10 Secrets to “Healthspan”: How to Live a Pain-Free Life Past 65 | Will Harlow LIVE

In this LIVE talk at Tanyard Hall in the Surrey hills, Farnham’s leading over-50’s physiotherapist, Will Harlow, talks about how he keeps his clients fit, mobile, independent and pain-free over the age of 65!

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If you’re over-50 with a painful problem in the Farnham, Surrey area, you can learn more about how Will Harlow and HT Physio can help you overcome a painful problem here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/

**Any information in this video should not be used as a substitute for individual medical advice. Please seek advice from your local healthcare professional before taking action on the information in this video.**

All right well hello everybody thank you very much for having me today it’s a real honor to be able to come and talk to you all um so thank you for for the warm welcome um if you don’t know who I am my name is will harow I’m the over

50s specialist physio at HT physio in farum we’ve got a small physiotherapy Clinic over in farum with a couple of practitioners and our job really is to help people over 50 to remain mobile and active and live a life free from painkillers and hopefully avoid injections and surgeries and things like

That as well so I’m going to start off today’s talk with a bit of good news for a change and the good news is that with each passing year or at least each passing decade life expectancy is on the up so we’re living for longer we’ve got

Longer lives and that’s in no small part to the advances in medical science we’ve had some great breakthroughs in the last few decades obviously new medications have been discovered new techniques have been discovered there are things that used to kill us years ago that no longer kill us for

Example uh issues with bacterial infections once upon a time a simple bacterial infection would have been enough to kill us off and now it’s just a quick trip trip to the GP and then down to the chemists to get gets some medication and those things can be fixed

So to back up that um statement there’s a few facts I’ve got for you here so in 1950 the life expectancy of the average person was just 69 years and 70 years on today that’s gone up to 82 so the average life expectancy today is 82 and

For someone who is born today they can expect to live on average 91 years with one in five of those people making it uh over the age of 95 so we are living longer lives but the bad news is the quality of our lives especially in the

Last Decades of life has not necessarily kept pace arthritis is more common than ever disability is just as common as it always has been risk of Falls is just as high we’ve got problems like diabetes and heart disease that continue to increase with each passing year so even

We’re living longer lives the quality of those lives has not necessarily kept up so that brings me on to the topic of today’s talk so we’re going to be talking about something today which I term Health span and health span is not uh my own concept I’ve borrowed it from

Uh a doctor called Peter AA who coined this phrase but it encapsulates everything that I talk about to my clients and on my YouTube channel as well and health span is a measure of the quality of your life not just how long it is so the title of today’s talk is

The 10 keys to health span how to live a pain-free healthy life past the age of 65 so hopefully you’ll get something from today’s talk so we talked about lifespan so lifespan is how long you live but Health span is the quality of the years that you live so if life span

Is a measure of length Health span is a measure of how healthy you are within that length of life so it’s a measure of quality over quantity so you might live for a long time but I’m not sure if you agree with me if you’re immobile if you’re in pain

If you’re disabled if you’re not enjoying life then really have you achieved anything meaningful other than to just live uh a long number of years so modern medicine focuses on expanding the lifespan of people but what I want to focus on today is the health span so Health span is kind of an

Umbrella term really and it encapsulates things like strength things like Mobility things like flexibility things like your Fitness and things like your balance and we’re going to touch on all of these things as we go on healthspan is inextricably linked to lifespan the healthier you are the longer you tend to

Live but the happier you’ll also be during those years as well so I’ll tell you what we’re going to cover today and then we’ll dive into it so the first thing we’re going to talk about are the 10 signs that you might not currently have the best health span

And then I’m going to give you the 10 keys that I believe are fundamental to improving that Health span so I hope this is going to be useful and obviously at the end we can cover any questions as well so let’s dive into it so the 10

Signs that you might not currently have as good a lifespan as you should the first thing is you’re unable to stand on one leg now many people laugh when I say this because for some people it’s been years and years since they’ve tried to do that

But standing on one leg is a measure of your balance so if you don’t have good balance you’re at higher risk of Falls and Falls are a leading cause of disability later in life we’re going to talk about Falls in more detail later on but for the moment with these 10 signs I

