March 6, 2026 • 8 mins
What is a SuperAger and how do you become one?
A SuperAger is someone over 80 with an excellent memory, particularly for everyday events and personal history.
What we know about them:
- They produce twice as many young brain cells as people in their 30s and 40s
- New brain cells are more adaptable or plastic and can help rewire and repair the brain when needed
- Genetics do play a part, but so do lifestyle factors like a good diet, lowering your stress, and having good sleep patterns
There are also some psychological tools you can adopt that help develop SuperAging:
Developing an optimistic view of the world and people around you – if we break this down, optimistic people have the following pattern:
- When something bad happens, they are less likely to blame themselves and see the problem as temporary
- When something good happens, they are more likely to take credit for it, feel that it’s partly in their control, and that good things are likely to continue
- It’s not about pretending stress or bad things don’t happen
- It is something you can train yourself to do – easy practical way of doing this is taking 15-20mins a week and think of your “Best Possible Self” in the future when you have achieved all your life goals and resolved all your problems. Be very specific about what this would look like and make sure to include how that would feel for you.
- Another way is “grace for atheists” where you spend time before the start of your evening meal deliberately bringing to mind and being thankful for several things that have occurred that day. Some days will be easier than others, but over time you can help train your brain to pay attention to these positive things. Your brain doesn’t need any practice looking for negative things – it does this automatically!
- Regularly practising the Best Possible Self and grace for atheists exercises can help develop an optimistic mind-set, and increase your chances of being a SuperAger.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That'd be So we said before eleven o'clock that sitting
for too long can be bad for your health. It
turns out all manner of factors, including diet and lifestyle,
go into whether or not someone can be considered a superager.
So superages are someone over the age of eighty who
have excellent memory. And Google Sutherland from Umbrella Well Being
(00:32):
is here with all the details this morning, get.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
A doogle Cura Jack, Nice to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, you too.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
So what do we know about superages?
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Yeah, so, as you said that they are over eighty
and particularly it means you've got they've got really excellent
memory skills. And that's memory for two types of broaday
for memory, both for sort of everyday events that happened
to you and for what we call those episodic memories.
So that's personal history, that's sort of remembering things from
(01:03):
back in your life. And they're almost like the sort
of the opposite of someone with Alzeimer's disease, right, and
often they're sort of compared as maybe this, maybe what
can we learn from superages that might help us understand
Alzheimer's more and to some of the things that goes
(01:23):
on there.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
And certainly in the brain.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
We know that superages they have that they produce a
lot more young brain cells, in fact, almost more sometimes
than people in their thirties and forties. So they've got
this prolific production of brain cells. And when I first
studied psychology, and you know it was doing my training
back in the nineties, the accepted wisdom at that stage
(01:49):
was that brain cells don't reproduce. You don't grow new ones.
You know, you're born with them and you do lose some,
but that you can't regenerate them. But that's changed really
in the past twenty to thirty years. Are understanding we
know that in fact, we do generate new brain cells.
And the advantage of having new new kind of brain
cells as they're much more plastic and pliable, so they
(02:11):
can be adapted for different things.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
They're not sort of set in their ways.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
You know, we talk all the time about oh, you know,
I'm making new neural pathways and the brain and that
kind of thing, And in fact this is kind of
this is perhaps sort of true for superages, that they
are producing new brain cells, and that's helping perhaps your
brain to grow and be more resilient and.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Be more flexible.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Right, So genetics player role, but lifestyle factors like sitting
too long at your desk and obviously exercise, those are
things to right absolutely.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
I mean, I think almost everything, particularly in psychology land,
almost everything is a mix of nature and nurture. There's
very few things around psychology that are purely one or
the other.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
There's always a mixture of two. So yes, you can't
and you can't change your genetics.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
So it's like, oh, well, you know, what's the point
in a way in terms of what can you do personally?
But you know those things that Brian was talking about
before before the news around sitting and being active, and
we talked about this sort of last year, I think
a little bit when we talked about blue zones, and
those are people that you know areas in the world
(03:23):
where people live long and they tend to have more
active lifestyles.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
But there's also psychological tools you can you can use
to help.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
With your help your brain really and these are associated
These tools are associated with long longevity and there's no
direct connection with super aging. But the idea is maybe
if you're using these psychological tools, you're actually helping your
brain be a bit more flexible. You're you're keeping it
active in the same way that getting up and moving
(03:55):
around is keeping your body active. Using some psychological tools
can actually help your brain become or stay flexible, stay supple,
stay stay new.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
That's amazing. So and these are true psychological tools, not
like just doing suduku or something like that.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
These are actual yeah, yeah, yeah, they are. Look, and.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
There's sort of mixed evidence from what I can see
around things like suduku and cross words and that kind
of thing. And I certainly wouldn't say to anybody, don't
do those at all.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
But this really is what we call developing an optimistic mindset.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
And that can sound a little bit eerie fairy, and
it's like, oh, well, isn't that just you know, you know,
isn't that just thinking the world's a wonderful place when
it's not really and blah blah blah, And it's not that.
