Learn from Kath
Kath Johnstone is a health hero because of the positive health and wellbeing choices she has made throughout life. Whatever our age, stage or circumstances, we can all learn from Kath:
Research shows that the pace at which people age can be modified. Much of what works to reduce physiological ageing, is important for good health at all ages.
A recent WHO study shows that most risk factors for the most common causes of death worldwide are associated with more than one disease and adds that targeting those factors can reduce multiple causes of the disease.
- Be active: maintaining regular physical activity is a well-tested way to prevent most of the long term illnesses that cause early death, or reduce quality of life: heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancers, dementia. Kath has an lifelong exercise habit, and is active in some way every day, including stretches on her bad at home, swimming, and exercising at the gym.
- Be positive: Kath maintains a positive, can-do, flexible approach to life. On turning 70, she decided to do something adventurous every year, and so has had some pretty exciting experiences over the past 20 years: sky-diving, white-water rafting, black-water rafting, rally driving, to name a few.
- Be sociable: Kath has an active social life with her family, and the people she lives at Abbbeyfield with. Each week she takes her 96 year old sister (all 6 siblings survive and are in their eighties and nineties) on an outing to Takapuna, and she enjoys takes an active interest in companionship with others
- Eat well: Kath enjoys food – she ‘eats everything’ she says, and has a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables. A diet low in saturated fats is important.
Research shows that the pace at which people age can be modified. Much of what works to reduce physiological ageing, is important for good health at all ages.
A recent WHO study shows that most risk factors for the most common causes of death worldwide are associated with more than one disease and adds that targeting those factors can reduce multiple causes of the disease.