A Federal Report released last month has found that more women over the age of 70 are remaining in the workforce than ever before. Could it be that these women are practicing Dr. Northrup’s wisdom?

With her mantra: “We have the power to create our own vibrant health,” Dr. Northrup has dedicated her lifework to showing women how to build up their immunity to negative beliefs, a resistance that could ultimately help during the aging process. “When my mother Edna turned 65, her mailbox was suddenly full of diaper ads, eyeglass deals, hearing aid ads, and so one. She said she felt as though she were being programmed to disintegrate at that age!”

Edna, who is now 80 years old and has never been on hormones, hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in her late sixties, skied around the base of Mount McKinley shortly thereafter, and when she was in her seventies, spent the summer going on a three-month extended hiking and kayaking trip to Alaska. “My mother says that she doesn’t feel much different from when she was thirty, but she’s definitely treated differently.”

Dr. Northrup’s advice: “The more women ignore what’s supposed to happen when we age, the better the chances are that all of us will stay healthy.”

According to the August 2006 report from the government’s Federal Forum on Aging-Related Statistics, more women ages 65 to 69 are continuing to work. Even the number of women over age 70 in the workforce has increased since the 1990s and continued to rise in 2005.

The report also states that labor force participation rates for older women have increased significantly since the mid-1980s, and for older men, since the mid-1990s. The workforce update notes that the number of men ages 65 to 69 in the workforce went from 25 percent in 1993 to 34 percent in 2005. For women ages 65 to 69, the rates increased from 14 percent in 1985 to 24 percent in 2005. There has been a similar increase in the labor force for women ages 62 to 64 over the same period (from 28 percent in 1987 to 40 percent in 2005). For men ages 62 to 64, participation rates leveled off in the 1980s after falling during the 1960s and 1970s. Then in the mid-1990s, their participation rates began to rise from 45 percent in 1995 to 53 percent in 2005.

The trend also applies to men and women age 70 and over. Here, too, labor force participation rates have increased markedly for at least a decade and the rise is continuing. Among men ages 70 and over, 14 percent were in the labor force in 2005, up from 10 percent in 1993. Among women 70 and over, participation rates increased from 4 percent in 1987 to 7 percent in 2005.

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• Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics(www.agingstats.gov/update2006/default.htm)