Shortcuts To Staying Healthy As We Get Older

Being healthy and fit demands hard work, dedication and time. Or does it? Dr Michael Mosley shares his favourite shortcuts to staying healthy as we get older. No sweat bands necessary…

- Ian Taylor

There is a slightly condescending phrase that perky fitness trainers are fond of saying to anyone lacking the motivation to train: “If you don’t have 20 minutes a day to invest in your health, you’re lying to yourself!”

They’re not wrong, of course, but who says that those 20 minutes have to be spent hyperventilating on a treadmill?

Not Michael Mosley, for one. The broadcaster, author and health hacker has a new podcast series called Just One Thing. Available to download from BBC Sounds, its aim is to reveal surprisingly simple things you can do to boost your health and wellbeing. Each episode covers a short, sharp intervention – from cold showers to gorging on sauerkraut – that could literally change your life.

“I wanted to look at things that people could easily fit into their lives, which they might not be doing at the moment and where there was some real science behind it,” Mosley explains. “I do it, and another person – a member of the public – does it too, and I also interview a leading expert about how strong the science is.”

Mosley has long been an enthusiastic guinea pig for the science he reports on. He is widely credited with popularising intermittent fasting, and even used a low-calorie diet to reverse his own type 2 diabetes. He’s also made programmes on sleep, exercise, meat-eating and e-cigarettes, plus many other topics, on BBC Two’s Trust Me, I’m A Doctor. In short, he’s made a career out of living longer. Good work if you can get it.

“Of the 10 things we cover in this series, I still regularly do eight of them,” he reveals. He eats fermented foods such as kimchi, practises gratefulness, takes morning walks in green space and, at the age of 64, can probably do more press-ups than you can.