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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. With Age UK we will be launching the re-run of Take Five to Age Well in May 2025. The campaign invites you to join a UK-wide community making small daily changes over 31 consecutive days for better ageing. We are asking you to choose one of more action from the list below and keep up the healthy change(s) for one month, pledging your commitment to ageing well.
We’ll support you during those 31 days of pledging to turn those changes into a habit for long-term health and wellbeing.

Take Five to Age Well Interim Short Report

This Interim Short Report contains updates on data collected during the pilot run of the pledge (1st -30th September 2023).
Read the preliminary findings based on the data collected from Sign up, Survey 1 (at the beginning of the pledge) & Survey 2 (at the end of the pledge).

We are currently working on the analysis of Survey 3 (collected five months after pledge finished) & Survey 4 (collected nine months after pledge finished). We will share a full report in spring 2025.
Find more information about the research

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.

Contact Us

Whatever your reasons for wanting to connect with us, you can contact us via email or social media on the addresses below

Email: ageing-well-pledge@open.ac.uk

Twitter: @JitkaVseteckova