How did three women, who live in different parts of the country, meet later in life and decide to open a longevity company that utilizes the benefits of integrative wellness coaching and motivates women to adopt lifestyle shifts to live better longer? And what exactly is integrative health? And what does it mean to live better longer?
I recently sat down with Susan Callahan, Jill Baker, and Collins Baker, to learn about integrative health, and their company Live Better Longer which “motivates women to harness the power of their brain health, physical health, mindset and purpose to feel their best now and master their next decades”.
Tell me a little bit about your background and how you each got to where you are.
Susan Callahan:
I started my career working in the art world, in the advertising world, and in the internet marketing world. As a mother of 4, I then decided to stay home and began thinking about self-care, and self-care for moms in particular. I wrote a book for moms called Mothers Need Time-Outs Too with two friends – a ten-year project that was published with McGraw Hill in 2008. That is what got me on the wellness journey. After that, one of my co-authors and I created a company called Every Day Matters which provided workshops for schools, discussing the intricacies of wellness with parents. Following that I co-founded a company called Well & Ready, which supported employees in the workplace to take care of themselves ‘pre-burnout’.
Along the way, I had family members struggling with Depression, Parkinsons, and Alzheimers.
With my passion for wellness, I wanted to learn more. I went back to school and got my certification in nutrition at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and then I went back and got a specialty in brain health at the Amen clinics. I then started my Integrative Wellness coaching practice assisting individuals and families to adopt science-based, sustainable lifestyle habits to help their overall emotional, physical, and behavioral health. I now focus on Longevity and serve as a co-founder of Live Better Longer – we support women to make lifestyle shifts, and after all these years I couldn’t love my work more!
Jill Baker:
I am enamored with the idea that we can teach people, young and old, that they have agency over their health and well-being, that we can give them the tools to take care of themselves in their own environment and that this is exactly how they can thrive. I became a Family Nurse Practitioner 26 years ago, after completing my graduate work at Columbia University and The University of California San Francisco. I spent 22 years as a primary care provider at a busy Internal Medicine practice in San Francisco. I took care of people through the lifespan and I have specialties in women’s health, longevity, and restorative health. I left that practice in 2021 to pursue this concept that we can all take care of ourselves best using lifestyle strategies within the context of an integrative framework.
I love spending time teaching people to understand their personal health beliefs, that their health can best be improved with an integrative approach driven by their own values and goals. Lifestyle strategy comes first and foremost for me. I see clients one-on-one, and then I do this wonderful work with Susan and Collins, where we’re meeting people in small supportive groups. I’m getting to do what I set out to do in the first place, so long ago, and I am ever grateful for the evolution of my career in health and wellbeing.
My three teenagers and my husband, Chris, have been an incredible support. Their curiosity and enthusiasm for this work and my capacity to grow (still!) just adds fuel to my fire.
Collins Baker:
I spent most of my career at Conde Nast in sales and marketing partnerships. I’ve always loved being around culturally relevant brands that shift with the times. I love content, and I love serving content to people in a way that will enable them to take action. I’ve always enjoyed doing that, strategic marketing, and I did a lot of events. So I also really understood how you port information out to make groups connected.
We were raising our 2 boys in Rye, New York but we made a big pivot following the tragic passing of my mother. We decided to move to Vermont in 2014 and join my father who was pouring his grief into building a family farm. We were three generations using our grit to create a premiere Hereford cow breeding farm. I was still a Vice President of Marketing at Condé Nast in NYC. I would leave my Patagonia and muck boots in VT and head toward Manhattan for 3 days of work each week. I was juggling it all.
Until I wasn’t – In July 2019 my stress sparked my body to shut down causing me to faint and I smashed my head on the bathroom floor. This resulted in a traumatic brain injury.
Western medicine told me that I might never fully recover. I was not willing to accept this and began a journey of using diet & lifestyle levers to heal my brain.
I relentlessly focused on rebooting my diet to only include non-processed food, I gave up alcohol, embraced sleep hygiene, did daily yoga, created positive intentions, took walks in nature, and journaled to dampen my inner critic. I also embraced cranial sacral work, myofascial work, and chiropractor bodywork. After 1 year of consistent effort using my lifestyle levers – I healed my body and brain, and as I emerged my anxiety was gone. It was incredible!! Which is what has fueled my passion to help women to live better longer through integrative wellness strategies and I’m excited to be a co-founder of Live Better Longer.
So how did the three of you meet?
Susan: Along the way I met Collins. Our sons went to college together, and we met on the lacrosse field sidelines. Jill is married to a friend of mine, who I grew up with in Connecticut. They would visit Rhode Island and Jill and I got talking and walking and thinking about all the same things in the health arena. I knew I had to introduce Jill and Collins, and the three of us started meeting once a week. We would meet and support each other with our own businesses.
Then we got the bug that we really wanted to be able to support women 50+ in a greater way. The information on Integrative Health wasn’t getting to this group properly, and the support wasn’t there. 50+ is a really tricky time for women given that they are in a kind of transition in their life, maybe reestablishing relationships with their adult children, or switching careers, or finding out who they really are. They’re re-looking at their purpose. So the three of us created Live Better Longer, which specializes in a year-long immersive experience for women to adopt a wellness roadmap to live better longer.
So what exactly is Integrative Health/Wellness?
Integrative wellness coaching is a holistic approach that includes lifestyle, mind-body, and western medical thinking. It takes into account the biological, psychological and social aspects of a person’s health and well-being.
