Live Longer Better
  • Your journey
    • More About the Optimal Ageing Programme >
      • About Muir Gray
      • Muir Gray's publications
    • Coping with Lockdown
    • Using the right words right; ageing, fitness, disease and beliefs >
      • Bad language about older people
    • The Lockdown Wellbeing Programme >
      • The Daily Mail series
    • the Daily Dozen + 30 for 4S fitness
    • What is happening as we live longer >
      • Your monthly briefing
    • LLL for LLB
    • The environment is tough >
      • Retirement has benefits and risks >
        • Join the Challenge Hub
      • Some people got a better start than others
      • the impact of isolation is now recognised
      • The physical environment is the cause of many problems blamed on ageing
      • Poverty affects too many older people
    • the Living Longer Better Programme >
      • what would a good life in your late 80s be likel
      • What do you fear most and want to avoid
      • Start to write your Living Longer Better Plan
      • Think positive
    • How to reduce your risk of a bad death
    • My diary & daily routine
    • My health record
    • My housing
    • Othercare - Supporting someone else
    • About the OxAP >
      • Muir Gray's Bookshop >
        • The Antidote To Ageing
        • Midlife
        • Sod60!
        • Sod70!
        • Get Moving
        • Eatwell!
        • Dr Gray's Walking Cure
      • Here is the news
  • Get physically better
    • Increase strength, stamina, suppleness and skill >
      • Strength
      • Stamina
      • Skill
      • Suppleness
      • Work hard
      • Brisk walking >
        • Virtual Walking
        • Restart Sport >
          • Restart swimming
          • Restart tennis
          • Restart football
          • Restart cycling
          • Virtual Cycling
      • If you have difficulty walking briskly
      • Join a Gym or Wellness Hub >
        • Meet others for fitness >
          • Silver sneakers
          • Age UK Generation games
          • Join a Gym, Fitness Centre or Wellness Hub
          • Find a personal trainer
      • Find a Trainer
    • Reduce your risk of disease >
      • Eat Well
      • Stop smoking
      • Increase activity - physical, cognitive and emotional
      • Watch the alcohol
      • Accept the offers from the NHS screening programmes
      • We need a revolution
    • Look after your body >
      • Happy and Positive Birthday >
        • Sod 60!
        • Sod70!
        • Sod It! Eat Well
        • Sod Sittin, Get Moving!
      • Skin maintenance
      • Teeth and gum maintenance
      • Feet maintenance
      • Bone, joint and muscle maintenance
      • Bowel maintenance
      • Brain maintenance
      • Mind maintenance
      • Heart maintenance
      • Lung maintenance
      • Waterworks maintenance for men
      • Waterworks maintenance for women
      • See as clearly as possible
      • Keep your Hearing as acute as possible
    • If disease occurs - Optimise Your Healthcare >
      • Living with a common condition >
        • Arthritis
        • Cancer
        • COPD _ Bronchitis
        • Diabetes
        • Dementia
        • Heart disease
        • Parkinson's Disease
        • Stroke
      • Making a big decision >
        • Should i have a hip replacement ?
      • Consequences of common conditions >
        • Loss of status
        • Disability and handicap
        • Isolation
        • Depression
        • Frailty
      • Look out for social as well as drug prescribing >
        • Enjoy Activity Therapy
      • What you can do to help the NHS even more
  • Think better
    • Train your brain ; we now know the brain can get fitter at any age
    • Understanding Dementia & Alzheimer's Disease
    • Reduce your risk of dementia >
      • Stimulate your brain more every year >
        • Learning new skills and build on your assets
        • Get even more engaged
      • Protect your brain >
        • Sleep better
        • Get more active
        • Avoid over medication
        • Control stress levels
        • Air pollution and dementia
      • Keep the oxygen flowing
    • Combat depression
  • Feel better
    • Stay engaged and don't lose your sense of purpose
    • Feel even better by helping other people even more
    • Meet others like you
    • Optimise the Internet >
      • My Virtual Reality
    • Join others for a Daily Service
    • Feel better by visiting Great Places >
      • Visit the great Museums
      • Visit the great libraries
      • Visit a National Trust treasure
    • Feel better through music >
      • Join a concert party
      • Your virtual choir
      • Music for Moving
    • Feel better by reading, listening and watching with other people >
      • Kindling Book Club >
        • Crime
        • Classics
        • Health
      • Audible Book Club
      • Your BBC
      • Your Film Club
    • Feel better by learning new skills and ideas
    • Feel better by joining a club to play games and meet others >
      • Chess Club
      • Bingo club
      • Bridge Club
    • Feel better by supporting nature >
      • Visit the great gardens
    • Feeling Better by Going Down Memory Lane >
      • Sporting memories are powerful
  • Understand better
    • Ageing is a normal biological process
    • From 40 to 90 loss of fitness is serious
    • The effects of disease are often compounded by loss of fitness
    • Negative beliefs and attitudes have a huge impact
    • The importance of planning with purpose
    • The Ageing Brain and the Maturing Mind
    • Strength and Power can always be increased
    • Skill and co-ordination can be improved at any age
    • Stamina can be improved by brisk walking
    • Suppleness can always be improved and stiffness always reduced
    • Activity Therapy is of vital importance

