There are nearly 60 MILLION Americans who are unpaid caregivers today.

Now think about that; these are people who likely have full time jobs working 40 hours a week and who are working another 26 hours a week on average looking after an aging loved one.

It’s a tough picture and it’s made worse by the lack of any kind of support available in the United States.

Certainly this long term healthcare crisis (and it is a crisis by any definition of that word) is not exclusive to America alone.

There are aging populations all over the world and countless millions more caregivers but many other countries have been proactive in implementing policies designed to mitigate the pressure that unpaid caregivers experience.

Debbie Howard, a professional market researcher, knows what it’s like to be a caregiver after spending some years caring for her cancer-stricken mother.

As a result, Debbie has devoted nearly 20 years to agitating for caregivers in the U.S., forming Aging Matters International and thecaregivingjourney.com along the way.

She is our guest this week on The Art 2 Aging.

Dave McCaughan has made frequent appearances on The Art 2 Aging; he is an experienced marketer with decades of real, “in the trenches” marketing expertise and he has made the issue of marketing to an aging population a kind of mission for the past three decades.

Today, he provides another thought-provoking Point of View in which he talks about how demographers have known for decades that the world’s population is aging (some countries faster and sooner than others, like Japan for example) and that an aging population will bring unique challenges and demands before it starts shrinking.

So, if demographers have known this for more than 40 years, Dave asks, why is it now only just dawning on policy makers? Further, is encouraging women to have more babies really a viable tactic to reverse aging in any country? Or just a silly idea with no merit whatsoever (hint: it’s the latter…)?

I can’t remember how we first heard about Fred Woolman but I knew it was imperative to have him as a guest on The Art 2 Aging.

That was more than a year ago; at the time, Fred was a full time fitness instructor at a nearby facility in his hometown of Rochester, Minnesota, 125 LIVE, where he was conducting fitness classes and personal training three times a week.

At the age of 83.

He’s still at it and the fact is, he is older than anyone in his classes – and they’re all what you could call “seniors”.

They will tell you that they love his classes and they are his biggest fans.

Well, bit by bit, Fred’s fame spread beyond Rochester and recently reached the offices of the Guiness World Records headquarters in London, England.

They were intrigued that this now-84 year old guy was a fitness instructor and possibly older than any other living trainer. So they began their background checks to determine the veracity of Fred Woolman: was he who his bosses at 125 LIVE said he was? Could he be doing what he was purported to be doing at 84? Was it even possible?

Yes, it was possible, they discovered. Fred came as advertised. He was the real deal – an 84 year old fitness instructor and personal trainer.

So, Fred became a Guiness World Record Holder in September, 2025.

But not just once. Twice. He’s in the Book of Records as the oldest living fitness instructor and the oldest personal trainer in the world.

Now, what do you think that says about aging?

I reached Fred at his home in Rochester, Minnesota to get the Guiness story from the horse’s mouth and learned that he’s just plunged headlong into a new physical activity: mountain biking!

There’s no stopping this guy!