You are here

  1. Home
  2. Research
  3. Projects
  4. Take Five to Age Well: Empowering the UK towards longer, healthier lives

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 on 1st May 2025, the campaign invites you to join a UK-wide community making small daily changes over 30 consecutive days for better ageing. We are asking you to choose one or more actions from the list below and try to maintain that healthy change(s) for one month, to improve your health and wellbeing in the short and longer term.
We’ll support you during those 30 days 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 campaign (1st -30th September 2023). More specifically you will find here preliminary findings based on the data collected from Sign up, Survey 1 (at the beginning of the campaign) & Survey 2 (at the end of the campaign).

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

Why take part?

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 improve our chances of a longer and healthier life. We don’t have a choice about whether we age or not but we do have a choice about how we age. There are simple habits that can help us keep strong, sharp, independent, and feeling good; Take Five to Age Well aims to empower people to adopt these habits over a month long period and beyond.

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 your action:

  • 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 your action:

  • Water: stay well hydrated
  • 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 your action:

  • 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 your action:

  • 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 your action:

  • 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 5 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 partnership with Age UK and have support from many other charities and organisations supporting healthy ageing. The campaign will last for 30 days and we will collect information about how people create and follow up new routines and habits.

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

Age UK logo

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