On 5th August 2020 I caught a little bit of “Lose a Stone in 21 Days with Michael Mosley”. He was testing people for their heart age. The premise of the programme was that the “Lockdown has been bad for the nation’s health.” I agree with the stay healthy message but this show also got me thinking about how we have started to associate health and age in a very negative way.

Your heart age is calculated based on your risk factors for heart disease, such as age, blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as diet, physical activity and smoking. A younger heart age means a lower risk of heart disease.” So Heart age equates to heart health. So far so good. The Heart age assessment compares how old your heart is compared to your actual age. If you are 40 and have a heart age of 50 this is very bad and you need to take action, exercise more, eat healthy stop smoking and so on. If you are 40 and your heart age is 30 well done, keep up your healthy living.

This is EVIL and we need to stop!

Why is this so bad?

Well let's think about this. The heart Age test on the NHS website does not actually test the health of your heart. It tests your lifestyle, where you live, weight, medical history, and family history. From this information it decides how likely it is that your heart is healthy or unhealthy. But they don’t say your heart is healthy or unhealthy, they say your heart is young or old!

Old = Unhealthy, Young = healthy.

Old - Bad, Young - good.

This is nonsense. Many 60 year olds have healthier hearts than their 40 year old neighbours. It would seem that it is ok to select a whole section of our society and label them unhealthy, sick, dying, not because they are, but because it is useful. It is useful because most people already see being old and being unhealthy as the same thing. How is this OK to reinforce and encourage this negative steriotype?

Ageing is already portrayed in a very negative light in our society. Adverts tell us to “Fight the signs of ageing”. Diets, beauty treatments and surgery promise to take years off us. If you cannot stay young you at least can pretend to be young for a few more years.

An active 60 year old could easily have 30 or even 40 years of life ahead of then

If you find that difficult to believe google Queen Elizabeth II or Capt Tom Moore, or Michael D Higgins. At the age of 99 Captain Tom Moore raised £37 million for the NHS and received a Knighthood for his efforts. He was knighted by the 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, head of State for the UK and around 15 other countries. Meanwhile, the UK’s nearest neighbour, ireland, has a 79-year-old President, Michael D Higgins.

“In 2019, there were approximately 4.66 million people who were aged between 50 and 54 in the United Kingdom, the most of any age group.” (www.statista.com). The UK has an ageing population (ONS, 2018k). There are nearly 12 million (11,989,322) people aged 65 and above in the UK (www.ageuk.org.uk)

We live in an ageing society and need to encourage all our active members to play an active part, to make a positive contribution. We simply cannot afford to write off millions of healthy, capable , experienced people as unhealthy, sick and dying.

If we tell people that their life is pretty much over and they had better just sit down and wait for death, can we be surprised if they become a burden? If we tell younger people that those who are older are sick, unhealthy, incapable and near death, can we be surprised if they don’t encourage them to be creative and useful members of society.

If we shove the elderly into residential homes and insist that they become passive recipients of care can we be surprised if those homes become a drain on our tax pound. If these believe that older people’s value to society is exhausted and they have nothing left to offer, is it surprising that the care sector was under resources during the Covid crises? Heart age as a measure of health is an EVIL concept and the sooner we stop using it the better.