As a physical therapist and fitness trainer, my clients are always asking me what they can do to keep their bodies young and healthy.

As we age, we naturally lose strength, range of motion and flexibility, which can cause stiffness, discomfort and an increased risk of injury. So mobility is crucial for long-term pain relief and overall longevity.

So if you ask any fitness expert what stretch is the best for longevity, they’ll tell you about the “World’s Greatest Stretch.” This full body movement can improve mobility, work a variety of muscle groups and keep your body in excellent condition as you age.

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1. Start in a high plank position. Keep your hands directly beneath your shoulders, and your body in a straight line from head to heels.
2. Step your right foot forward. Place it outside your right hand, forming a deep lunge. Make sure your front knee stays aligned over your ankle.
3. Reach your right arm upward. Rotate your torso to the right, extending your arm toward the ceiling. Follow your hand with your eyes to enhance spinal mobility.
4. Return your hand to the ground. Bring your right arm back down and place it on the inside of your front foot.
5. Straighten your front leg. Shift your weight back slightly to stretch your hamstring. Hold for 10 seconds, then return to the lunge.
6. Switch sides. Step your right foot back to the plank position and repeat on the left side.

Not only does this stretch feel amazing, but it is also science-backed. According to studies, dynamic stretching is more effective than static stretching at increasing flexibility and getting your muscles ready for exercise.

For the best results, aim to perform this stretch for five to 10 repetitions on each side, holding each position for a few seconds. Try to reach a little bit deeper into the lunge as you rotate to improve your mobility over time.

As you do this stretch on a daily basis, you’ll start to notice:

• Improved hip flexibility: Tight hips are a common issue that can lead to increased tension in the lower back.
• Strengthened stabilizing muscles: By holding the stretch position, you’re actually performing a core exercise by stabilizing at your hips and trunk.
• Boosted circulation: Dynamic movements stimulate blood flow to the muscles, which helps with recovery and reduces inflammation.
• Enhanced joint health: Moving joints through their full range of motion promotes synovial fluid production, which lubricates and protects cartilage.

Keep in mind that, while this stretch is excellent for most people, it’s not for everyone. If you have a physical condition or health concerns, consult with your doctor first.

Andy Fata-Chan is a physical therapist and the founder of Moment Physical Therapy and Performance, which specializes in helping patients with chronic debilitating pain get back to high performance. His experience ranges from youth athletes to Olympic and professional-level athletes.

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Rebecca Smiley is proof that travel agents are making a comeback, and young people are driving demand.

Smiley, 28, changed careers to become a travel advisor and is on track to book $1 million in trips for her clients this year, up from roughly $800,000 in 2024.

Her trip bookings vary from $1,000 Vegas getaways to $21,000 weekend cruise packages. But regardless of budget, she says some travel expenses are worth splurging on, whereas for others you should save.

If you’re going to spend more in one travel category, make it your accommodations, Smiley says.

Hostel or camping trips have their place, but booking a “nicer” hotel closer to your points of interest, where you can sleep soundly and rest in between your activities, can “make or break” your overall vacation experience, she says.

“When you look back, although you might remember the excursions or adventures you had, you will remember a bad stay more than that,” Smiley says.

You don’t have to resort to a five-star hotel for nicer accommodations, she adds – a boutique hotel can provide a luxurious stay on a smaller budget.

One place to save: your flights. There are a number of ways to find cheaper airfare, like booking at the right time and flying at off-peak hours. Look into using your credit card points or airline loyalty programs to lower the price of your flight, Smiley adds.

Overall, the biggest trend she’s seen, based on her 2025 bookings, is travelers who want “something unique that will blow me away” and set them apart, especially on social media, she tells CNBC Make It.

“You hate that it comes down to this, but you’re scrolling and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s another person that’s gone to Cancun. Do I want to go to Cancun? Or do I want to go somewhere that nobody’s heard of before?’”

For example, many of her clients are planning European honeymoons but want something “off the beaten path” and tailored to their specific interests, like an “LGBTQ honeymoon in Greece, or a Tuscan winery honeymoon,” she says.

Younger travelers in their 20s and 30s, who feel shut out of the housing market or from reaching other traditional financial milestones, are prioritizing bucket-list travel, Smiley says.

