The Future of Ageing
Dear Friends,
I’m delighted to share the final episode in this first series of Live Longer Better, where Leslie Kenny and I reflect on one of the most important questions of all: what does the future of ageing truly look like?
Throughout this series, we have explored many different aspects of healthy longevity — from dementia prevention and physical activity to nutrition, purpose, and the environments in which we live. In this concluding conversation, we look ahead and ask whether the future will be shaped primarily by extraordinary scientific breakthroughs, or by something much simpler and already within our reach.
There is enormous excitement surrounding longevity science today: artificial intelligence, gene therapies, peptides, and other emerging technologies. While these developments may eventually play an important role, we discuss why the strongest evidence currently still points towards the importance of our environment, what scientists now call the exposome. How we move, eat, work, connect with others, and structure society continues to have profound effects on how well we age.
One of the key messages from this episode is that healthy ageing is not simply an individual responsibility. Social deprivation, education, housing, transport, and access to healthy environments all shape people’s opportunities to live longer better. Improving longevity therefore requires not only scientific innovation, but cultural and social change as well because ageism, a negative and pessimistic prejudice still has too great an effect
What gives me optimism is that many of the solutions are already known. Communities are becoming more active, people are remaining engaged later in life, and there is growing recognition that ageing well is possible for far more people than previously imagined.
Thank you to everyone who has joined us throughout this first series. Your enthusiasm, encouragement, and commitment to living longer better have made these conversations deeply rewarding.
Warm regards,
Sir Muir Gray
