Journal of Ageing and Longevity

Healthy aging depends on preserving the capacity to adapt to physiological stress. Physical exercise is a prototypical hormetic stimulus that transiently perturbs redox, energetic, mechanical, and inflammatory homeostasis, activating pathways involved in mitochondrial remodeling, metabolic flexibility, cellular repair, and stress resistance. The Mediterranean diet may shape the context in which these responses occur through polyphenols, unsaturated fatty acids, fermentable fibers, micronutrients, and microbiota-derived metabolites. This review develops a hormetic framework for the molecular convergence between Mediterranean dietary exposure and exercise in healthy aging while distinguishing mechanistic plausibility from demonstrated biological interaction. Particular attention is given to Nrf2–Keap1, AMPK–SIRT1–PGC-1α, mTOR–autophagy, NF-κB/NLRP3, and eNOS/NO networks, with mitochondrial quality control considered a candidate integrative hub. The gut–muscle–mitochondria axis and microbial polyphenol metabotypes are discussed as potential contributors to interindividual variability. The antioxidant paradox is framed through a proposed adaptive redox window in which physiological stress and nutritional modulation support adaptation without exceeding or suppressing compensatory capacity. Current human evidence supports molecular convergence and biological complementarity more strongly than formally demonstrated diet × exercise interaction, while evidence of true synergy remains particularly limited; the framework is therefore hypothesis-generating and requires factorial and mechanistic testing in older adults.

Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) has been linked to a range of health outcomes, but little is known about its relationship to how older adults manage their money. This study extends SCD with financial interference (SCD-F), a brief, person-centered classification introduced in earlier work, to two money management outcomes in older adults: assistance with money management and satisfaction with current arrangements. Participants (n = 1392) completed an online survey through the Older Adult Nest Egg website and were classified as having no subjective memory complaint (SMC), an SMC only, or SCD-F. The groups differed in money management (χ²(4) = 70.00, p < 0.001) and satisfaction with their money management arrangement (χ²(4) = 100.84, p < 0.001). Participants with SCD-F more often received help managing their finances or had someone else manage them (42.09%) than those with an SMC only (24.47%) or no SMC (19.35%), and were less often satisfied (61.87% vs. 77.66% and 87.02%). Findings held after adjusting for age, gender, race, and education, supporting both hypotheses. These findings suggest that financial interference adds information beyond a general memory complaint. Future longitudinal studies with objective measures of financial capacity should test the direction of these associations.

Depressive symptoms are common among older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and are associated with poorer health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and lower healthy-aging scores, yet the pathways underlying these associations remain unclear. Drawing on stress-and-coping and meaning-making perspectives, this study examined whether spiritual well-being statistically accounted for part of the associations of depressive symptoms with healthy aging and HRQoL, and whether these indirect associations differed by cognitive status. In this cross-sectional comparative study, 281 older adults with MCI and 295 older adults without a diagnosed cognitive impairment (aged 65–75 years) were recruited from a geriatric outpatient clinic. A just-identified multi-group path model was estimated with age as a covariate and 5000 bootstrap resamples. The MCI group had higher depressive symptom scores, poorer HRQoL, and lower healthy-aging and spiritual well-being scores than the comparison group (all p < 0.001, |d| = 0.45–0.67). In both groups, depressive symptoms were directly associated with lower healthy-aging scores and poorer HRQoL. A statistically significant but modest indirect association through spiritual well-being was observed between depressive symptoms and healthy aging (standardized indirect effect: −0.18 in the MCI group and −0.08 in the comparison group); this association was robust to adjustment for sociodemographic and clinical covariates and to the exclusion of conceptually overlapping healthy-aging subscales. The indirect association with HRQoL was small, and no indirect association differed significantly between groups. Because the design was cross-sectional, these findings do not establish causal mediation; they indicate that spiritual well-being is a psychosocial correlate of healthy aging that warrants examination in longitudinal and intervention studies.