“They’re much more willing to spend their money, their hard-earned money on an experience like a vacation than the the nicest new car, or maybe [because] they can’t get a house,” she says. “They’re going to put in the money to go on this really cool African safari that maybe other people don’t do until they have retirement money.”

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Even before your children understand how money works, they can start picking up on your attitude and feelings about finances, and that can have a lasting impact. But avoiding talking about money with your kids altogether could be even more detrimental to their future financial success.

“Deep down, most people believe that money is a bad thing, that kids need to be shielded from [it],” Ramit Sethi, self-made millionaire and author of the new book, “Money for Couples,” tells CNBC Make It. 

“You don’t shield kids from riding a bike. You don’t shield kids from trying a tomato. So why would you shield them from something that is far more important than either of those examples?” he says.

When you talk about money with your kids, there is a “horrible phrase” Sethi says he would “ban” from households: “We can’t afford it.” Here’s why.

Many of the individuals Sethi has spoken to on his “Money for Couples” podcast recall hearing “we can’t afford it” from their own parents when they were growing up. 

“And they really believed it,” Sethi says. “So even when they have a good job and they make good money 30 years later, they still feel scarcity around money.”

A positive relationship with money has nothing to do with how much money you actually have, Sethi says. Teaching your kids this phrase can unintentionally make them fearful of spending any money down the line, even when they are technically able to afford the thing they want.

Instead of saying you can’t afford something, Sethi suggests echoing the norms and culture you set within your family to explain your decision. You could say, “In our family, we choose to spend money on healthy food instead of popcorn with butter,” he says.

Alternatively, “not everything has to have a massive explanation,” he says. It may not satisfy a child begging for a toy at the store, but planting the seeds for your children to understand you can’t and shouldn’t spend your money on every little thing you want to impulsively buy will benefit them in the long run.

 “Saying no is a good thing,” he says. “I love saying no, and sometimes no is all you need to say.”

In addition to talking about money, Sethi encourages families to get their kids involved with financial tasks so they can build a positive foundation for their relationships with money when they get older. 

Let them watch you pay the bills or even click the “pay” button, he suggests. And try not to gripe out loud about how high the electric bill is or how expensive your rent is. Instead, let your kids know that this money is providing the roof over their heads and the electricity to play their video games. 

“As teens, they [can] help plan an entire family trip or help purchase a family car,” Sethi says. “That is how they start to learn about taxes and trade-offs. That’s how you equip them to be successful in the real world.”

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We’ve all dealt with emotionally immature people: They get defensive at the slightest criticism, they constantly deflect blame, and then they try to guilt you into feeling sorry for them.

Emotional immaturity is a growing problem, and whether it’s in your personal or professional life, communicating with them can be a real struggle.

As experts on the psychology of communication, we know that if you’re not careful, you can also easily run the risk of seeming emotionally immature to others. Why? A lot of us automatically use certain emotionally immature phrases without even thinking about it.

Here’s a list of the most common ones to avoid:

People who are emotionally immature often won’t take responsibility for their own actions when something goes wrong. So what do they do? They extricate themselves from situations by immediately stating that they are not to blame. 

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An emotionally immature person will do everything in their power to not take responsibility for their actions, and a common tactic is to make it seem like you, or literally anyone else, is in the wrong — not them.

You can almost imagine a little kid saying this one. This phrase is a way for them to avoid any true accountability or genuine communication with the person they are engaging with.

This is a combo of gaslighting — trying to make others believe a false reality — and shifting the blame again. The message they’re sending: You’re the problem, not me. Another toxic phrase in this vein is “you’re being too sensitive.”

People use that simple “whatever,” often with a shrug, to say, “I’m done discussing this.” It’s an emotionally immature method to shut down the paths of communication and figuratively walk away from any further discussion.

Here we go again with the gaslighting. People who are emotionally immature rewrite reality, both for themselves and, possibly more importantly, for others. When someone says something like this, they’re typically trying to evade responsibility and make you think something else happened.

In this case, emotionally immature people walk away from any complicated issue by throwing it onto someone else and dismissing any and all responsibility. It’s the perfect example of transference.

Another example of invalidating other people, and one that is used in both personal and professional relationships. By saying phrases like this, an emotionally immature person is dismissing the other person’s concerns and opinions, and belittling their reaction.