I mean, there's some specific things that we know. So
first year optimism or an optimistic mind frame is associated
with longevity, so living longer, and the idea here is
(04:49):
that maybe that's also helps with your brain. So what
can you do to be to adopt an optimistic worldview?
Well that we know from looking at optimists there's two things.
So they look at bad when bad things happen. So
it's not pretending that bad things don't happen, but when
bad things happen, they're much less likely to blame themselves.
They see themselves not as this bad thing happens, not
(05:11):
because I'm a terrible person or something. It just bad
stuff happens sometimes, and it's only temporary.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's only temporary.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
So that's optimists look at the bad things like that,
and then they flip when they look at good things
that have.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Happened, so they have an opposite mindset.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
They look when they look at bad things are not
about me, It won't last long. Good things, they go,
oh yeah, much more likely to be something I've done
and I can take control of it, and it's probably
likely to continue.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
So in a sense, you take.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Credit for the good and make it and don't take
any credit for the bad, and you think, oh, yeah,
this positive stuff, this is going to continue. This is
really going to continue for me in the long term.
And we know that that optimistic style of thinking is
associated with better aging. And it is, of course, something
(06:02):
you can train your brain to do. It's not you know,
and most of us don't look at the world in
an optimistic way.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
We tend to be looking for threat and looking for negativity.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
But you can train your brain to look at that
sort of optimistic worldview.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah right, and so you can do things like it's
grace for atheists.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Yeah yeah, yeah, so's a couple of a couple of
a couple of sort.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Of practical tools.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
We've call this grace for atheists. I mean, obviously, if
you're a person of faith.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
You don't have to be an atheist. You can just
say grace.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
But grace for atheists is sitting down, you know, stereotypically
with your evening meal, but it could be any time
of the day and just bringing to mind, and even better,
writing down or discussing with other people who are around
you the good things that have happened, things that you
are thankful for that day. And those might be very
(06:55):
very small things. Sometimes it's not like every day you
get up and win lotto or you know, or something
amazing happens.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Sometimes it's just the very small kind of things.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
It could be like last weekend, for example, I was
taking the dogs for a walk and going back to
the topic of birds that you were talking about, just
before these two just flew past me and landed on
a tree just about at my eye level, just about
ten meters away, and it was like, man, these are
New Zealand falcons right there.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
So that's just an.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Example of sort of you know, small things that you
can be thankful for.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Every day. So it's trying to bring to Mike getting
it's training.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Your brain to look for those positive things, however small
they are in your life as they happen every day.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, and it'll pay off over time. That really is
quite extraordinary that you can try and teach yourself those
little psychological tricks. You know that you can teach yourself
those little practices, those routines, and that they can pay
off meaningfully in the long run.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah, it's finny. Yeah. Yeah. They're very much like you know,
training your body. You know that you do, you know
you do.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Going back to the sitting analogy. With the sitting, you're
getting up, you're being active. You're creating a pattern, a
habit of being regularly active in your physical body. And
maybe while you're doing that, while you're standing up from
your desk, use the time mentally to think about a
couple of good things that have happened that day. So
you combine the two together and actually you're exercising not
only your body but your brain as well.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
It's amazing. Hey, thank you so much. Google Google Southerland
from Umbrella Well Being with us this morning.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks a B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That'd be So we said before eleven o'clock that sitting
for too long can be bad for your health. It
turns out all manner of factors, including diet and lifestyle,
go into whether or not someone can be considered a superager.
So superages are someone over the age of eighty who
have excellent memory. And Google Sutherland from Umbrella Well Being
(00:32):
is here with all the details this morning, get.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
A doogle Cura Jack, Nice to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, you too.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
So what do we know about superages?
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Yeah, so, as you said that they are over eighty
and particularly it means you've got they've got really excellent
memory skills. And that's memory for two types of broaday
for memory, both for sort of everyday events that happened
to you and for what we call those episodic memories.
So that's personal history, that's sort of remembering things from
(01:03):
back in your life. And they're almost like the sort
of the opposite of someone with Alzeimer's disease, right, and
often they're sort of compared as maybe this, maybe what
can we learn from superages that might help us understand
Alzheimer's more and to some of the things that goes
(01:23):
on there.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
And certainly in the brain.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
We know that superages they have that they produce a
lot more young brain cells, in fact, almost more sometimes
than people in their thirties and forties. So they've got
this prolific production of brain cells. And when I first
studied psychology, and you know it was doing my training
back in the nineties, the accepted wisdom at that stage
(01:49):
was that brain cells don't reproduce. You don't grow new ones.
You know, you're born with them and you do lose some,
but that you can't regenerate them. But that's changed really
in the past twenty to thirty years. Are understanding we
know that in fact, we do generate new brain cells.
