New site set to provide ‘gold standard’ to help people maintain happiness
Using data from Public Health England it will tell users how to alter life
People can also ask questions about income, pension and friendships
Lifestyle: The site will advise people what changes to make in their life to age better
The life-limiting risks of poor diet, excessive alcohol and smoking are widely known.
But a new service is to be launched to more accurately predict their impact as we reach old age.
The new website will use a mathematical formula to calculate how the lives of users will turn out and what steps they can take to alter their future.
Lord Geoffrey Filkin, chairman of the Centre of Ageing Better is overseeing the new site, which he believes will provide a ‘gold standard’ of evidence to help maintain health and happiness.
He said: ‘We will not be telling people what they should do, but we will be providing them with a gold standard of scientific and research evidence if they want to improve their wellbeing in later life.’
The website, which will use data from Public Health England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the office of National Statistics, will be able to answer questions concerning life expectancy and the benefits of improved diet.
Users will also be able to ask questions concerning their expected income, how to increase pension size and whether they have enough friends to stave off loneliness in old age.
The Centre of Ageing Better is a new trust launched with a £50million grant from the Big Lottery Fund.
The website, set to be in service by 2015, will be one of the centre’s first projects and will receive full support from the Government, of which it will remain independent of.
It will offer life predictions for those aged 30 and above by creating a personalised plan.
Advice: The website, set live in 2015, is the first project launched by the Centre of Ageing Better
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Lord Filkin said the website’s aim was to inspire people to improve their lives.
He said: ‘Everybody is going to live much longer than we have experienced in the past, so it is really important to work out how we can ensure that we make this as enjoyable and meaningful as we can.
‘If you are 30, the thought of being 65 is so horrible that you don’t even want to think about it. You would use the website to see the difficulty of building up a pension later.’
Important: Lord Filkin, overseeing the new site, says it will create a ‘golden standard’
‘We don’t want to spread misery around the western world. This is not just a dose of gloom. In fact many things are under your control.
‘If you are poor before you retire, you will also be poor later in life, but one thing you can do is adopt a healthier lifestyle.
It has enormous benefits and almost zero cost.’ He said that even though not everyone may decide to seek a healthier lifestyle, it was important to equip them with the information to do so.
He said: ‘People who have a rich social life and a sense of meaning apart from themselves will be happier and live longer.
‘Whether we’ll be able to say that you’re going to be at risk if you have fewer than 10 friends I doubt, because I doubt the data is so black and white – two good friends might be worth 10 drinking companions.
‘We will, however, be able to say that people who do have friendly relations do have a meaning to their life, live longer and say they are happier.
‘We will also bust the myth that you have to be perfectly healthy. People who have friends and give something to the community can be happy.’
Earlier this year, Lord Filkin chaired an inquiry which found that there will be twice as many people aged 85 and above in 2030 as in 2010 and that 10.7m people in Britain are set to retire on an inadequate income.
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