Take Five to Age Well: Empowering the UK towards longer, healthier lives

Do you want to live well longer? You are in the right place.

Take Five to Age Well offers five steps to boost your health and well-being. Launching 1 September, the campaign invites you to join a UK-wide community making small daily changes for better ageing. We are asking you to choose and keep up the healthy change(s) for one month, pledging your commitment to ageing well.
We’ll support you to turn those changes into a habit for long-term health and wellbeing.

Why pledge?

Everyone wants more time on Earth in good health and the science indicates almost all of us, regardless of our genes, can systematically do things to boost our ‘healthspan’ - to retain our physical and mental faculties for as long as possible. You don’t have a choice whether you age or not but you do have a choice about how you age. There are simple habits that can help you keep strong, sharp, independent, and feeling good; Take Five to Age Well will empower you to adopt these habits over a month long period.

There are 5 areas where you can choose new habits:

You are what you eat! This phrase is true - eating well can boost our health, longevity and even mood. A good diet and healthy weight is a recipe for a longer, healthier and happier life and we will help you with recipes and guidance to what makes for healthy eating.

Choose an action to pledge

Breakfast: have a nutritious breakfast every day
Less, more often: eat small portions more often across the day
Eat the Rainbow: eat at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day

As you age, your brain doesn’t always tell you when you are thirsty and many people are chronically dehydrated. This isn’t good for your physical health but also cognitive functioning such as memory. What’s more, alcoholic drinks, tea and coffee are diuretics meaning they can dehydrate you further.

Choose an action to pledge

Water: drink 6-8 cups of water every day
Less caffeine: limit the number of cups of tea and coffee per day
Squeeze the juice: reduce fruit juices and fizzy drinks to only special occasions
Bust the booze: limit your alcohol intake to no more than 14 units a week

You are built to move. Being active is one of the keys to a longer, happier life and can reduce the risk of everything from cancer to heart disease to Alzheimer's Disease. But, it’s not easy for everyone and we are here to support you to move more, regardless of how fit you feel right now.

Choose an action to pledge

Walk: walk for at least 15 minutes, twice a day
Power: do 3 short (6-10 min) bursts of cardio exercise everyday
Stand: get up and move for 5 or more minutes every hour through the day
Strength and flex: follow a free short (15-20 min) online exercise video once a day

Loneliness affects millions of people and the number of people chronically lonely has increased since the pandemic. This seriously affects your mental and physical health. We are here to help support you to connect and engage with others as part of your Take Five to Age Well pledge.

Choose an action to pledge:

Connect: call or meet a friend or family member for a chat every day
Know your neighbours: get to know your community and try to speak to someone everyday, even if it is just to say 'hello'
Share a hobby: take up a hobby and maybe share with others

Use it or lose it applies to the brain. Your brain shrinks as you age but you can still stay sharp by challenging your brains and engaging with people, puzzles and games. We have lots of ideas for keeping our brains fired up and will be sharing these over the pledge.

Choose an action to pledge:

Learn: learn or do something new and maybe share with others
Play: do puzzles and play games every day
Be mindful: pause and take notice of your surroundings for at least 1 minute, 3 times a day

Tips for your actions

Make it specific: choose an action and make sure it’s quantifiable - for instance, you may want to eat 6 pieces of fruit or vegetables a day or cut down to 8 units of alcohol or walk for 30 minutes everyday. Whatever it is - make sure you can measure it.

Make it achievable: you know yourself better than anyone - choose actions that are challenging but attainable. Remember, you need to do this everyday so make sure it’s something you will be able to do.

Developed by The Open University, Take Five to Age Well is based on the successful Ageing Well Public Talk Series and its Five Pillars for Ageing Well . We are working in collaboration with many other charities and organisations supporting healthy ageing. The pledge will last for 30 days and as part of the pledge we will collect information about how people create and follow up new routines and habits.

By pledging to age better participants will become role models for current and future generations.