Ageing is not a cause of major problems till the nineties

UNDERSTANDING AGEING
Key messages 

Ageing is a normal biological set of processeswhich does not cause major problems till the nineties 

The principal effects are reduction in the maximum level of ability and loss of resilience or reserve

Ageing starts in childhood but does not become the dominant biological process till the late thirties, the decline observed by most people before that age being due to loss of fitness 

Most major problems experienced by people as they live longer are due to loss of fitness, disease and ageist beliefs and attitudes

 
The principal effects are reduction in the maximum level of ability and loss of resilience or reserve

Ageing starts in childhood but does not become the dominant biological process till the late thirties, the decline observed by most people before that age being due to loss of fitness 

Most major problems experienced by people as they live longer are due to loss of fitness, disease and ageist beliefs and attitudes
Once upon a time life seemed very simple. There were three phases to life -childhood and learning, work and then retirement . In the old days retirement was relatively short until the grim reaper came to call but life is very different now. There has been a dramatic increase in life expectancy at birth from 70 when the NHS was founded in 1948 to about 80 now, a little bit longer for women than for men and, sadly, much less for people who are less well off . 
It is however essential to consider not only life expectancy from birth but life expectancy from the age of 65 a person who is 65, or 60, would be wise to assume that they were going to live to ninety and that they should therefore take steps not just to live as long as possible but to live well as long as possible. All round the world attention is switching from life expectancy to health life expectancy or , to put it another way, from lifespan to healthspan
 
There is now scientific evidence how people can achieve this, not by taking more drugs but by understanding better what is happening to us and taking action to 
 
  • Adapt to the ageing process
  • Prevent disease and cope with it well if it does occur and
  • Maintain and increase mental and physical fitness
  • Continue to be positive and have a sense of purpose
 
To help you achieve this is the aim of the Optimal Ageing Programme through which you will learn how to think about your future and develop a plan to live longer better
 
 There have  two important changes in our understanding of what happens to us.
 
 Firstly the period of retirement is no longer just a few years. 
 
Secondly,  many people think that if they take action to live longer all this means is that they will be disabled and dependent and isolated and depressed for longer
However there is now strong evidence from research that there are many steps that you can take to reduce your risk of developing dementia and frailty and becoming a burden on your children. You need a bit of luck to avoid the diseases we cannot prevent, for example rheumatoid arthritis.  It is the aim of the Living Longer Better programme to provide the knowledge , encouragement and support perhaps to live longer but certainly to compress the period of dependency on other people  
 
 
 
WHAT IS AGEING

We now know that ageing is a normal biological process or, perhaps more accurately, a set of processes.  Ageing starts even in childhood where some tissues age and die and are not replaced, for example in a gland called the thymus gland. Most people however confuse ageing with the combined effect of ageing and loss of fitness which will be discussed in a separate episode.  

