Creativity and Ageing

Over several years, I have done innovation work with top scientists on healthy ageing. Rather overwhelmed with all the info thrown at us, I asked one, an American professor, for the essence of it all. “Eat more fruit and vegetables and take more exercise,” he said.

That's it, apparently.

A lady in her 80s followed up by asking: “If I choose between doing the Times crossword and taking a walk, which is better for me?” He responded: "Get out the door. Every time."

Now a new book* by Barbara Strauch, based on a number of recent studies, goes further. She reveals that as we grow older the brain improves in several ways, becoming better equipped to deal with the important issues and better able to use more of the brain’s power to solve problems.

This is radical stuff in a world that has assumed up to now that creativity is the birthright of the young.

Hope for us all.

*Barbara Strauch, The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: Discover the Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind, Penguin £9.99

Professor Jerry Morris RIP

It has been assumed since Ancient Greek times that exercise is good for you. Yet until Professor Jerry Morris started to think about it in the late 1940s, there was no real scientific evidence.

Morris conceived the extraordinarily simple idea of studying the health of bus drivers and bus conductors on double-decker buses in London. After all, the drivers spent their day sitting behind the wheel, whereas the conductors were running up and down stairs all day – an average of 750 steps per day.

Lo and behold, he discovered that the drivers had twice as many heart attacks as the conductors.

Morris followed up this study with other grander designs. He discovered for example that postal workers who delivered their mail by foot were significantly healthier than those who drove their routes in vans. But it was the publication of his bus-workers research in the Lancet in 1953 which began the process of transforming attitudes and behaviours worldwide.

He himself was an early jogger, at a time when it was considered eccentric. And well into his 90s he was still swimming, pedalling his exercise bike and walking every day.

He died 28 October 2009 aged 99.