THE ESSENTIAL MID-LIFE MUM MAKEOVER
From fitness to sleep and even your social life, a brilliant new book by two 50-something mothers reveals how to protect your health and happiness
Susan was in her mid-30s when her elderly mother was diagnosed with alzheimer’s and she took on the role of carer.
By doing so she was following an onerous family tradition: as a teenager, she’d watched her beloved mum nurse her own mother through the same debilitating disease. so when susan met annabel at the gate of a London nursery school in 2006, they swiftly realised they had much in common.
annabel’s mother had also nursed her grandmother through dementia, and both women were terrified that the disease would strike them and similarly blight their children’s lives.
Then susan came across a life-changing research paper that suggested starting a healthy lifestyle at 50 may reduce the risk of dementia by up to 90 per cent. Bonded by a determination to trial different ways to boost their midlife health and protect themselves from the accelerated ageing they’d witnessed in their families, susan and annabel established a joint mission: they called it the ‘age Well Project’.
Over the past five years, as they entered
their 50s, the pair have immersed themselves in the latest medical studies, interviewed experts and tested health recommendations in an unswerving bid to radically overhaul their lives.
Now the popular blog that documented their findings has been made into a book, extracts of which we are exclusively running in inspire.
Annabel, 54, a novelist and writer, has four children, aged 13 to 19, while susan, 52, a TV producer, has two daughters aged 15 and 18. Both women grew up in the shadow of disease, watching loved ones die too early from dementia, heart disease and cancer, or living out their so- called golden years blighted by illness, crippled by arthritis or unable to recognise their own family.
When they met, Annabel had already inherited a chronic condition (inflammatory bowel disease). Both were raising families, working full-time and paying scant attention to their health.
Over the course of their investigations Annabel dropped a dress size and susan lost her ‘mum tum’. The backache that almost blighted Annabel’s career and defied treatment has disappeared. her chronic auto-immune disease is now in remission and (oddly) her eyesight has improved. Both no longer get winter colds.
here, they reveal how they have transformed their lives and their health — now and for the future.
NO, YOU REALLY CAN’T KEEP PUTTING IT OFF
sO MUch of our research turned up the frightening fact that many diseases suffered in old age actually begin, silently and stealthily, in middle age. And yet middle age is often the busiest time of our lives.
We knew our lifestyles were all wrong: we were eating the wrong things, grabbing snacks, eating junk, only sporadically exercising and enduring sleepless nights and chronic stress. After a decade of juggling endless pregnancies and miscarriages, six children and elderly parents and inlaws between us, not to mention hugely demanding work commitments, our own health had slipped to the bottom of the pile.
so it was quite a wake-up call to find research that suggested we could live longer and better than our ancestors and that our fates weren’t determined by our genes.
We realised we could start to make changes, but, already in our late 40s, we had to act fast. We were only just in time.
We pored over medical books and journals, research reports, culinary histories, tomes on neuroscience, and followed the latest discoveries into ageing. We attended lectures, spoke to doctors and researchers, and we cooked healthy food and actually made time for exercise.
The best bit? it really does seem to be working. We feel better in our 50s than we’ve ever felt before. We are less stressed, we’re enjoying better sleep, better behaved guts, defined muscles, more energy, thicker hair, fewer coughs and colds, low blood pressure, consistent weight and a greater sense of purpose.
Will we avoid the diseases of our forebears? We don’t know.
We don’t want to be younger. Not for all the goji berries in china would we turn the clock back to our angst- ridden teens, our penniless and hung-over 20s, our exhausted child-bearing 30s, the ‘sandwich’ years of our 40s juggling children and ageing parents.
it’s great to be able to say we absolutely love being in our 50s. We are thriving and we have every intention of loving our 60s, 70s and beyond. But do you want to know the biggest secret to l iving longer? You’re going to have to move.
All the experts agree that exercise is the magic bullet for good health, and the stark truth borne out by swathes of research is that once you get to midlife, it can no longer be optional.
Whether you’re going for a brisk stroll, carrying bags of shopping, vacuuming or challenging the kids to a game of ping-pong, it all counts — and any exercise is better than none.
HOW TO FIDGET YOURSELF FIT
YOU can easily spot Annabel at the cinema or on any long train or car journey — she’ll be the one wiggling her toes, curling and stretching her fingers, rolling her shoulders and lifting one leg up, then the other. For the sake of our health, we have both become inveterate fidgets. We are all spending far too much of our time sitting, and it is killing us. Experts say that every two hours spent sitting cuts blood flow, raises blood sugar and reduces ‘good’ cholesterol levels. Prolonged sitting will increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes, dementia, obesity and cancer. Long periods of sitting can also affect our brains, causing thinning in the region of the brain that forms memories. But if you do have to sit for long periods of time, fidgeting can reverse the damage. studies have shown that sedentary women who fidget enjoy the same health as very active women. so, not surprisingly, we very quickly learned to fidget. Now we stretch at our desks and stand up when talking on the phone. You’ll find us tapping our feet, wiggling our knees, shrugging our shoulders. Anything goes!
