September is Healthy Aging Month. It’s a month that raises awareness on the physical and mental health of older adults.
Josephine “Pepa” Dodge is someone who exemplifies healthy aging and may make you believe, “age is just a number.”
She’s been teaching fitness classes at the Newport Mesa YMCA in Newport Beach for almost 50 years. She’s 97-years-young and still teaching, still moving, and still grooving.
Dr. Thomas Kim is a geriatrician with AltaMed PACE in Santa Ana. He said healthy aging is “about maintaining function, independence, quality of life in the older age.”
Kim added that exercise and mobility are key to that, offering both physical and mental health benefits. He said Pepa is proof, “Age is just a number to certain people. And to people who are so motivated to keep active, it just shows the power of what that can do.”