Just want to see if you can I want you to see if you identify of any of these and make a mental note of them because these are all things you can work on the second sign that you might not currently have a great health span is you’ve

Noticed a weakness in your grip okay so this is quite an interesting one many of the people who come to see me especially the people in their 70s ‘ 80s and ‘ 90s they say I just can’t open jars like I used to or door knobs are difficult now

I can only open a door if I’ve got a handle rather than a door knob and these are all signs of a loss of strength strength now grip is an interesting measure because the research shows that having a strong grip is actually correlated with a long and healthy life

And it’s not that the grip itself allows you to live longer it’s a proxy measure for your overall strength so it’s no good going out and just working on your grip you should go and work on your overall strength and your grip will improve as a result so there’s some

Really interesting data to show that alongside um cardiovascular Fitness having strong grip is a great predictor of people who are going to remain independent and mobile now the third thing that might indicate that you don’t have as good a health span as you could is that you’re

Unable to get up off the floor and again people often laugh and I say this cuz many people have found that through either a fall unfortunately or they’ve just managed to sit on the floor when they’re gardening or something and they struggle to get back up but many people

Are are surprised by this when they first realize that they don’t have the ability to stand up from the floor like they once could we’re going to talk about why that’s so important in a bit another sign that you don’t currently have the best health span is pain so if

You’ve had pain in one or more joints for over 3 months I would say that’s cause for concern but the good news is many painful problems that cause pain in the joints can be improved provided you know how in fact I’d go as far as to estimate probably 70 5% of the people

Who come to see me with a painful problem we can usually at least improve their pain even if they’d written themselves off as just suffering because of their age and that even counts if your GP has told you that the problem you’ve got is just to be accepted because of your

Age so the fifth sign that you might not have as good a health span as you could is that you get out of breath on tasks that you shouldn’t and tasks that you shouldn’t are things like climbing one flight of stairs or maybe walking to the

End of your road or maybe just doing a little bit of light gardening if you find that you’re out and about and oh you feel a bit puffed that’s often a leading sign that your Fitness isn’t what it should be and thankfully Again Fitness is something that can be

Improved at any stage of Life another sign that your health span is not what it should be is if you’ve suffered a fracture in the last 12 months now obviously to suffer a fracture most people have fallen or they’ve hurt themselves if they’ve suffered some kind

Of insult to the body which has caused the fracture but to cause a fracture it should be a pretty significant injury to make it happen but as we get older the insult that causes the fracture can be less and less and less especially with things like osteoporosis or

Osteopenia and now these are terms that are used to describe medical problems where the uh density of of the bone has started to decrease in fact in the UK one in three women are going to develop osteoporosis and one in five men will develop osteoporosis at some point in

Their lives and this problem makes fractures more likely so doing everything we can to strengthen the bones as well as the muscles is key now another sign that your health span might not be quite as good as it should be is if You’ ever noticed yourself dropping

Into a chair okay now I’ll give a quick example and we’ve all been guilty of this at times you feel tired at the end of the day you go to sit down and you flop down like this and it’s okay to do that once in a while especially if

You’re tired but if you make that a habit and you don’t use the strength in your legs to slowly lower yourself down eventually you’ll find that you can’t lower yourself down even if you tried because it doesn’t take that much time before the muscles start to decrease in

Strength so dropping into a chair is another proxy measure of overall strength that I like to use if I get someone into the clinic I’ll often ask them to very slowly lower themselves down into the chair and if they drop that last 6 in I know that they probably

Don’t have that much overall strength now the eighth sign that you’re maybe not as healthy as you should be or your health span is not as good as it should be is you feel afraid of falling when you’re walking on unfamiliar terrain and again this is something that

Many of my patients mentioned to me that they’re out and about walking and whenever it’s you know craggy pavement or they’re walking on slightly wet Pavements that they’re not familiar with they feel afraid that they’re going to topple over and this fear of falling a is horrible but B it reduces the

Likelihood that someone’s going to continue walking because if they’re scared and they don’t feel good when they’re walking they might just put it off till tomorrow and then put it off again until tomorrow and we find that people who have fear of falling will less and less and less and less the

Older they get so feeling afraid of Falls is often an indicator that your balance is not as good as it should be your strength maybe isn’t as good as it should be and your Mobility which is how well you can move your joints is not as

