Do you want to live well for longer? You are in the right place as a new, nationwide project aims to give the nation longer, healthier lives.
“Take Five to Age Well” offers five steps to boost your health and well-being. Launching 1 September, the campaign invites you to join a UK-wide community making small daily changes for better ageing. They are asking you to choose and keep up the healthy change(s) for one month, pledging your commitment to ageing well.
Hopefully making changes for a month will lead to healthier, life-long habits!
Developed by AAA members The Open University, Take Five to Age Well is based on the successful Ageing Well Public Talk Series and its Five Pillars for Ageing Well . They are working in collaboration with many other charities and organisations supporting healthy ageing. The pledge will last for 30 days and as part of the pledge they will be collecting information about how people create and follow up new routines and habits.
By pledging to age better, participants will become role models for current and future generations.
Why our “healthspan” matters
Everyone wants to spend more of their lives in good health, and the science indicates almost all of us, regardless of our genes, can systematically do things to boost our “healthspan” – to retain our physical and mental faculties for as long as possible.
You don’t have a choice whether you age or not but you do have a choice about how you age. There are simple habits that can help you keep strong, sharp, independent, and feeling good: Take Five to Age Well will empower you to adopt these habits over a month-long period.
Tips for your actions
The pledges centre on actions such as eating and drinking more healthily, increasing activity levels, engaging socially and staying mentally sharp. You can find out more about those on their website.
Make it specific: choose an action and make sure it’s quantifiable – for instance, you may want to eat six pieces of fruit or vegetables a day or cut down to eight units of alcohol a week, or walk for 30 minutes every day. Whatever it is – make sure you can measure it.
Make it achievable: you know yourself better than anyone – choose actions that are challenging but attainable. Remember, you need to do this every day so make sure it’s something you will be able to do.
Join us this September: Sign up today!