TRY THIS:
sET an alarm on your phone to ping every 30 minutes and remind you to fidget, stand up or move.
ANALYsE your daily sitting time, then cut it: schedule walking or standing meetings; work at a standing desk for some of your day; watch TV from an exercise bike; arrange social activities that involve movement.
PiN a note to your computer screen saying: ‘ sitting can kill you’.
BUY a set of bike pedals to put under your desk ( around £15 online).
sWAP your desk chair for a large stability ball, which forces you to continually adjust your posture to stay balanced; or put a ‘wobble cushion’ (about £10) on your chair to stop you getting too comfortable.
STROLLING IS SLACKING — PICK UP THE PACE!
WhEN our children were young, the only walking we managed was ferrying them to and from school (slowly). We knew it wasn’t enough, but we couldn’t see how we could possibly squeeze in more.
Brisk walking can reduce the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 24 per cent and protect against dementia. With a family
history like ours, it was mad not to. We discovered that to reap maximum age-well benefits, you’re going to have to up your speed. Studies show a ten-minute fast walk is more beneficial than a 30- minute meander: it’s the effort you put in, not the length of time you walk for, that matters most. This is all excellent news for busy midlifers like us, because who can’t squeeze in a few short bursts of walking each day?
Now we both walk every day — fast. Susan sometimes runs, too. Annabel leaves the car at home and walks to and from her local supermarket, carrying food home in bags, the old-fashioned way, so strengthening arm muscles as well as getting her heart pumping.
We both keep track of our pace and distance with a pedometer (you can use your smartphone as one) and clock more than 100,000 steps a week much of it by stealth — commuting, shopping, dogwalking, school runs, gardening.
IT’S TIME TO JUMP TO IT
Although our relatives haven’t suffered from osteoporosis, it was clear from our research that weakening bones is a big problem for women and it can start in midlife.
So we wanted to make sure we were doing the right kinds of exercise to keep our bones strong. Research shows that jumping ten to 20 times a day provides greater bone-building benefits than running or jogging, so we both now incorporate jumping into our workouts.
Try burpees (squat down and put your hands on the ground, kick your feet back into a plank position, then jump them forwards again and jump up to standing). They’re a killer, but effective. or try skipping, or just jumping on and off a low box.
Susan jumps up and down on the spot a few times to wake herself up before getting dressed each morning, adds star-jumps into her gym routine, and will ‘pogo’ when waiting for a bus.
EVEN YOU CAN FIND TEN MINUTES TO WORK OUT
Susan used to feel guilty about spending time at the gym, but now she’s put exercise much higher up her to-do list and has discovered she can condense her workouts into short, sharp high intensity circuits.
Despite its uninviting name, hIIT (high Intensity Interval Training) means nothing more than adding short bursts of intensity to your activity. It works on a treadmill, bike or rowing machine and it couldn’t be simpler: go a little faster for a few seconds, then allow plenty of time to recover. Then repeat.
We both took up hIIT in our 50s and we do three ten to 20-minute sessions each week: Annabel does her hIIT sessions on the rower and the treadmill (uphill walking), whereas Susan prefers structured hIIT classes at the gym.
A growing body of evidence suggests that exercising like this has a more profound effect on our brains, bodies and guts. It has been found to increase the activity of mitochondria (the ‘batteries’ of our cells) as we age, and to improve memory.
But remember, always stop if it feels too much.
DANCE LIKE NO ONE IS WATCHING YOU
DANce of all kinds is a great way to protect your brain against dementia. Studies show regular dancing could even reduce your risk by 76 per cent.
Zumba has been shown to improve mood and cognitive skills, while Scottish dancing has been shown to reduce age-related decline in women over 70.
Aim to regularly learn new steps and routines as you move, rather than working repeatedly on the same old choreography. You get the best brain boost with freestyle dance, which requires you to make constant, split- second decisions about how, where and when to move.
AdApted by Louise Atkinson from the Age-Well project by Annabel Streets and Susan Saunders (£14.99. piatkus) out May 2. © Annabel Streets and Susan Saunders 2019. to order a copy for £11.99 (20pc discount) visit mailshop. co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640; p&p free on orders over £15. Spend £30 on books and get FRee premium delivery. Offer valid until 28/04/2019.