Tag Archives: Ageing

fizkes / Shutterstock Catherine Elliott O’Dare, Trinity College Dublin While loneliness can strike at many points throughout our lives, there are times when it is especially acute. Big transitions like leaving university, changing jobs or moving cities can make us feel isolated and socially excluded from the people around us. You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated …

Targeting the biological causes of ageing could be one method for better treating multimorbidity. oneinchpunch/ Shutterstock Janet M. Lord, University of Birmingham and Carolyn Greig, University of Birmingham Over half of UK adults over the age of 65 live with two or more long-term health conditions – commonly known as multimorbidity. People living with multimorbidity not only have a shorter …

Obak/Shutterstock Jolanta Burke, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and Padraic J. Dunne, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences A bit of stress can be good for your mental and physical wellbeing, but too much can lead to anxiety, depression and other health problems. It can also make you age faster. So learning to become more stress-resilient is …

Centenarian buddies in Sardinia. Sabino Parente/Shutterstock Richard Faragher, University of Brighton and Nir Barzilai, Albert Einstein College of Medicine A 35-year-old man only has a 1.5% chance of dying in the next ten years. But the same man at 75 has a 45% chance of dying before he reaches 85. Clearly, ageing is bad for our health. On the bright …

Sam Carr, University of Bath and Chao Fang, University of Bath Paula* had not been living in her retirement apartment for very long when I arrived for our interview. She welcomed me into a modern, comfortable home. We sat in the living room, taking in the impressive view from her balcony and our conversation unfolded. Paula, 72, told me how …

How long could a human really live? Hyejin Kang/ Shutterstock Richard Faragher, University of Brighton While most of us can expect to live to around 80, some people defy expectations and live to be over 100. In places such as Okinawa, Japan and Sardinia, Italy, there are many centenarians. The oldest person in history – a French woman named Jeanne …

Men can produce children for longer than women. Shutterstock/fizkes Michael Carroll, Manchester Metropolitan University In 2012, proud dad Ramjit Raghav made global headlines when he became a father at the age of 96. He had beaten the record for the world’s oldest dad – a record he’d set himself, two years earlier, at the age of 94. Older men fathering …

Supplementary benefits? Vitamin D by Shutterstock Tim Spector, King’s College London Everyone loves D, the sunshine vitamin. Doctors, patients and the media have been enamoured with vitamin D supplements for decades. As well as their clear benefit in curing severe vitamin D deficiencies, endless headlines hail their magical ability to reduce a vast range of conditions from dementia to cancer. …