Dr. Christiane Northrup, M.D., visionary pioneer and one of the world’s leading authorities in the field of women’s health and wellness, is live tonight at GPB for the airing of her new PBS special "Glorious Women Never Age!" In the special, Dr. Northrup takes on the topic of “aging” – and turns it on its head! She challenges the most popular but least helpful perspectives on women’s “aging,” replacing the notion of decline and decrepitude with the profound understanding that growing older means an increase in wisdom and value. Dr. Northrup skillfully collects and interprets research from astronaut studies, eldercare, the fields of sexuality, orthopedics and other areas, and combines them with her own clinical and life experience. The result is 7 Steps that every woman should take in her journey to getting older – without aging. During her time in Atlanta, GPB conducted an interview with Dr. Northrup about the new special. Q: Why did you want to do a show about women and the touchy subject of aging? A: Because the subject called “aging” needs to be transformed. Getting older is inevitable. The deterioration that we speak of as aging is optional. I wanted people to know the research because it’s very robust research on the mindfulness work of people like Ellen Langer and Mario Martinez, who has interviewed over 500 centenarians. They all have the same things in common. We look around at the Baby Boom generation, and seven to 10,000 people are turning 65 every day until 2018. That's a trend that started in 2011. If people do not change the way they think about the process of moving through time we are going to have a population that can’t walk or get on an airplane, and that has to do with things that are absolutely under one’s control. Moving doesn’t require intense exercise. You don’t need to run a marathon, but you do need to stand up from your computer regularly. The bulk of my work has been with the Baby Boom generation. I’ve followed this generation through my whole career. We went through teenage hood together and all the cultural portals that we associate with various things. Mario Martinez defined aging has how you choose to move through time in your cultural portals. Those portals are beliefs that start very, very early as I pointed out in the show. Q: Can you give us an example of one of the 7 steps you discuss in the show? A: One is to stop participating in ageism. That’s one anyone can get behind. When I say keep you blood sugar stable, that’s going to require a little testing. But if someone were talking with me today, I could tell them how to step out of ageism. One is, don’t talk about your age. People say, “At my age I…” and then they use their age as an excuse why their knee hurts or back hurts when really the excuse is they haven’t moved in twenty years. It has nothing to do with age, right? Q: What do you hope viewers will take away from the show? A: Hope and a new perspective that with practicing mindfulness, which is a different way of thinking and being, they can have an entirely different experience of growing older. I want them to be excited actually because for me having worked through all of this personally, and seeing many, many women who have, it isn’t so much the looking younger, it’s the feeling younger. It’s the being younger. I’m not burdened by the ideas of my past. You know like, "Oh God, I’m a 49-year-old woman, and I’m divorced and there are no good men, and my kids are moving on, and they are dating. I’ll be alone the rest of my life." That’s what most women go through, and it’s what one must work through to see that it doesn’t need to be the way that you’ve been taught in the movies. Q: What is the Ageless Goddess Ecourse that you are making available to people through the program? A: I’m very excited about this course. What we’re going to have is one lesson a week that will be on video and have a PDF. It’s exercises that take the content of the show and expand them in practical baby steps. And we’re having an exclusive Facebook group where all the people who are doing the course can talk to each other. They can problem solve with each other, and most importantly, find each other. Women are just natural social media people. With the Facebook group, people can find a tribe. On my own Facebook page, I’ve had people find each other. I have a good friend in Istanbul because of Facebook. So it’s kind of like birds of a feather flock together. If you’re interested in the material, and you’re the only one thinking this way, and everyone in your tribe or your family thinks you’re nuts, you’re then going to be in a group where this is the norm to think this way. None of us can do this alone. We have this myth in our culture that we should be able to exercise every day and change our thoughts, but no one can do this on their own. You need people who are giving you feedback, who are cheering you on. Mostly what we need is positive reinforcement from people who want to see the best in us. So many women are in situations with a jealous friend or maybe a jealous daughter. Every time they want to do something that’s new and different or what the daughter would consider racy, they’ve got someone putting the lid on them. The book is full of that information because I’ve been there and seen those stories. A friend of mine called me and told me she danced at her daughter’s wedding, and her daughter told her that no one wanted to see her dance like that. And I said, yes this is how it goes. The minute you start to act like something different than a doddering old woman believe me, you’re going to have one of your kids try to squelch you. But you have to teach your daughter that this is what a woman older than 50 does. This is what she looks like, this is how she acts. We are not talking about wearing mini-skirts and thongs and embarrassing everyone. We’re talking about living fully in your skin. If that means you want to dance like no one is watching, that’s what you do. Q: Have you had time for any fun in Atlanta? A: I’ve been here before, but you know this is interesting. Atlanta feels really good to me. We went to a place called South City Kitchen last night. I had fried chicken, banana pudding and tried a little of the Devil’s Food Cake. The place was great and I love the people. It’s been just lovely.