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Professor Sir Muir Gray – How to Live Longer Better
6th November 2025 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Muir Gray is a public health doctor who has been very involved in work with older people since starting in the City of Oxford in 1972. He has done many jobs in the NHS ,for example, setting up the national screening programmes, and he was the first Chief Knowledge Officer of the NHS.Throughout his career he has maintained his interest in population and personal ageing and set up the Optimal Ageing Programme at Oxford and is now leading a national programme called Living Longer Better
It is now known that the normal biological process of ageing is not a cause of major problems till the 90s. The problems that occur as we live longer are due to three other processes – loss of physical and mental fitness, disease, often complicated by accelerated loss of fitness, and social factors notably isolation, deprivation and ageism. Furthermore the principal reason for loss of fitness is not laziness or lifestyle but the modern environment, for example sitting at work surrounded by calorie rich opportunities. Unfortunately our genes are unsuited for this environment having been selected through hundreds of generations in which people had to be continuously active and in which the ability to put on fat quickly was an advantage
Fortunately we now know that at any age if we understand the science of what is happening we can
• Regain lost mental and physical fitness, increasing strength, stamina, suppleness and skill
• Reduce the risk of most common diseases such as stroke, type 2 diabetes and dementia
• Adapt and respond to the onset of diseases which do occur to minimize disability, working in partnership with NHS clinicians
• Fight against ageism and the other social causes of disease, disability and the need for social care
The result is we can live not just longer but longer better compressing that period of dependency at the end of life when we are dependent on others for even the most basic task such as getting to the toilet on time.