About the Healthy
Ageing Project
Healthy ageing isn't something that happens in your 60s and 70s.
It's a lifelong process and your 30s, 40s and 50s is a critical period.
Coming soon!
The Healthy Ageing Project is being updated & developed into the following offerings:
Individual health coaching program: For those who wish to make a positive change to their health, with personalised assistance to make the changes stick.
Practitioner training program: For skilled helpers (e.g., coaches, therapists, allied health professionals) seeking a collaborative approach to supporting client health & wellbeing.
Talks & presentations: For organisations, teams & groups who are interested in learning more about healthy ageing & what researchers are discovering about how to live our best lives.
Details to be released in August 2023.
Why is it important to get moving & keep moving?
Three primary reasons…
First, evolutionary biology tells us we’re uniquely evolved to live in an active way.
The fact we don’t is why we hear so much about ‘lifestyle diseases’. We live in high convenience societies that don’t impel us to move very much…and so most of us don’t. And that’s a problem because an important part of being well requires us to be active enough to allow our evolved physiology to make that wellness possible. When there’s a ’mismatch’ between what we are capable of doing and what we do, it has major implications for how our body systems function.
The second reason is that we quickly lose our physical capacities, if we don’t use them.
As everyone knows, we physically decline as we age. That’s part of a process called senescence. We can’t stop senescence or turn it off – there’s no pills or cryogenic freezing that will help you avoid that reality. But, whilst we do lose muscle mass and bone density over time, we do have an ability to slow that process and retain a good level of physical capacity across almost the entire course of our lives. It’s why I keep saying that healthy ageing is not something that happens in your 60s and 70s…it’s a lifelong process and your 30s, 40s and 50s are a critical period!
The final reason is that physical activity is intrinsically motivating.
We are naturally active creatures. Just think about kids in a playground & how much fun they have. We have this innate urge to move but lots of people disconnect from in early adulthood and start regarding as unimportant…or, at least, not as important as other things. But psychology and exercise science tell us that physical activity not only helps us to think better and feel better, it also gives us lots of opportunities to connect with others, which bolsters our sense of physical, psychology and social wellbeing.