Why we need to focus on HEALTHY AGING rather than just living longer

We have a crisis with our health. Focusing on disease prevention rather than treatment is essential for future generations.

The more I see in clinical practice, the more I realise how we have got things so wrong with how we view health and ageing. Our healthcare systems are in crisis. Only this week, where I live on the Isle of Wight, the news states how our local council is on the brink of bankruptcy, the main factor being the increased cost of social care.

The World Health Organisation has also just published new figures stating that cancer cases worldwide are projected to rise from around 20.6 million a year in 2024 to as many as 35 million by 2050. That is not a small increase. It is close to doubling within a generation. Much of this rise is being driven by something we cannot avoid: people are living longer, and populations are ageing. But a large proportion of it, nearly four in ten cases globally, is linked to our collective lifestyles.

Here in the UK, we are watching our social care system strain under a similar pressure. The number of people aged 65 and over in England rose from 9.5 million in 2014 to 11 million in 2024. Local authorities received over 2 million requests for care support in the last year alone. Total spending on adult social care in England is now approaching £29 billion a year, and that figure keeps climbing. The Casey Commission has been set up specifically because the system, as it stands, cannot keep absorbing this demand indefinitely.

Put those two things together, and you get a fairly stark picture. We have more people living longer. We have spent more years in poor health than in good health. And we have health and care systems that were never designed to carry this weight.

Living Longer Is Not the Same as Living Well

Even after working in healthcare for 20 years, I was heading in the direction of chronic ill health. I was overweight, and my blood pressure was high. I was drinking too much alcohol, and I was stressed. I have a strong family history of heart disease, and my risk was only going to increase as I entered the perimenopause stage of my life. But this didn’t start in midlife; it had been gradually building, almost silently, over decades, through the small choices I made on a daily basis, even though I was “educated in health”.

I see so many women (and men), like me, in midlife, who have been managing multiple conditions for years, often without anyone joining the dots between their hormonal changes, their cardiovascular risk, and their day-to-day habits. By the time people reach their seventies and eighties, that accumulated burden becomes the difference between someone who can live independently and someone who cannot.

This is not about blaming individuals. Our environment, our food systems, our working patterns, and years of underfunded public health messaging have all played a part. But it does mean the solution has to include a serious focus on what happens before people get sick, not just how we manage them once they are. The biggest factor, which seems impossible to fix in our society, is that the poorer you are, the sicker you get, and the earlier it starts. Education about what happens when we make daily choices is key.

I know I am in a privileged position, and I am not living in poverty, but many people are. I’ll use myself as an example here to show how easy it is to get into a disease spiral: When my children were small, my husband worked away, I was working, and I was constantly tired and juggling a lot of balls in the air. I would always be rushing to get everyone out of the door, driving to drop the kids off, before sitting in traffic trying to get to work on time. I probably had coffee and toast for breakfast, and as I worked in the community, I would eat on the go in my car or in the clinic. By the time my shift was over, I would rush back, knowing I hadn’t been grocery shopping. The kids would be cranky and tired, so it was easier to swing by McDonald’s and buy them a Happy Meal. To save myself the effort of cooking, I would get something too. The kids were happy, and I didn’t have to use more mental energy after a long day, other days I would get something from the freezer and bung it in the oven. At home, the list of stuff to do lasted until bedtime, but to unwind, I would scroll on my phone and probably eat some chocolate, always staying up later than I intended. I would fall asleep easily but wake up at 3 in the morning with racing thoughts. On Friday, my husband would come home, and I would open the wine to relax after a hectic week. Saturday would usually start after a broken night of sleep and a hangover. I would eat junk food to feel better and do it all again on Saturday night. I might swim or run at the weekends and thought that was enough to offset the weeks’ inactivity. I took supplements, and though skipping meals would help keep the weight off.

Over the years, my weight and waist measurements both increased, along with my blood pressure and anxiety. I put it all down to hormones. I was an educated health professional; I knew best. In fact, I was ignorant and living in survival mode, as most of us do, and I was miserable.

Inside my body, I would be producing lots of insulin to deal with my high-carbohydrate diet, my liver was working hard to deal with the sugars and alcohol I was drinking, and my cortisol levels were constantly elevated through stress, inactivity, and poor sleep. I was becoming more inflamed at a cellular level, which led to higher blood pressure, weight gain, poor gut health, a weakened immune system with recurrent colds and increased anxiety. My self-esteem was at an all-time low, resulting in drinking more to numb out my feelings and to be more sociable when I was feeling anxious.

If I hadn’t addressed my lifestyle back in 2022, I would probably now be type 2 diabetic, or at least pre-diabetic, I would no doubt be on antidepressants, blood pressure medications and statins, and contemplating paying for weight loss drugs which I couldn’t afford. All the while berating myself for my lack of willpower.

I am pretty sure this is a relatable story to many. If this resonates with you, please, please know you are not alone and not to blame yourself. No one sets out to get diseases; we don’t plan ill health. It can feel impossible to know where to start, but change is possible; you just need the right information and support.

As a society, we have to look forward to see what is coming. We don’t need more treatments; we need to stop disease processes in the first place. If cancer cases nearly double by 2050 and our social care system is already under this much pressure now, we are heading towards a situation where demand simply outstrips what any health or care system can deliver, however well-funded.

Every year we delay someone's onset of type 2 diabetes, keep someone's blood pressure in range, support someone through menopause without it tipping into years of undiagnosed cardiovascular risk, or help someone stay strong and mobile into their seventies, we are reducing pressure on a system that is already close to breaking point. This is the difference between someone needing a care package at 70 or at 85. It is the difference between a hospital bed being available for someone who needs emergency care, or being occupied by someone who is waiting for a social care bed.

Prevention does not mean living a perfect life, and it does not mean another list of rules to feel guilty about. It means catching things early. It means understanding your own risk factors, particularly around cardiovascular health and hormonal change, well before symptoms require treatment. It means building habits around movement, nutrition, sleep, and stress that are realistic and sustainable, not a short-term fix.

If you want support understanding your own risk factors and building a realistic plan around them, that is exactly the work I do at Island Holistic Healthcare.

This article is written for educational purposes and does not constitute individualised medical advice. If you have a specific health concern or are managing a chronic condition, please speak with your healthcare provider before making significant dietary changes or beginning a new exercise programme or before beginning any supplementation.