The effects of ageing may be summarised as having two main impacts.  
 
Firstly there is a decrease in the maximum level of ability of the individual, for example the maximum heart rate. There is no stable phase of life. There is a period of growth and development . Then there is  a phase of decline. 

 
 
 
The age at which this turning occurs is for most people in their 20s but this is not the result of ageing but to some social change the most common being getting one’s first job because most jobs now simply involve more sitting and therefore loss of fitness, as we will discuss in the next module. To understand the process of ageing it is helpful to look at the life course of people who have kept themselves fully fit, because they are professional athletes,  as shown in the diagram below 
 
 

 
However it is also important to remember that Roger’s performance might be influenced not only by ageing, his level of fitness and his injuries but also by his attitude. Can he really have the same sense of purpose and drive turning up tho the O2 arena for the 17th time that he had in his first few appearances 
 
Secondly as a result of the normal biological there is a loss of resilience or reserve, a term that is increasingly used. For example if a person aged twenty breaks a leg and spends two weeks in bed they will lose ability but regain all the function that has been lost. Someone aged eighty with an exactly similar fracture will take longer to recover and may never recover the level of ability that they had before the fracture occurred. Your reserve is  a little like a deposit account in a bank.You can live life with a current account if you are thoughtful but now and again things happen which mean that you have to draw on the deposit account.
 
Ageing is obviously important because the loss of reserve means that people affected by ageing are less able to respond to challenges such as 
  • A drop in environmental temperature 
  • A period of prolonged bed rest or
  • A trip or stumble
  • Infection by corona virus
However what is increasingly clear from high quality research is that many of the problems that we have assumed as being due to  ageing, for example decreasing strength, inability to look after oneself and stiffness are due not primarily to ageing. The normal biological process of ageing is not the cause of major problems till the later nineties. The problems that occur are due to three other factors firstly,  
  • loss of fitness
  • disease, some but not all of which is preventable 
  • A person’s and society’s beliefs and attitudes are the fourth key factor that affect us all as we live longer  

The adverse effects arise not from the ageing process itself but from the mistaken assumption that ageing is to blame for everything that happens to people after the age of 60
 
How to talk about living longer better
​
Most people, including most clinicians have a muddled concept which they may refer to as ‘ageing’ or ‘growing older’, terms they may use as synonyms. The core mission of our work is to help people see there are four processes that take place – ageing, loss of fitness, disease and the development of  beliefs and attitudes. So too does  a condition newly defined by the medical profession – frailty 
 


  • Ageing a normal process , starting as the dominant theme from about 30 The effects of ageing are a loss of maximal ability eg pulse rate and a loss of reserve or resilience, that is ability to respond to challenges.. Biologists use the term senescence which can be considered to be a synonym for ageing,
  • Loss of fitness, resulting from inactivity and having an impact from the age of the first car or the first sedentary job which often occur together, usually in the early twenties the effects loss of fitness are a loss of maximal ability eg muscle strength and a loss of reserve or resilience, that is ability to respond to challenges. These are very similar to the effects of ageing which is one reason these two process are often confused.
  • Disease an abnormal process, sometimes related to ageing but more often due to lifestyle and environmental problems 
  • Growing older, a social process, influenced by personal beliefs and social culture 
 
 
These terms are often used loosely and wrongly, for example people talk about ageing when they mean growing older. in addition all generalisations are risky because people who are aged 70 or 80 or whatever differ from one another in many more ways than they resemble one another. One useful way to talk about these complex issues is simply to talk about  living longer, for example " the longer you live the more active you need to become"


 
 

 
 
 
 

Proudly powered by Weebly