Good as it should be now another sign that your health span isn’t as good as it should be is you would struggle to hold your breath for longer than 20 seconds now breath holding is a good test for the efficiency of your oxygenation system and it’s also a good

Proxy again for cardiovascular fitness so as we covered that before this is another thing that is super important to keep you healthy and the final thing I’ve got for you here another sign that maybe you’re not as healthy as you should be is you find yourself Furniture walking around the house and Furniture

Walking is when you are walking around and you grab the sideboard or you grab the table or you grab the back of the chair just to help you around and what you’re effectively doing here is you’re adding another base of support because you don’t trust the two that you’ve got

Got down there so again it’s a a measure of poor balance and poor strength so that’s all of the bad news I wanted to get that all out of the way first so but if I wanted to say now if you spot any of these issues with yourself don’t

Panic the following 10 steps I’m going to give you will help you to overcome these problems and increase your health span because the good news is all of these things are addressable so if it’s all right with you I’m going to jump straight into the 10 keys to improving

Your health span and hopefully each one of these points we can cover off so the first key I’ve got for you for improving your health span is to prevent Falls by making balance practice a habit and hopefully all of these tips are going to be tiny little habits and tweaks you can

Make to your daily routine that aren’t too onor to help you improve your health so this first one is very very easy now just to explain why this is so important the cost of falls to the NHS each year is somewhere between 2 and 4 billion

Pounds per year depending on the year so it’s massive and that cost encompasses the initial call out from the ambulance then the hospital stay then all of the disability that is uh required to be addressed after that fall hip fractures are incredibly common after a fall

Especially in women over the age of 80 and uh they are uh horrible for the person who suffered they lead to huge disability and also big costs on the NHS so the incidence of injury after fall is very high and that increases by 12% with every passing year over 80 so

When you’re 81 you have a 12% higher chance of a serious injury from a fall than you did when you were 80 and when you were 82 you have an extra 12% higher chance than when you at 81 so with each passing year the um the stakes get higher and

Higher so again more bad news but here are some things you can do to actively address it not quite working on balance is very very easy and it is something that could be improved balance is a skill it’s an attribute it’s something that we can

Work on so I would give you three easy things to do if you’re very unsure of yourself to begin with the first way you can practice balance is just by making your base of support very very narrow and I reckon that just having a a bathroom sink in front of you brushing

Your teeth and standing like this for some people in this room is probably enough to challenge them enough to improve their balance and when we say practice all we’re talking about is 30 seconds to 60 seconds at a time and you’re just going to put yourself in a

Position where it feels challenging to stay there now if you can do this for 60 seconds with no problem you can move on to the next one and that would be something like this so we call this a tandem stand this is where we’ve made our base of support even more narrow

We’ve got one foot in front of to the other almost like that we’re walking a tight rope again you’re going to try and get there and stay there for 60 seconds and if that’s very easy then you can go onto one leg now one leg might be

Difficult to begin with so I would start back here first and always make sure you’ve got something around you to hold on to so if you do lose your balance you can grab hold but just 3 to 5 minutes per day broken up into sort of 30

Seconds to 60c segments is enough to improve over a period of about 6 weeks and I see this over and over again in the practice someone comes in with terrible balance they can barely stand with their feet together when we first work together and in 8 weeks time

They’re standing on one leg and they’re much more confident around the house as well so it’s really easy I tell people to tie it into other things you do every day such as brushing your teeth hopefully everyone does that at least twice a day and if you um if you

Practice your balance whilst brushing your teeth that makes it almost zero effort on your part to build it in things like boiling the kettle as well work well so tie it into something you already do now the second tip I’ve got for you for improving your health span

Is to make sure you can get back up from the floor and you guys might laugh to begin with because for some people they might not have done that in 10 years 15 years I know many people who come to see me they say that oh it’s um it’s been

Such a long time since I’ve got back up I don’t think my knees or my hips could take it and that’s that’s fine but there are ways we can build up to that point and even if we don’t quite get to being up to being able to get up from the

Floor we can improve our Mobility to improve our health bit by bit so the reason we want to get back up is because obviously some of the injuries happen from the initial fall but a lot of the problems after a fall happen because the person can’t get back up so I’ve spoken

