Lajuana Weathers is determined to be the healthiest version of herself. She starts each day with a celery juice, is always trying to increase her step count, and meditates daily. Weathers is also 89 years old. And she has no plans to slow down. “I wake up in the morning and feel blessed that I have another chance at a day of life,” says the grandmother of six, and great‑grandmother of six more, who lives in Illinois in an independent living facility for seniors. “I look at my life as a holistic entity, and in that life is my physical, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. I have to take care of all of those. That’s what I like about the ageing process. All the clutter of raising children is out and I can concentrate on the wellness of me.”
Weathers is a superager. This isn’t a self-proclaimed label, but one backed up by science – she is part of the SuperAging Research Initiative at the University of Chicago. To qualify for the study, you have to be over 80 years old and have memory performance that’s at least as good as the average 50- to 60-year-old. There are about 400 superagers enrolled across North America.
As life expectancy increases, many of us are keen to know how to stay healthy in our older years. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the average life expectancy in the UK is 79.1 years for men and 83 for women. The latest ONS projections show that those born recently will live even longer – boys born in the UK in 2023 can expect to live, on average, to 86.7 years and girls to 90 years, while 11.5% of boys and 17.9% of girls born in 2023 are expected to live to at least 100. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in longevity and healthspan – the period of life spent in good health – rather than lifespan, which is the total number of years lived. So what can this growing area of research tell us about why some age better than others? What can we learn from the superagers?
Enrolment in the SuperAging Research Initiative takes three to four days. It includes a paper‑and-pencil test that assesses memory, attention, language and different aspects of cognition, as well as sharing a detailed family history. An MRI brain scan and a blood test provide data on genetic factors, blood‑based biomarkers such as risk level for Alzheimer’s, and the immune system. “We integrate data across brain structure and function, molecular and genetic measures, lifestyle, medical history, psychosocial factors, family history and other factors to understand how these elements interact to support exceptional cognitive ageing,” explains Dr Emily Rogalski, director of the initiative.
The goal isn’t to study these people for the sake of it, but to use the findings to benefit everyone. “If this rare population has something in common, it could be translated to be beneficial to the general population,” says Rogalski. “If you find a protective factor, then you say, ‘How do we turn this protective factor on in the mainstream population to boost chances of living long and living well?’”
There isn’t yet the data to say what percentage of the population are superagers. “What we can say is that of the people who think that they are superagers, less than 10% end up meeting the criteria. We set the bar high. We’re looking for people who are truly unique.”
Weathers doesn’t seem like your average 89-year-old. With a short crop of white hair, red lipstick and a beaming smile, she is full of energy and positivity, and seems younger than her years. “I concentrate on how good it is to be alive,” she says. “I have a ‘count my blessings’ attitude. I intend to be happy and I have the power to orchestrate that.” She loves clothes and has no interest in what society says she “should” wear at her age. “I dress in what satisfies me,” she says. To boost her mood, she plays choral music in her apartment and sings along. The eldest of three sisters, she is often mistaken for the youngest (who is 85; the middle sister is 87). She proudly tells me that she takes only one pill – at her doctor’s insistence – for blood pressure and feels so well that she has plans to negotiate with her doctor about phasing that out. She talks passionately about enjoying this “season” of her life and constantly trying to better herself.
After the researchers mentioned that colouring and word searches would be beneficial for her cognitive function, Weathers started doing both every day. “I’m trying to do anything I can do to enhance my cognitive ability – well, all abilities,” she says. She has been in the study for two years, after hearing about it at an event and reaching out to see if she would qualify. “I felt that they were in a good place to research what’s happening with the older generation so that they can help the younger generations and slow down debilitating diseases. My mother died at 33, my brothers died at 19 and 61, and my father at 62, so I wanted the opportunity to share what’s happening with me,” she says.
Colouring is one of the many activities in Weathers’ packed schedule. She walks outside if the weather is nice – if not, she gets her steps in around the corridors of her building, starting with a 40-minute walk each morning and another walk after dinner. She does about 6,000 or 7,000 steps a day, but her goal is to get to 10,000. She does occupational therapy twice a week to work on her physical health, and goes to a weekly wellness class where she has learned about nutrition, preparing food and how to “stack” her foods. “The body uses fibre first, then protein, starches and sugar. I stack my food in that order, so my body can process it better,” she says. She doesn’t eat refined sugar or gluten, and follows a largely plant-based diet, with some fish and chicken. She is involved in her local church and, as a vocal technician, she loves music and still works with choirs in her area. “If they call me, I’m there. For my 90th, I’m going to conduct the choir at church,” she says.