Yes, it’s usually best to focus on the future. But emotionally immature people will often accuse people who bring up their mistakes of harping on the past. They don’t want to learn from their mistakes and they don’t want an honest discussion about whatever is happening. They want to move on without addressing the issue.

Here’s an example of how emotionally immature people passive-aggressively avoid taking responsibility for what they say. It might sound like they’re trying to smooth things over, but it’s actually more of a way of critiquing someone, then distancing themselves from their statement. 

Emotionally immature people often use broad generalizations. Instead of engaging in constructive honest conversation or using specific examples, they will issue an accusatory blanket statement and use that to avoid any further discussion. 

If there’s one phrase that really sounds like a kid said it, it’s this one. How many of us used “but all the kids are doing it” argument trying — usually in vain — to get our parents to allow us to do something? But emotionally immature adults use it, too.

They’ll pull out the time-honored “everyone’s doing it” argument as a justification for something they want to do or already have done. Of course, they’re blameless if they’ve done something wrong, they were just going along with the crowd, after all.

Kathy and Ross Petras are the brother-and-sister co-authors of the New York Times bestseller You’re Saying It Wrong, along with other popular language books, and co-hosts of the award-winning NPR syndicated radio show and podcast ”You’re Saying It Wrong.” They’ve also been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and Harvard Business Review. Follow them on Bluesky.

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While the brain makes up only 2% of your body weight, it is responsible for over 20% of energy expenditure each day.

I’ve spent 15 years studying the brain, and five years as a medical director of a residential memory care facility. I am always reminding people to eat things that feed the brain, not harm it. You want to give your brain the nutrients it needs to heal, repair tissues, fight toxins and create neurotransmitters so that it can stay young, sharp and energized for as long as possible.

That means nutrient-dense, lower-carb foods. Nutrients to provide the building blocks, and lower carbs to help stabilize your blood sugar and even out the roller coaster of spikes and drops that create so many cognition-impairing side effects, including lightheadedness, anxiety, fatigue, irritability and a decrease in focus.

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So if you do one thing to improve your diet to protect the brain, start raising your carb-consciousness and begin swapping out some of the carb-heavy foods you eat most often for lower-carb alternatives.

A healthy amount of carbs to shoot for is around 130 grams per day (about 25% of calories in a 2,000 calorie diet).

But not all carbs offer the same health benefits, so the quality of the carbs you eat is much more important than the number. Consider that eating a higher carb fruit like grapes or watermelon after a high-fat, high-protein snack like greek yogurt will reduce how quickly and how much your blood sugar will go up.

Eat high-fat, high-protein foods first in your meal and save the higher carb options until later. Aim to snack on low-carb options like cucumbers, bell peppers, cheese, coconut yogurt, pecans or walnuts.

Sweets on an empty stomach will raise your blood sugar high and fast, then it will drop. Generally that drop in blood sugar feels bad and makes us act hangry, and over time it leads to diabetes, insulin resistance and cognitive impairment. 

That could look like:

• One piece of avocado toast for breakfast instead of a whole bagel or cereal.
• Soup and salad instead of a sandwich and chips for lunch.
• Swapping your side dish of potatoes or rice for quinoa or cauliflower rice at dinner.
• Berries with a little whipped cream or a few squares of dark chocolate instead of ice cream for dessert.

Don’t get too hung up on counting every gram of carbohydrates you consume, because it can be stressful and overwhelming (which is the opposite of what we want!).

But many times my patients don’t realize how many carbs they’ve been eating. Becoming aware of how many carbohydrates you’re eating in a day will help you eat less of them — after all, you can’t change a habit you don’t know you have.

Just this one change would do a ton of good — including bringing down glucose and insulin levels (and therefore reducing inflammation), and upping consumption of the nutrients that support brain health (protein, vitamins and minerals from vegetables and fats).

Dr. Heather Sandison is a naturopathic doctor specializing in neurocognitive medicine and the founder of Solcere Health Clinic, a brain optimization clinic, and Marama, the first residential memory care facility to have the goal of returning cognitively declined residents to independent living. Her latest book, “Reversing Alzheimer’s” is out now.

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.

Adapted excerpt from the book: ”REVERSING ALZHEIMER’S,” by Dr. Heather Sandison. Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Heather Sandison. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.