old age healthy life style

Healthy and active ageing

Being healthy, physically active and socially engaged throughout your life has many benefits, especially as you grow older.
Some simple tips to help you to achieve healthy and active ageing include:

• maintain a balanced diet. This is important for a healthy body and healthy brain
• do regular physical activity. This is essential for your body and mind. Regular physical activity builds muscle and helps to control weight, blood pressure, cholesterol diabetes, pain, as well as bone and joint problems such as osteoporosis and arthritis. It can also reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke, some cancers, and help prevent falls and injury
• actively participate socially and engage with others. This contributes to your overall health and wellbeing by strengthening your sense of belonging and creating social relationships.

How do I maintain a balanced diet?

To maintain a balanced diet, you should try to eat a variety of foods from different groups. This means trying to eat:

• fruit and vegetables – two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables every day
• foods such as bread, cereal, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods, preferably wholegrain or wholemeal
• milk and dairy foods – use low fat milk and yoghurt and hard cheeses
• meat, fish, eggs, beans such as broadbeans, soybeans and lentils and other non-dairy sources of protein
• fish – at least two portions a week, including one portion of oily fish such as trout, salmon and sardines
• smaller amounts of food and drink that are high in fat or sugar.

It is also essential to drink lots of water and other fluids in order to keep the body hydrated.


The following triangle shows how a healthy diet looks like.