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Like Weathers, Ralph Rehbock is a superager with a busy schedule. He keeps track of it on a paper calendar, where he writes down appointments, singing rehearsals and social visits. Aged 91, Rehbock lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife. Born in Gotha, Germany, he fled the Nazis in 1938 when he was four – his parents found a sponsor so that they could move to the US. Today, Rehbock shares the story of his escape with others. He’s the first vice‑president at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, for which he does talks, in person and on Zoom.
As well as his work with the museum, Rehbock is part of Men Enjoying Leisure (MEL), a social group for male retirees, which was set up 25 years ago by four men who met on a computer course. They gather on the first Friday morning of each month in the basement of a local synagogue. Rehbock also manages MEL’s singing group, the Meltones, which rehearses on Friday afternoons. “We sing songs from the 30s and 40s. We sing at senior residences, and hope that they will sing along, and they do,” he says. It was through MEL that Rehbock heard about the Northwestern University SuperAging Program. He has been part of the study for the last 11 years.
When he’s at home, Rehbock rarely sits still. “I’m always needing things. My wife says, ‘You’ve been sitting for only one minute’ and I jump up to do something, sit back down again, and then I think of something and jump up again.” One of his big projects in recent years has been working on his family tree. It started with a school project he made aged 15. He still has the original and gets up to find it and show it to me. He has digitised it and added the new generations of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren; the family tree now includes 600 members of his extended family and 400 members of his wife’s. It’s on the wall in his basement, where he continues to add details. “That took a lot of time. Some people might call it busywork, but it’s my kind of busywork,” he says.
He drives himself and his wife to appointments, does Wordle every day, and always has a 1,000-piece jigsaw on the go. “I might do an hour a day, and it might take several weeks to complete,” he says. When he finishes a puzzle, he adds it to the ever-growing pile in his garage of ones he’s completed. When I ask him about his superager status, he’s modest. “I was booksmart in the sense of my grades, but I never thought of myself as anything special,” he says.
Having discovered that the memory performance of superagers such as Rehbock and Weathers is as good as 50- to 60-year-olds, researchers wanted to look at the structure and functionality of their brains – known as brain integrity – to understand why. “What does their brain integrity look like? Does it look like a 50-year-old’s, with whom they share memory performance? Does it look like an 80-plus-year-old’s, with whom they share chronologic age?” says Rogalski. Her team looked at this on MRI scans, which allowed them to measure the thickness of the cortex, the outer layer of the brain. As we age, the cortex usually shrinks, which has a negative effect on cognition. Rogalski’s research found that in “average agers”, the outer layer of their brains had thinned, but in superagers there was no thinning. The superagers’ brains looked “indistinguishable” from 50- to 60-year-olds’, except in the anterior cingulate region, which is important for attention and memory. This part of the brain was thicker in superagers than in 50- to 60-year-olds.
The research focuses on memory and cognitive function, but is looking at a broader picture by gathering data on physical activity, motor function, sleep and social engagement through wearable sensors. The aim is to understand “how physical, social and biological factors interact to support cognitive resilience”. They are still processing the data, but anecdotally. Rogalski says most superagers are active in some way. “We have some people who are doing high‑intensity water aerobics, yoga and hiking in mountains. Other people are skiing or cycling, and then we have people who may need a wheelchair or a walker, who might be doing chair stretching. But there is a consistent report of activity,” she says.
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Being active as you age is important, but some of the superagers push this to extremes, performing at a level you’d expect to see in much younger people. This is the case for Ina Koolhaas Revers, a 78-year-old powerlifting champion who lives in Amsterdam. At 64, Koolhaas Revers started doing CrossFit – a type of high-intensity training that combines weightlifting, gymnastic and cardio exercises. “Before that, I went to a regular gym, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I had always been physically active, but never in an intense or competitive way,” she says. Her coach noticed that she was “unusually strong” and suggested she try powerlifting, a form of competitive weightlifting focused on three lifts with a barbell – a squat, bench press and deadlift. In 2018, she qualified for the Powerlifting World Championship in Canada and won gold in her age group.
After that, experts from Maastricht University in the Netherlands studied her as an older athlete. The results were impressive – compared with the average for healthy women in her age group, Koolhaas Revers’s quadriceps muscles were 37% bigger, while her muscle cells were 46% bigger, and comparable to women in their 20s. She was also able to bench press 57.5kg, squat 90kg and deadlift 133.5kg, which is better than the average woman aged 25, where the maximum results are 49kg, 76kg and 89kg respectively. “I turned out to be extremely strong – much stronger than many young women aged 18 to 35 who went to the gym several times a week. I had no idea that the weights I lifted were considered so heavy or that my strength was exceptional,” she says. “To me, it was evidence that seniors can achieve far more than they imagine.”
