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Summary
On episode 346 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Karen Salmansohn, a best-selling author and award-winning designer, to talk about her book Life Is Long: 50+ Ways to Help You Live a Little Bit Closer to Forever.
Karen wrote the book after promising her son Ari she would live to 100, and researched so many tips that her original 50 grew to 57. Her focus is not just adding years, it is adding quality to those years, what she calls staying “welderly.”
The conversation covers healthy fats and oils, which supplements she takes and why, the chemicals hiding in everyday personal care products, and simple daily habits like flossing and laughing that carry outsized health effects.
Links
- https://notsalmon.com
Key Takeaways
- Seeing others thrive at older ages changes what you believe is possible for yourself. Karen compares this to Roger Bannister's four-minute mile: once one person proves something is possible, others follow.
- How fast or slow you age is partly a choice. Karen argues that daily habits and decisions, not just genetics or luck, determine your trajectory as you get older.
- Not all fats and oils are equal. Karen recommends olive, avocado, coconut, and MCT oil, and avoiding processed oils such as soybean, corn, safflower, cottonseed, sunflower, palm, and any partially hydrogenated oil, which she says show up in shelf-stable, bottled products.
- You are who you eat with. Karen changed how she talked about food with her young son so he could be her accountability partner, pointing to research that eating habits, and even income, spread through the people you spend the most time with.
- Karen takes vitamin D3 with K2, CoQ10, and green tea extract, all with a doctor's input. She takes D3 in liquid form because most people who spend their time indoors are deficient, K2 to help direct the D3 where it needs to go, CoQ10 for mitochondrial and heart energy, and green tea extract for antioxidants and blood pressure support.
- What you put on your skin gets absorbed into your body, not just what you eat. Karen watches for chemicals like formaldehyde, toluene, and even generic “fragrance” in lotions and nail products, and avoids busy nail salons because of fumes in the air.
- Diluted apple cider vinegar may help with blood sugar and appetite control. Karen warns never to take it undiluted, and mixes it with water or flavored elixirs to make it tolerable.
- Oral health is tied to whole body health, not just your teeth. Gum tissue has blood vessels, so unhealthy oral bacteria can affect the rest of the body, including heart health.
- Laughter measurably improves health outcomes. Karen cites studies, including Japanese research linking laughter to lower levels of a protein tied to diabetes-related kidney disease, as reasons to build humor and funny friends into daily life.
“You can age quickly or you can age slowly. And some of that is your choice.”
Karen Salmansohn
Another Episode You May Enjoy
Episode 387 – Live large and live long with Jennifer L Carroll