To people in the practice who uh fell they didn’t really hurt themselves from the fall but no one came in to see them for 24 hours which meant that they were on the floor for 2 2 4 hours because they couldn’t get back up so that’s a

Huge risk to life and that wasn’t from the initial injury from the fall and just knowing you can get back up again after you fall is enough to decrease the fear of falling in the first place so I reckon that most people can start off with a really nice easy

Way to build up to getting up from the floor by starting off with what we call mini squats so mini squats are a lovely exercise which if if it’s okay I’ll show you now so anyone can do this at home you just need something to hold on to so

You put your hands on a worktop or a kitchen sink or the back of a chair and just start by going down 6 in and back up now hopefully just about everyone can manage this but this is a lovely exercise to get you started and building some strength in your thighs and your

Hips which are the key muscles to help you stand back up again now if you can do that then we can move on to the next step and that would be to practice sit to stand so we talked about people who drop into the chair and many people have

Lost the ability to go down slowly so what we’re going to practice here is going down into the chair as slowly as possible so starting with two feet on the floor and then very very slowly lowering yourself down until you’re sitting it’s a lovely way again to build

Strength in your thighs and in your hips now if you can do that with no problem we can move on to the next step and the next step would be to practice getting down onto one knee so again I’d recommend having something to just hold on to

And you have one leg behind the other see if you can just get down to here obviously if you’ve had a knee replacement that makes this difficult but it’s a really good exercise to do for people who have healthy knees and if it hurts your knee to get down there try

Putting some cushioning down but as you can see it’s kind of a stepbystep incremental progress to take you from standing to going down and then back up again and there’s so many different ways you can practice it if you find that too difficult what you could do is start on

Your bed lying down flat and just practice gently sitting up with your knees raised just so you’re running your hands up your knees like this that helps to build some core strength which is also important from standing and if you can just get from lying on your back to

Rolling onto your side and sitting up in the bed again that’s great practice for getting up from the floor so hopefully all of these things will give you a couple of ideas for things to practice if you can’t necessarily get all the way down and back up again right now now

That brings me on to my third point which is using your legs when you get down from a chair so many people find that they over rely on their hands especially when they’re doing sit to stand movements so if you’ve had a uh a chair at home with armrest it’s very

Easy to get used to lowering lowering yourself down into the chair using your arms and people use the strength at the back of their arms to do that quite a lot now the same is true for stairs so if you’ve got two banisters what we find

Is many people over rely on this pulling movement to get themselves up and this kind of lowering movement to lets elv back down and the reason we do that is because we’re all lazy at heart we want the easy route for everything and the body always takes the easiest path but

If we over rely on our arms we end up with quite a strong upper body with a weak lower body so again practicing that movement is enough to improve it and sometimes just being aware of what you’re doing is enough to improve it as well so if you’re uh at home today you

Might notice that you are using your arms on the stairs and that might not have been something you’ve noticed but if you can improve that then um you’re going to be able to get stronger legs over time it doesn’t take that long all of these things probably take 6

Weeks eight weeks to really notice a massive difference and that really is independent of age we see it in the clinic all the time so the fourth Point I’ve got for you today to improve your health span is to maintain the mobility of your joints now over time as we age

If we develop arthri is in our joints which just about everyone does you’re going to find that your available range of motion at each joint decreases with time so thankfully I’m of an age where I haven’t yet developed arthritis in my knee and I’ve got a nice full range of

Motion when I bend and straighten my knee but many of the people I treat they come to see me and they can only move their knee to about 90 or 100° now that process has happened very slowly it’s not like they woke up one day and suddenly they couldn’t move it

To a to more than 100° it developed over a number of years probably decades so the Insidious thing about that is the process of developing that stiffness tends to be painfree so the person doesn’t notice it happening it’s happening slowly over time but the good thing is if we’re aware that’s happening

In our bodies we can put in steps to mitigate it and mitigating it is as simple as practicing that movement over and over again on a consistent basis so if many in many cases the stiffening up of our joints can actually be prevented if we’re proactive enough to to spot it and

Then stop it from happening and it can be as simple as bending the knee 10 times to its full range of motion then straightening it every morning sometimes I’ll give people just that exercise to begin with they come to see me with a stiff knee and all I ask them to do is