And the advantage of having new new kind of brain
cells as they're much more plastic and pliable, so they
(02:11):
can be adapted for different things.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
They're not sort of set in their ways.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
You know, we talk all the time about oh, you know,
I'm making new neural pathways and the brain and that
kind of thing, And in fact this is kind of
this is perhaps sort of true for superages, that they
are producing new brain cells, and that's helping perhaps your
brain to grow and be more resilient and.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Be more flexible.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Right, So genetics player role, but lifestyle factors like sitting
too long at your desk and obviously exercise, those are
things to right absolutely.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
I mean, I think almost everything, particularly in psychology land,
almost everything is a mix of nature and nurture. There's
very few things around psychology that are purely one or
the other.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
There's always a mixture of two. So yes, you can't
and you can't change your genetics.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
So it's like, oh, well, you know, what's the point
in a way in terms of what can you do personally?
But you know those things that Brian was talking about
before before the news around sitting and being active, and
we talked about this sort of last year, I think
a little bit when we talked about blue zones, and
those are people that you know areas in the world
(03:23):
where people live long and they tend to have more
active lifestyles.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
But there's also psychological tools you can you can use
to help.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
With your help your brain really and these are associated
These tools are associated with long longevity and there's no
direct connection with super aging. But the idea is maybe
if you're using these psychological tools, you're actually helping your
brain be a bit more flexible. You're you're keeping it
active in the same way that getting up and moving
(03:55):
around is keeping your body active. Using some psychological tools
can actually help your brain become or stay flexible, stay supple,
stay stay new.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
That's amazing. So and these are true psychological tools, not
like just doing suduku or something like that.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
These are actual yeah, yeah, yeah, they are. Look, and.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
There's sort of mixed evidence from what I can see
around things like suduku and cross words and that kind
of thing. And I certainly wouldn't say to anybody, don't
do those at all.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
But this really is what we call developing an optimistic mindset.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
And that can sound a little bit eerie fairy, and
it's like, oh, well, isn't that just you know, you know,
isn't that just thinking the world's a wonderful place when
it's not really and blah blah blah, And it's not that.
I mean, there's some specific things that we know. So
first year optimism or an optimistic mind frame is associated
with longevity, so living longer, and the idea here is
(04:49):
that maybe that's also helps with your brain. So what
can you do to be to adopt an optimistic worldview?
Well that we know from looking at optimists there's two things.
So they look at bad when bad things happen. So
it's not pretending that bad things don't happen, but when
bad things happen, they're much less likely to blame themselves.
They see themselves not as this bad thing happens, not
(05:11):
because I'm a terrible person or something. It just bad
stuff happens sometimes, and it's only temporary.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's only temporary.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
So that's optimists look at the bad things like that,
and then they flip when they look at good things
that have.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Happened, so they have an opposite mindset.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
They look when they look at bad things are not
about me, It won't last long. Good things, they go,
oh yeah, much more likely to be something I've done
and I can take control of it, and it's probably
likely to continue.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
So in a sense, you take.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Credit for the good and make it and don't take
any credit for the bad, and you think, oh, yeah,
this positive stuff, this is going to continue. This is
really going to continue for me in the long term.
And we know that that optimistic style of thinking is
associated with better aging. And it is, of course, something
(06:02):
you can train your brain to do. It's not you know,
and most of us don't look at the world in
an optimistic way.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
We tend to be looking for threat and looking for negativity.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
But you can train your brain to look at that
sort of optimistic worldview.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah right, and so you can do things like it's
grace for atheists.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Yeah yeah, yeah, so's a couple of a couple of
a couple of sort.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Of practical tools.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
We've call this grace for atheists. I mean, obviously, if
you're a person of faith.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
You don't have to be an atheist. You can just
say grace.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
But grace for atheists is sitting down, you know, stereotypically
with your evening meal, but it could be any time
of the day and just bringing to mind, and even better,
writing down or discussing with other people who are around
you the good things that have happened, things that you
are thankful for that day. And those might be very
(06:55):
very small things. Sometimes it's not like every day you
get up and win lotto or you know, or something
amazing happens.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Sometimes it's just the very small kind of things.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
It could be like last weekend, for example, I was
taking the dogs for a walk and going back to
the topic of birds that you were talking about, just
before these two just flew past me and landed on
a tree just about at my eye level, just about
ten meters away, and it was like, man, these are
New Zealand falcons right there.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
So that's just an.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Example of sort of you know, small things that you
can be thankful for.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Every day. So it's trying to bring to Mike getting
it's training.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Your brain to look for those positive things, however small
they are in your life as they happen every day.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, and it'll pay off over time. That really is
quite extraordinary that you can try and teach yourself those
little psychological tricks. You know that you can teach yourself
those little practices, those routines, and that they can pay
off meaningfully in the long run.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah, it's finny. Yeah. Yeah. They're very much like you know,
training your body. You know that you do, you know
you do.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Going back to the sitting analogy. With the sitting, you're
getting up, you're being active. You're creating a pattern, a
habit of being regularly active in your physical body. And
maybe while you're doing that, while you're standing up from
your desk, use the time mentally to think about a
couple of good things that have happened that day. So
you combine the two together and actually you're exercising not
only your body but your brain as well.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
It's amazing. Hey, thank you so much. Google Google Southerland
from Umbrella Well Being with us this morning.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks a B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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