While wrinkles and grey hair may be the external signs of ageing, there’s a whole other process going on inside our bodies. ‘Inflamm-ageing’ is the term coined by doctors to describe the low-grade inflammation intrinsically linked to the process of growing older. It plays a central role in the all the chronic conditions of ageing:…
HOW TO COMBAT AIR POLLUTION & LENTILS IN A LEMON AND TOMATO SAUCE
The most difficult chapter of our book to write (so far) has been the chapter on air pollution and what it’s doing to our bodies and brains. Why so difficult? Not because of the lack of research (oh no, plenty of that!), or the complexity of learning about PM2.5 (relatively simple compared to grappling with…
YOUR BRAIN WANTS YOU TO LOOK AFTER IT RIGHT NOW, and griddled asparagus with miso dressing
Alzheimer’s is a disease for old people, right? Wrong! While the symptoms of Alzheimer’s may not appear until later in life, the pathology – the changes in the brain which lead to this devastating disease – starts much earlier. So if we want to reduce our dementia risk, the work needs to start now. Middle-aged…
ANOTHER COMPELLING REASON TO FAST? HORTA ON TOAST
So far, the only intervention able to dramatically extend healthy life appears to be … fasting, otherwise known as Caloric Restriction (CR). Studies – on animals – suggest that regular fasting can extend healthy life by up to 30%. Susan recently wrote about her experience of fasting after trialling Professor Longo’s Longevity Diet, and we wrote…
CAN YOU HELP SCIENCE? YES YOU CAN… SPICED NETTLES WITH GREEN OLIVES
Is it time to make yourself available to science? And I don’t mean donating your dead body (although we’re big supporters of organ donation too) or giving blood (another good thing to do), but taking part in a living, breathing research project. Over the last four years of blogging, we’ve become increasingly aware of the…
THESE VEGETABLES WILL STRENGTHEN YOUR BONES – AND KALE SHAKSHUKA
Growing up, I was very close to my paternal grandmother. She was widowed young and filled her life with a cohort of doughty female friends and relations. They became, by extension, my ‘aunties’. They played whist, shopped and shored up the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service together. As time passed they all started to break bones,…
WHAT YOUR DOCTOR SHOULD TELL YOU, AND MISO COD
It’s no secret that a healthy lifestyle greatly improves our chances of a healthy old age. That’s what this blog is about, after all! Living disease-free for as long as possible is a goal for all of us, and would be enormously beneficial for the NHS, as I blogged here a few weeks ago. Yet…
NOT ALL EXERCISE IS EQUAL: ZA’TAR NUTS AND THE LONDON BOAT RACE
We know exercise is good and that any exercise is better than none. But are we being misled by Government guidelines with their constant references to moderation? In Britain the National Health Service advises us to do “150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity such as cycling or brisk walking every week.” But Swedish research published…
HOW TO GET A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP, AND SUSHI BOWLS
How did you sleep last night? If the straw poll of friends around my dinner table this week (all women around 50) is anything to go by, then not very well. Today is World Sleep Day: designated to encourage us to focus on getting some shut-eye. We’re living in an epidemic of sleeplessness which…
SHOULD YOU EAT LESS SALT? LEBANESE BAKED BEANS
Salt is back in the news. I’m sighing as I write this because salt has been one of the most difficult-to-investigate and complex chapters of our upcoming book (so far). Picking a path through the mountains of conflicting research has left my head reeling. Salt, it seems, is an emotive and contentious subject. We need…
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