Healthy ageing: the

The key ingredients required for us to age well have been revealed in a groundbreaking study, led by Professor Cassandra Szoeke. Here, she reveals some of the things we can do every day to promote wellness and longevity.

The secrets T he longer your exposure to unhealthy things, the unhealthier you will be. Healthy ageing has two components. One is prevention and minimisation of disease, the other is quality of life and optimisation of ability – put simply, finding ways to make the most of what you have. Age is not a measure of years, it’s also a measure of your exposure to bad habits. The longer you eat poorly and are inactive, the greater of women your chances of getting degenerative diseases. Luckily, for those of us who worry a ‘healthy lifestyle’ involves difficult regimes, the women we studied were not fanatical. You do not need to become a health ‘fanatic’ to be healthy. In fact, research shows these people have worse health who livelong, than those who opt for moderation in all things. The women at the heart of the Women’s Healthy Ageing project, which began in 1990, come from all walks of life. And these participants have shown us that things you do in your forties, fifties and sixties will help your health when you’re over 70. If you act on the secrets they revealed – to move, eat well, to stress but not distress, to connect – you’ll build your intrinsic capacity, your ability to weather the storms life throws at us. It’s what provides resilience in the face of inevitable change. healthy lives They do not stop When people decrease activity in retirement, there are consequences for their health. For example, early data shows the chance of getting dementia doubles every five years over the age of 65. However, what our research also reveals is that illnesses like dementia are not an inescapable part of ageing, but rather they are diseases that evolve due to persistent ongoing inflammatory damage to nerve cells. The way we live can change these outcomes. This is just one of the secrets we have learnt from women in our study. They are active daily If you’re expecting me to tell you exactly what to do, prepare to be disappointed. The most important thing is to do whatever activity you want. It doesn’t have to be the same activity either. You might do something when you are one age and another when you’re older. You might do one activity with friends, another on your own; a physical activity at home might not be the same as an activity away from it. Just be active, every day. Doing some form of activity you enjoy, or WORDS by PROFESSOR CASSANDRA SZOEKE that’s an unavoidable part of life, is the key.

Physical activity has been shown to directly relate to how long you live, as well as how long you live without disease. The National Cancer Institute has published work showing patients with cancer who don’t exercise are more likely to die than those who exercise regularly. Numerous studies show how much you walk each day relates to how long you’ll live. So, go for a walk today!

Energy EFFICIENT

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women need to prioritise reducing hassles and stress. Research also shows if we can increase how we view our wellbeing, there are long-term positive changes in our physical and mental health. We get better at this skill with time. We’ve learnt from the amazing women in our study that nothing is more important than being optimistic. They’ve shown us that positive attitude and mood can be powerful in dealing with even dramatic and crushing life events. Theydon’tdiet The adage ‘laughter is the best medicine’ is still in circulation for good reason. Bless the comedians; they are champions of public health.

For those who worry a ‘healthy lifestyle’

involves a strict eating regimes, adherence to these women difficult were not They have purpose It’s a well-known fanatical. Research shows those who When looking at each side of the health coin phenomenon that those focus on a single thing – like rigorous you may ask: What is ‘purpose’? In essence, who continue in a research study longterm tend to have better health. Even being part diets – have poorer health than we’d expect. Interesting studies have shown people who are dieting are more likely to get infections. Researchers have tested the blood of people dieting and purpose is what connects us to a feeling of being useful in our role, and that our service is of value. It correlates strongly people feeling their lives have meaning. with of short research studies shown there are fewer natural-killer Overwhelmingly, the secret our women improves your health cells (the immune system cells that eat reveal to us time and again is ‘it’s the little because the scrutiny up bad things that end up in our bodies) things that count’. We’ve observed in our picks up things that compared with people not on a diet. study that people have an incredibly wide might otherwise go ‘Eating healthy’ within the calorie variety of social connections and – most unnoticed. In our study, limits your body needs is not dieting. importantly – that a person can change their we found 60 per cent of We need to ingest enough. We should connections dramatically over time, sailing our women had low vitamin D levels. Ours is an observational study, however, we share not ingest too much. This may seem straightforward but ‘enough’ and ‘too much’ mean different things to different people and can thwart our efforts to find the right balance. If there’s more life’s winds as they alter. It’s the surprising secrets that are most precious, and one of the ones that surprised us most was that not all socially active women are fit and well. results with participants’ energy going in, you put on weight. We saw a number of women volunteering, GPs and this resulted in And the inverse is true too. Get the caregiving and grandparenting who had women having vitamin D maths right, and you’ll be set for a arthritis and reported active aches and joint supplementation, so in healthy life and ageing. Your favourite pains, yet engaged despite these. They had subsequent years the health professional can help you better mood as they tended to focus on the women didn’t calculate a tailored personal ‘required positive attributes of their dedication, priding demonstrate the same calories per day’ plan for you. themselves on being deficiencies. This is an responsible and reliable. example of how even in Their communities observational research, taking part can influence health appreciate this and reward them. and we see less illness in participants.

They have a high positive mood score

Negative life events challenge mental resilience. They place us at risk of developing depression by lowering our positive mood. But rather than focusing on reducing negative impacts, at times outside our control, the key to good mental health is to augment our positive mood. This is akin to positive thinking and the feeling you really can do it, things are not that bad and you feel hopeful – and it’s a strong protector of mental health.

Overall, the greatest influences causing negative mood in women boil down to three factors: daily hassles, stress and bothersome symptoms. To maintain health and wellbeing,

Multitask habits

What’s interesting about the healthiest women in our study is they don’t do the above in isolation. They’re wonderfully efficient. They integrate several activities at once. They’re active while interacting with friends and while caregiving or volunteering. They bring a positive attitude to life and routinely find things to do that include being active, while also being mentally stimulating, which makes them feel happy and purposeful. AWW

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This is an edited extract from Secrets of Women’s Healthy Ageing: Living Better, Living Longer by Professor Cassandra Szoeke, Melbourne University Press.