Exercising Our Brains, Muscles and Cells to Fight the Ageing Process

Life expectancy is increasing, but the time spent in good health (health-span) is not keeping pace, with implications for health, social care, and pensions resulting in estimated costs more than doubling by 2050. Thus, understanding the many factors that contribute to healthy ageing versus frailty, and potential things we can do to promote healthy ageing is important. For example, how does stress, being physically inactive and poor dietary practices affect our body, leading to unhealthy ageing? As part of the 2015 Pint of Science series, researchers interested in brain health, muscle function and the immune system from the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Birmingham, UK discussed the effects that ageing itself and stress, physical activity and nutrition can have on our health and wellbeing. The objective of our presentation was to question the lifestyle that we lead and discuss realistic alternatives to incorporate healthy activity, such a exercise, into our lifestyles to improve our healthy ageing. Here, we summarise this presentation and illustrate the effectiveness of physical activity for ageing healthily