Media spotlight on ARC East Midlands Theme Lead

Professor Adam Gordon has spoken about ‘ageing well’ in an interview with the ‘i’ where the ARC East Midlands Theme Lead put theory into practice.

The lead for the ‘Building Community Resilience and Enabling Independence (BCREI)’ theme talked in his capacity as President of the British Geriatrics Society and gave advice about staying young as an expert in older age.

Professor Gordon, who is a Professor of the Care of Older People at the University and also a Consultant Geriatrician at Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, told the publication about his drive to practice what he preaches.

The 45-year-old said: “I didn’t do any exercise until I got to the age of 40, and then I decided that I ought to do something about that if I wanted to age well.

“So I took up running three times a week, which allows me to maintain my cardiovascular fitness, but particularly allows me to build strength in my legs. Running is an effective way of maintaining my skeletal muscle, which is a way of protecting me against frailty as I age.”

Professor Gordon spoke about how he has started running and took up fencing with his son as part of his own personal fitness regime. He advised about the health benefits of maintaining friendships into older age and warned about the impact of working night shifts over the age of 40.

He added: “There’s an increasing body of evidence around sleep that is important in terms of mental health and well being, but it’s also important in allowing the body to conduct its normal metabolic processes. We can see changes in people who do night shifts over a very prolonged period of time and therefore are very sleep-deprived for long periods of time – insulin resistance, changes to weight and other things. So it’s important to get a healthy amount of sleep, if you’re going to maintain metabolic health.”

To read the interview in full click here, although a subscription is required to access it.