To straighten and bend their knee 10 times in the morning and 10 times at night it’s often enough to stop the stiffness from getting worse and improve it overall so gently working into that little bit of resistance is advisable but not into pain so I’m not asking you

To pull it as far as you can to the point where it’s Agony we just want to take it to the point where you’re on the edge of stiffness you just feel that stiffness creep in and then you take it back and you can do that for any joint

In the body particular the ones that feel like they’re developing a bit of stiffness over time now the fifth thing I’ve got for you to improve your health span is to work against resistance now this might surprise you but running and cycling and swimming are actually not the types of exercise that

Have got the most proven health benefits the type of exercise that does have the most proven benefits backed up by hundreds of uh scientific studies done over the years is something called resistance training now many people will erroneously believe that lifting weights and using resistance bands is just the

Realm of the bodybuilder or the athlete and in fact that is not the case resistance training is suitable for just about everybody and what it is is moving your body against an external Force so it could be dumbbells it could be uh the machines at the gym it could be just

Your body weight it could be things like press UPS on the wall it could be the sit to stand that we spoke about earlier which is just moving your body weight against um gravity but all of these types of resistance training have been proven to be beneficial for health

Probably over and above any other type of exercise that you can do so I’m just going to read a quick excerpt from my book so I I created a chapter in the book about resistance training where I spoke about some of the scientific evidence for how beneficial it is so

Here are just some of the benefits that taking part in resistance training can give you so the improvements in muscle strength seen after resistance training seem to significantly reduced the risk of pretty much any injury far from making us stiff resistance training has been shown to improve joint and muscle flexibility and

Mobility so if you look at the big guys at the gym maybe they’re a bit stiff but if we take part in just a well measured uh resistance training program we actually should improve our flexibility you you’ll lose body fat but you’ll also find it easier to keep the fat off as

You gain muscle having more muscle on your body raises your metabolism meaning you burn more calories at rest than someone who is the same age as you but doesn’t have the same muscle mass so there’s another benefit there’s some evidence to suggest that resistance training slows down cognitive decline in

Older adults so using dumbbells and weights and resistance bands can actually keep your mind young as well resistance training leads to improvements in stamina meaning you won’t get so tired when you’re out walking with friends back pain can often be improved through resistance training increased strength leads to better

Support for the lower back and less pain as a result those who resistance train seem to have a lower risk of anxiety and other mental health problems so there’s other mental benefits there too resistance training is a great way to protect against and treat arthritis in

Many different areas of the body and in fact resistance training is one of the things that I prescribe the most to my clients who come in I give them some simple resistance exercises for things like knee arthritis hip arthritis and back arthritis as well strength training leads to improvements in mobility and

Balance making Falls less likely those who take part in resistance training generally look healthier in my opinion and it has been proven that it helps us to maintain a younger looking posture as well people who end up sunk in like this with a bit of a hunched posture can

Often improve it by strength training certain areas of the body those who lift weights have a lower risk of osteoporosis as the body lays down new bone to cope with the demands of resistance training so even though we’re going to end up with stronger muscles from resistance training you’ll also end

Up with stronger bones which is a huge benefit there makes you less likely to suffer a fracture you’ll get the wonderful side effects of improved confidence self-esteem and Body Image after resistance training to which may lead to an increase in happiness judging by one study your sleep sleep should

Improve meaning you can get off to sleep faster with less disturbances throughout the night which is another big benefit there I’m sure you all agree and you’ll find that daily tasks become a breeze things like climbing the stairs things like going out for a walk should all become easier as well and finally

Resistance training has been shown to have a positive effect on your heart and your lungs similar to that of cardiovascular training like running walking and cycling which means that if you’re going to prioritize just one for form of resist of training I would recommend you make it resistance work

Now it doesn’t have to be a gym you don’t have to go out and sign up to David Lloyd you can use resistance bands at home very cheap on Amazon small dumbbells or just your body weight like with sit to stand type movements the key to making it effective is to make it

Challenging to make it nonpainful so it shouldn’t cause you pain to make it Progressive so you make it slightly harder as time goes on and to make it at the right dose so you’re doing it just enough but not too much so if I had to give you a recommendation I’d say this