Koolhaas Revers continues to compete in powerlifting events. “I train four times a week for two hours per session, I follow a high-level athlete’s diet and I prioritise rest and sleep. I’m not experiencing any significant decline. I still deadlift 131 kilos.” She attributes some of her ability to genetics – her father was in the military and very fit, and both parents “remained relatively healthy for a long time”. Koolhaas Revers says exercising is good for her brain, too. “I strongly believe that being physically active helps keep the brain healthy.”
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Hans Smeets is another septuagenarian who has amazed researchers with his physical capabilities. A 78-year-old who lives in the Netherlands, Smeets ran as a teenager, but didn’t take it up again until he was 50, when he decided to run a marathon and achieved a time of two hours 50 minutes, placing 10th overall and first in his age group.
Since then, he has won gold in his age category in 22 European championships and 25 world championships. When he was 75, Smeets was approached by sports scientist Bas van Hooren from Maastricht University about studying him in the laboratory. They discovered that he had a VO2 max of 50.5, which Van Hooren describes as “remarkably high”. VO2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during intense exercise. It’s a “central indicator of cardiorespiratory fitness and endurance potential”, says Van Hooren. Smeets’s VO2 max of 50.5 at 75 years old would “place him roughly in the 75th percentile of 20‑ to 29-year-old men”, he says. “To our knowledge, this is the highest value reported for someone at 75 years old.”
According to Van Hooren, the results “reinforced the concept that ageing does not impose an absolute ceiling” when it comes to fitness. Through his research he wants to understand “what it takes to remain healthy and fit in old age” and how to “extend your healthspan as much as possible”.
In his training, Smeets focuses on endurance, rather than high intensity. “The study confirmed that my training method of mostly slow endurance runs has a positive effect on the wear and tear process. I have remained virtually injury-free as a result,” he says. “To stay fit at my age, it’s crucial to train consistently, avoid overestimating yourself and build up stamina. This reduces the risk of injury.”
Currently, Smeets runs four or five times every week. He runs in the picturesque – and unusually hilly for the Netherlands – region of Heuvelland in South Limburg where he lives. He used to work at a rehabilitation centre for disabled children. Since retiring, he goes for a walk every Monday with his 84-year-old brother, and spends lots of time gardening. His parents weren’t endurance runners like he is, but they enjoyed cycling and walking.
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Consistency and a focus on endurance is Neil Hunter’s approach, too. He was 57 when he did his first triathlon. Now 65, he estimates that he has participated in between 100 and 150 events. “I have four racks for medals in my garage,” says Hunter, who lives in Lancashire. Most recently, he became an Ironman Age-Group world champion, after coming first in the men’s over-65s category at the 2025 event in Nice.
Hunter ran marathons in his 30s and 40s, but after his first triathlon, he was hooked. Since 2019, he has been working with a coach, who sets him a monthly training plan. Every three months, they test his fitness on a stationary bike while he wears an oxygen mask. “Every 30 seconds, the resistance increases on the bike. You pedal to destruction,” he explains. His most recent test shows that he has a VO2 max of 59.6, which is well above the 90th centile for his age group and more in line with the 90th centile of 20- to 29-year-olds, which is 62.2.
Hunter trains for 15 to 20 hours every week, which includes running, cycling and swimming. He also walks his dog every day, and does stretching, yoga and pilates. He particularly enjoys overtaking younger people during triathlons. “Being a mature athlete, there’s nothing better than being able to whip the backside of a young whippersnapper.”
While not everyone can compete in triathlons, Hunter sees exercise, in any form, as a crucial part of healthy ageing. “My mantra is: get fit, stay healthy, be happy. I’m convinced that there’s no prescription medicine that could provide the same wellbeing results, either physically or psychologically, as daily exercise,” he says. The importance of exercise is backed up by Van Hooren, who suggests doing strength and cardio training. “Ageing affects not only the heart and lungs, but also muscles, balance, coordination and joint integrity. A mix helps preserve functional capacity,” he says. Interestingly, many of the older people they have studied at Maastricht University didn’t exercise until later in life. “It’s never too late to start,” he says.
The idea of what makes a superager is something that Eric Topol, professor and cardiologist, explores in his book Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity. He spent seven years researching a group of 1,400 people whom he calls the “wellderly”. “Most of the people were in their 90s, all the way up to 102. They took good care of themselves. There was a 99-year-old man who still smoked two packs a day, but that was the rare exception,” explains Topol. His findings showed that “lifestyle is fundamental” and that genetics played less of a role than they anticipated. “In their genome sequence, we found very little to account for their healthy ageing. A lot of it is related to non-genetic issues, especially the immune system. Lifestyle has a big influence on our immune system,” he says.
