So, you've made it so far and how would you rate your health today, satisfactory, could be better or could be worse? Your present state of health is influenced by the journey you have been on, starting with the genes you inherited from your parents. A few diseases run in families but more important is the fact that the genes we have all inherited are genes that have favoured survival for hundreds of generations who have had to be active all the time, chasing food or fleeing sabre toothed tigers and hostile neighbours trying to steal the little food you have managed to store for the winter. In addition the genes that led to more efficient deposition of fat were also an advantage in helping people survive the winter. Two generations ago this all changed. We are now inactive as never before, thanks to the car, the computer, the desk job, the sofa and the TV, and we are surrounded by tempting calories, not berries on bushes but shiny packets at every check out.
Income tax, bad weather and the normal biological process of Ageing - these are things that affect you that you would have preferred not to face. Things you cannot escape. But, you can minimise the impact that they have on your wellbeing and quality of life, and for this reason you should not ignore them. You need to understand what is going on and think about what might happen so that you can take action to minimise their impact. We now know that is what you need to do so that living longer can be better.
Our mission is to collect best current knowledge about what you can do to prevent, delay, slow down or sometimes even reverse many of the problems which have hitherto been assumed to be caused by the normal ageing process, including the conditions we fear most - stroke, dementia and being so disabled you have to depend on others for the tasks of everyday life. You can search our web site but we are also making sure that every drug prescription is accompanied by an activity prescription using technology called W:ISH. to inform you not only about the benefits of physical and mental activity when disease has developed, but also about the opportunities, local and digital, best suited to your condition. We also offer the opportunity to learn in more depth about what is happening as we live longer and what we can do about it
LEARN WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOU, AND HOW TO TAKE ACTION
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in laboratories to find the Elixir of Life, a drug to slow down or reverse the ageing process – without success. It is certainly important to understand that the normal ageing process can reduce maximum level of ability, the pulse rate for example, and resilience, for example the ability to respond to a stumble or to a period of inactivity, but our review of the science is that ageing by itself is not a cause of significant problems till the later 90s. What us actually happening to you, and the scientific evidence about what you can is on the linked page https://www.howtolivelongerbetter.net/what-is-happening-as-we-live-longer.html
WHO WE ARE
Responsibility for the content of the site rests with Sir Muir Gray, director the Optimal Ageing Programme. He has worked on methods to improve health in old age for 50 years and published the first book on Prevention of Disease in the Elderly in 1984. He has done other jobs in his work for the NHS such as setting up all the national screening programmes but finding and providing the knowledge on how to live longer better has been his continuing interest and he was the first Chief Knowledge Officer of the NHS. He has published a number of books including Sod60! for people in their sixties, Sod70! for people in their 70s, 80s and 90s,a book on how to Reduce Your Risk of Dementia and Increase your Brainability and Dr Gray's Walking Cure. You can read more about the books on the linked pagewww.howtolivelongerbetter.net/muir-grays-bookshop.html
He is also a member the Oxford Longevity Project https://oxfordlongevityproject.org/ whose
- vision is a world in which all adults understand how they can best improve their healthspan and take action to do so and whose
- mission is to communicate the latest breakthroughs in longevity science and be a guide and advocate for personal, social and political action .
Nationally this work is being taken forward by the NHS through its Living Longer Better system www.livelongerbetter.uk and this is led by Dr Sarah Price, the Director of Public Health for the NHS and by Elspeth Briscoe and Mark Fishleigh from Learning with Experts www.learningwithexperts.com and Alan Naismith who has developed the W:ISH technology which enables the delivery of personalised knowledge about the opportunities for physical, cognitive and emotional activity both local and online linked to, and sometimes instead of, drug prescriptions.