Is just about doable for most people three sessions a week each time it should be 30 to 60 minutes per session choose five to seven exercises in each session I say a 70% intensity so you feel like you’re working at 70% of your capacity and focus m mostly on movements

That use lots of different muscles and Joints at the same time things like the squat things like the bench press where you’re pushing things like a push-up things like a uh a deadlift where you’re picking something up off the floor these are all great exercises for people of any

Age now the sixth tip I’ve got for you here is never stop walking so walking is such a great exercise for pretty much everyone we’re built to walk it’s how we were designed now we all hear the 10,000 step step today number but did you know there’s actually very little scientific

Evidence to support that number does anyone know how that number came about why everyone says 10,000 steps it it was actually uh it was actually from the 1960s and it originated in Japan of all places and it was a uh a university researcher looked around and um he

Decided that the Japanese people were becoming uh too much like their Western counterparts they were in weight they were moving less and less and less and he designed a big Public Health campaign to say that everyone should be walking 10,000 steps so we just pluck that figure out the air basically the 10,000

Steps is quite a nice figure because it equates to 5 miles um of walking for most people um but really it’s an arbitrary goal so don’t worry too much about how many steps you’re doing but do worry about how regularly you’re walking so walking keeps to uh helps to maintain

Your muscles and your bones so um it’s a it’s a great exercise for the body but it’s also great for the mental health I’m sure you can all agree that it’s good socially as well now I recommend most people start with easy flat terrain and then if they’re happy they can

Progress to more hilly walks as well and there’s some evidence to show that you’re better off doing a couple of brisk walks than you are doing one very long slow walk because the brisk walks have the added benefit of increasing your heart rate and your breathing rate

More than the long slow one so it doesn’t need to take lots of time you could start with two lots of 15 minute walks each day that would be a brilliant way to get started But continuing to walk throughout your life as much as you can is

Vital now the seventh tip I’ve got for you is do what you can to Stave off osteoporosis and we spoke a little bit about osteoporosis the other day a bit earlier today and that is uh basically a l loss of bone mineral density so it’s a condition that is very very common it

Affects both men and women but it’s more common in women and it actually means porous bones so Osteo is bone porosis is porous and it means that the Bones have started to thin out effectively because they’ve lost calcium they’ve lost magnesium they’ve lost the other minerals that make them up so the risk

Factors are gen gentics being female and being older so those are things we can’t do anything about but the other things that are risk factors for osteoporosis are poor diet so a diet low in calcium and vitamin D is definitely a risk factor for osteoporosis a lack of

Exercise is also a risk factor for osteoporosis uh resistance training is one of the key ways to combat it so is walking so if you can prioritize weight bearing and resistance training exercise that’s one of the best things you can do smoking is another risk factor for osteoporosis and so is heavy alcohol

Intake as well now a couple of easy things we can do alongside um walking and resistance training are ensuring you’re getting enough vitamin D so in this country with the weather we don’t tend to get enough vitamin D into our bodies and that gets worse with age

Because vitamin D is created in the skin and as we age our skin quality slightly decreases over time time which means it doesn’t it’s not as efficient at creating the vitamin D we need so if you haven’t had your vitamin D levels checked it’s a really good idea to get

Those done also calcium so uh Dairy is a great source of calcium so is meat I’m not one of the people who subscribes to the whole vegan thing at the moment I think meat is great for us and um increasing your calcium in your diet in

Any way you uh in any way you can can be really good for staving off osteoporosis now it’s important to note that your bones are like muscles okay they’re they’re not just fixed in place they’re changing all the time so just like we can strengthen a muscle we can also

Strengthen a bone and thankfully we do so in just about the same way so walking and resistance training build new bone as well as new muscle now the eth thing I’ve got for you to um help you improve your health span is to maintain proper blood flow in

Your legs so many people come to me they uh complain that they don’t feel their circulation is very good in their legs and this can be a big cause of problems health problems it can lead to significant losses in comfort so it can cause pain and it can also lead

To problems with Mobility as well now lots of issues can contribute to uh a loss of circulation in the legs uh including problems with the heart um and if you’ve noticed you’ve got swelling or skin changes down in your lower legs that definitely needs checking out because it could be that you’re