When thinking about healthy ageing, Topol says that preventing the major age-related diseases – cardiovascular, cancer and neurodegenerative – is crucial. There are new technological developments in this area, such as organ clocks, which assess individuals and predict which diseases they are likely to develop. “These organ clocks give us a pace of ageing of every organ. People generally don’t develop age-related diseases before 50. So at 50 people will get an organ clock assessment of their arteries, brain, heart and immune system. That way we’ll know if there’s something that warrants more attention. It’s exciting. The organ clocks will be out this year.”
While he has advice for people – eat an anti‑inflammatory diet, avoid ultra-processed foods, do aerobic exercise and resistance training, work on your balance and prioritise quality sleep – he says many people don’t do these things. “When we are able to predict which of the three diseases you’re likely to get, the chances of you doing something are greatly improved,” says Topol.
When it comes to what superagers eat, there’s no one‑size-fits-all approach. “We see a wide range of diets,” says Rogalski. “Diet is important for health, so I’m not endorsing having fish and chips every night, but some individuals may be able to tolerate it more, and that might be, in part, an interaction with their genes.” That said, the people I speak to are all relatively healthy. “I’ve eaten healthy my whole life,” says Smeets. “I rarely eat meat, I never eat processed food. I’ve been baking my own organic sourdough bread for 40 years and I drink buttermilk every day.” For lunch, he eats fruit from his garden with organic yoghurt and organic grains. Koolhaas Revers eats salads, greens, fish, nuts, chicken and legumes. Hunter has porridge with blueberries and honey for breakfast, and follows a reasonably healthy diet. “But don’t let me sit on a pedestal and think I’m holier than thou. Do we have a takeaway on a Saturday night? Of course we do,” he says. Hunter isn’t teetotal but mostly stopped drinking in 2019 when he started training more seriously.
Interestingly, Rogalski says that the superagers in their study are “not uniformly ‘perfect’ in their lifestyle histories” and that approximately 40% report a history of smoking. “This variability is valuable – it allows us to ask why some individuals maintain exceptional cognitive health despite known risks.” But is it possible to reverse years of unhealthy habits? The superagers could be key to finding out. “Evidence increasingly suggests that lifestyle factors and, critically, their timing matter for brain health,” says Rogalski. One of the goals of her research is to understand if there are windows of opportunity for reducing cognitive decline.
There is one thing that unites most superagers – social connection. Researchers at Northwestern University found that superagers in their study tend to be highly social and have strong interpersonal relationships. They also discovered that superagers have more “von economo neurons” in their brains, which are thought to be linked to social behaviour.
Rogalski is in the process of analysing more data on social activity but says that “strong social engagement does appear to be a common feature among many superagers” and that learning new things and social interactions are great for keeping your brain active. Even having conversations with friends is “good exercise for your brain”, she says. She also points to a study in which they took two groups of people and taught one of them knitting and the other photography, and found that both had the same brain benefits because they were learning new skills. “If you’re in a routine and doing something you know how to do, that’s fine for enjoyment but you’re probably getting less brain benefit, as opposed to doing something challenging.”
These are things Koolhaas Revers prioritises. “In the gym, I socialise with all generations. Don’t limit yourself to the company of older adults. A whole new world has opened up to me through young people,” she says. “Stay curious. Read the newspapers, try new foods, go to the theatre or museums. Live fully and try to remain optimistic, even when you lose people around you. Challenge yourself with new hobbies and interests. Don’t think, ‘I’m too old.’” For Weathers, social interactions are “essential”. She offers to drive people in her building to the shops if they need something, and leaves notes on people’s apartment doors to lift them up. “They say things like ‘Be encouraged today’ and ‘If you need anything, I’m here’,” she says.
From speaking to superagers and experts, it seems there is always something you can do to keep your mind and body active. “My motto is: if all you can move is your little finger, then move it,” says Koolhaas Revers. This is true even if you have mobility or health issues. “Healthy ageing does not require perfection or the absence of illness. For individuals with health or mobility challenges, the focus should be on staying physically active within their abilities, remaining cognitively engaged and maintaining social connections. Even modest, consistent engagement – physical, cognitive or social – can be meaningful,” says Rogalski. This could be anything from phone calls with friends and family to doing gentle stretching in a chair.
It’s hard to know what exactly makes a superager – genetics, lifestyle or a bit of both? Rogalski says they don’t have the full picture, but they are hoping to build it up through more research. On the physical side of things, Van Hooren says “it will always be a mix” but that you can “get far by adopting a healthy lifestyle even when genetics aren’t optimal”. The superagers I speak to generally think it’s a combination of genetics and lifestyle. “I live in a building of 200 units. I don’t see anybody as active as I am or as positive as I am,” says Weathers. “It must be something genetic, along with the influences of my environment, that got me to this place. My tip is to be grateful for what you have and use it for a purpose.”