This personalized work is driven by the client’s wellness goals and values. The coach serves as a non-judgemental guide, providing multidimensional support to the client.
An Integrative Wellness coach meets with clients to complete a health history, understand their current health situation, understand their current life impacts, determine goals, help educate them to understand what is happening in their physical bodies, their brains, and their mindsets, and then guide them to support making the shifts they need to support their long term health and wellness.
Clients come to us with many different types of issues which may include, but are not limited to, life issues (that may be causing stress, for example), physical issues (they want to become more active and are looking for guidance on the best way to do so), nutrition issues (general nutrition, weight management, gut issues and more) and tactical health issues (they may need help determining what test they may need and which questions they should be asking their doctors).
What does living better longer mean?
Susan: Jill, Collins, and I are all individual integrated wellness coaches. The joke is that really no one wakes up and says ‘I need to live better longer!’ Because people just don’t know what that means – as this is just an emerging trend and coming to the forefront and into the cultural zeitgeist.
The quest for longevity has sparked a revolution in the health, biotech and wellness spaces. The research that is being done around Longevity shows that we can greatly impact the trajectory of aging and in some cases we can reverse aging.
The amazing news is that 85% of your potential longevity is impacted by your lifestyle while 15% is impacted by your genetics.
For women in particular, there is so much opportunity to change the trajectory of their future decades. Longevity is not only just something in the distant future: it’s also about vibrancy in your everyday life.
We want to make sure that they don’t miss this revolution! We don’t want women to be left behind as many of us were as it relates to menopause.
The body of research on women and our unique health biology is growing: there is so much to uncover that has been sidelined by accepted health norms and old information. We are so excited to bring timely, relevant and actionable data to you in our effort to inspire your own best practices.
What is the issues, and opportunities, you see women experiencing in mid-life that impact their longevity?
Women in midlife and beyond experience cognitive and physical changes that impact our ability to live the way we want to live now.
This is compounded by hormonal changes associated with the perimenopause through postmenopause transitions and the continued issues we have because of low estrogen throughout the rest of our lives.
Women are also in a transition where their mindset and purpose are being greatly impacted. We’ve got hormone changes and major shifts at home. The empty nest juxtaposed against caring for aging parents. Adult children in and out. Travel. Living in new places.
Personal lifestyle choices can positively impact your health span by 10-20 years. The key to fostering that positive impact is to use lifestyle levers to fuel your body and mind.
By using our science-backed criteria in and among the 6 pillars of: Nourishment, Mindfulness, Movement, Sleep, Nature, and Connection you can change the trajectory of how vibrant you feel both now and for decades to come.
Tell me about your year-long program:
We identified a gap when we studied the longevity market. There’s so much out there – you can go get all this testing at the longevity clinics, or you can go to the ranch or these week-long kick starts and get information. You can do 2-day longevity summits where you’re going to get all this information. But what we saw is that nobody’s helping you adopt the strategies into your everyday life.
Our year-long program, called “The Practice”, consists of one-on-one integrative wellness coaching and group community work to propel women to make realistic lifestyle shifts.
We guide clients to SHIFT to a new normal which fully supports a longevity practice. How do we do this?
- Discover the following: what is their health history, baseline health, and life impacts
- Identify gaps in their current wellness practices, barriers and blocks
- Establish a plan to adopt key strategies that will bridge the gap
- Practice the identified strategies and goals to foster change
- Integrate new wellness practices into our daily life
- Shift your mindset from “ I should, I must or I have to” — to —- “ I get to, I am excited to, I feel calmer and more balanced when I….”
- Re-establish your purpose to support what fuels you
Our promise is that by the end of the program you will feel adept at tuning your body and mind using lifestyle strategies to feel in command of yourself.
Do you give medical advice?
Our scope is coaching. We do make recommendations about labs. We make recommendations about lifestyle strategies. We’re not going to coach people on what medicines they should take or what they should get rid of, but we do advise. I might say that I think you need to talk to your provider about this, and here is a list of things to talk to them about. This is really important. This seems to be working because if people can go in with a little more clarity around what’s going on, that’s what we can help with.
In most situations, if people need medication they are already on it. But can that be shifted? Can somebody have more agency around how they pursue their health care and how they take care of themselves and then end up with less medicine? That’s a nice outcome. But it’s not the only outcome we’re looking at.
We want people to be happy in their bodies, to be content, and to have longevity. Longevity is really the outcome we’re looking for. And to have these glimmers of feeling good now, and later. You’re going to feel better now. But you’re actually setting yourself up to be the best 70 year old, and 80 year old you can be, and it compounds over time.
Thanks ladies!
Here is LBL’s FAB 5 list of how to Live Better Longer, based on their pillars of nourishment, movement, mindfulness, sleep, nature, & connection.
- Get a handle on your Inner Critic: Learn how to get control of your negative thoughts with tools that engage neuroplasticity and mindset at this time of life.
- Focus on Protein: We have specific protein needs to speed up metabolism and prevent frailty.
- Rise and Shine: Wake up and get out the door. Orienting your brain to the natural light first thing supports your mood, memory, and metabolism.
- Sprint! When was the last time you played with battle ropes at the gym? Or what about running 20 seconds fast several times at the end of a hike? We know this kind of exercise is necessary for upregulating a postmenopausal metabolism.
- Get on your mat: Settling your nervous system is necessary for metabolic health and longevity. Can you make this happen for 5 minutes today?
For more information, contact Susan Callahan at susancolecallahan@gmail.com or visit livebetterlongerprogram.com to learn more.