Suffering with a loss of sex circulation down there but if you are worried about your circulation there’s lots of things you can do um exercise obviously is one of them but there are other things too that don’t require getting up and moving around one of them is to wear socks that

Are slightly higher than the average that come up to here that have a bit of a compressive component to them so there are kind of Airline socks that you can wear which they do work really well but people find them uncomfortable one thing that I found to

Be quite good is actually the old football socks that we used to wear when when we were playing the ones that we tucked the shim pads into those tend to be pretty good because they’re quite compressive they’re also a lot easier to pull on I know that people have trouble

Pulling on those tight Airline socks so something like that just to bring a bit of compression into your calf is a really good thing that can help so is hot and cold therapy so having heat down in your lower legs hot water bottles things like that can increase blood flow

What heat does is it causes the blood vessels to dilate so they open up which increases the flow of blood and then positioning is important as well so if you are sitting at home rather than sitting like this with your feet down if you can have one or both

Feet raised up slightly on a foot cushion or on a um on the ches L or whatever you’ve got at home you want to ideally get your ankle just above your hip at that level and that will help to naturally drain some of the the blood out that would sit there otherwise and

The other thing that can help you as well is not sitting with a block behind your knees so we’ve got some very important blood vessels that live at the back of the leg we’ve got an artery in a vein that live back behind the knee and

If we’re sitting with the front of the chair pushed into the back of our leg that can sometimes olude that blood vessel and stop the flow of blood so just cing ourselves slightly further forward in our seat to allow a bit of space between the front of the chair and

Your leg hi that can also help the other thing that’s quite good is Hands-On treatment so we do quite a lot of treatment for people with poor blood flow at my clinic massage things like that ultrasound can all help as well so if you’re struggling with it don’t just

Try and solve it on your own there are people out there who can help you so another thing that’s quite good when you’re sat down is to keep your ankles moving so if you raise them up and then do what we call ankle pumps which is

Where you’re pushing it down and back up down and back up that’s a really good way to get the blood flowing and and if you want to do something on your feet a nice way to um increase that even more is to do some heel raises so again

Holding on to the back of something coming up onto your tip toes and back down and what we’re doing here is we’re activating something called the muscle pump now in our legs obviously we’ve got the disadvantage down there of having gravity pulling our uh blood flow down

Into our feet but there isn’t anything really to push it back up unless we’re Contracting our muscles so a contraction in the muscles down here is often enough to squeeze that blood back up towards the heart almost like squeezing a tube of toothpaste and it can keep your circulation going a lot

Better so the ninth tip I’ve got for you here and this is one not just relevant for people over the age of 65 and this is to maintain a healthy weight now obesity is linked with many diseases and physical health problems along with reduced mobility and increased pain so

One of the only real ways to uh maintain a healthy weight is to keep half an eye on calories and I know there’s a lot of research coming out at the moment from the likes of Tim Spectre and the Zoe project that maybe calorie counting isn’t quite as effective as uh it once

Was thought to be but keeping track of how much you’re eating is still pretty much the only way to keep your weight under control if you’re not exercising now another thing that’s really good is to try and minimize the consumption of ultr processed foods so ultr processed foods are basically food

Stuffs that are created in a factory so when they are on your plate they bear no resemblance to a natural food in the wild if you like okay so Ultra processed foods are things like cakes and pizzas unfortunately also things like Supermarket bread fall into the category

Of ultra processed foods and to give you a clue look down the ingredients list and if there’s more than 10 ingredients on there it’s probably an ultr processed food and these have been shown to be hyper palatable so we want to eat more and more and more of them they’re also

Processed by the body incredibly quickly which means you eat it and then half an hour later you’re hungry again so eating Whole Foods like whole grains potatoes fish and meat things that are naturally found in the wild tend to keep us Fuller for longer our body uh blood sugar

Doesn’t Spike quite so much when we eat it and they tend to keep us healthier as well now another key to maintaining a healthy weight is to eat plenty of protein now protein is found in things like Meat and Fish and eggs and protein is basically the building blocks of our

Muscles so without protein we will not just lose body fat but we’ll also lose muscle as well so if we eat protein one of the key benefits is that we we uh will maintain and grow new muscle mass and the other benefit is that protein Keeps Us Fuller for longer as well it’s

