Exercise - the secret for healthy old age | Professor Janet Lord FMedSci

With people living longer, Professor Lord explains her research into why people age differently, how much of immune aging is lifestyle related, and why exercise and caloric restriction can help us live healthier, for longer.

Professor Lord works in the field of geriatrics, studying the variability of ageing and life expectancy. While we all age throughout our lives, there is large inequality in how long people live for and whether or not they enjoy good health in the last years of their lives. In this talk, she looks at how our immune systems respond to getting old (immune ageing), frailty, the impact of diet, physical activity or inactivity, smoking and alcohol. Professor Lord explains the cellular mechanisms behind why our immune systems fail with age and struggle to stop many diseases, including autoimmune diseases and cancers, and asks - why do Japanese people tend to live longer, healthier lives?

Professor Lord also talks briefly about her own career in biomedical research, from an stressed postdoc with a young child to a professorship, and the importance of having a cunning plan...

This second part of the talk is part of the Academy of Medical Sciences MedSciLife project, encouraging researchers at all stages of their careers to talk about how they manage their work-life balance. Find out more about the project at

Watch Professor Lord's MedSciLife talk as a standalone video:

Professor Janet Lord FMedSci is Professor of Immune Cell Biology at the University of Birmingham.

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[coltonmorrison]

Wow!!! This information is badly needed at this time during the COVID-19 pandemic for one great reason, because of all these lockdowns and the closing of gyms and schools, it has allowed the obesity epidemic to go out of proportion with services such as skip the dishes and door dash.