much possibility and potential. And it's worth celebrating. So in next week's episode, I like I mentioned, we're gonna have a special guest who literally wrote a book about having happy birthdays. What a better perfect what better better person, sorry, to bring on the show than someone who's like literally written a book on it, who coaches other people on the importance of birthdays, why it's so important to celebrate, what to do when your like birthday blues, et cetera. So we're gonna we're gonna dive into this a little bit more next week. But for today's episode, before I sign off, I hope that was helpful to just think through aging in a slightly different lens, to really see it as a gift, and to know that there is a lot in our control to slow our biological age as opposed to our chronological age. And I can't wait to dive into this more with you next week. If you enjoy our podcast, please subscribe, give us a review, share with your friends and family. We are still a new podcast, and I'm definitely doing my best to try to get the word out. So I would appreciate any help you could offer. And I will see you on our next episode. Bye, everyone.