Very satiating now another thing to help you maintain a healthy weight is to engage in lots of walking and resistance training bit of a theme here um and resistance training seems better for fat loss in the long run than even cardiovascular exercise like cycling and walking so just bear that in mind now

The other thing that not many people think about when it comes to maintaining a healthy weight but is equally important is to uh make sure your sleep is good and sleep is very important for maintaining a normal hormonal balance without proper sleep our hormones are out of whx

And then we have an increase in certain hormones that encourage us to store more fat so even if the rest of our health is pretty good if we’re not sleeping well we’re probably not going to get as good results as we could have and then the final tip I’ve got for

You today to keep your health span as good as possible is to keep the Mind young so as we age we might not feel quite so sharp as we once did but science shows it’s possible to combat many of these changes and we don’t just have to accept them there’s a few things

That are evidence-based that I want to describe today so all of the things I’m about to mention have got solid scientific backing to help us with our cognition one thing is coffee and caffeine so having a daily cup of coffee has been shown to improve cognition for

People as they get older another thing is sleep so it’s a myth that as we get older we need less sleep and in fact just about everyone needs between 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night if you can’t get 7 to n hours of sleep at night a nap

In the day can help to uh help you meet your quota and naps have been shown to be particularly effective at increasing cognitive performance and there’s some sh studies that show that straight after a nap our performance in cognitive tasks like Puzzles actually increases now one of the best things for

Keeping your mind young and I would say this is the main thing to prioritize here is being social so being social in groups like this um can help to keep the Mind sharp obviously talking with others especially people of your own peer group is really really effective and

Loneliness is one of the biggest risks for cognitive decline there is a uh almost perfect correlation between how lonely someone is and how quickly their cognition declines with age interestingly learning a new language seems to be superior to other brain tasks for keeping the minds young

And healthy and it seems that people who have more than one language experience a uh slower rate of cognitive decline as they age problem solving is very important and not just puzzles we could think about you know practical issues I’ve got some men who come to see me in

My clinic who go to a group called men in sheds I don’t know if anyone’s heard of that before and it just seems to be a fantastic organization it allows um the guys who are a part of it to get into a group but also to solve practical

Problems I know that the faram one they uh they built a new uh planter outside the Civic offices in farham and they also fixed the church bell which is a hugely complex task helping them to get it down and then take it all apart put the mechanism back together and then put

It back up and it’s amazing what they’ve done um but I mean by far in a way the biggest benefit to um having groups like that is what it does for the people who are a member of it and that is to to keep them as young as as possible

Avoiding smoking is an obvious one um smoking has been associated with uh increased uh levels of cognitive decline there just doesn’t seem to be any benefit to smoking whatsoever um and now a little bit of good news for you apparently alcohol in moderation there is some evidence to show that mild to

Moderate alcohol intake might be neuroprotective which means it might actually help to keep your yeah exactly to keep your mind young but heavy intake has definitely been associated with a higher risk so keeping it mild to moderate seems to be key keeping blood sugar in control is also really really

Important wild spikes in your blood sugar from eating loads of sugary snacks have been linked to a risk of neurod degeneration um so keeping kind of a a a a lid on how how much sugar you put into your tea and how many biscuits you eat too is key and keeping blood pressure

Under control as well so blood pressure obviously if you have high blood pressure we know that that’s a risk factor for cardiovascular problems and stroke but it’s also a risk of accelerated neuro decline as well uh many people have um high blood pressure but for many people it can be controlled

Through lifestyle so um having a healthy diet not eating too much cholesterol is a good way to keep your blood pressure under contr control um so is walking so is cycling and shock horror so is resistance training one of the best ways to decrease your blood pressure is to

Engage in something called isometric resistance training which is a fancy term for muscle contractions without movement so that there is an isometric contraction because my muscle’s working but there’s no movement happening another great exercise which is good for blood pressure is something called the wall sit or the skiing sit where you

Lean against the wall like this you squat down a little bit and you hold it and before long you’ll start to feel your legs working quite hard but guess what that’s also really really good for your blood pressure as long as you keep breathing so that is everything I had for you guys Today