We are delighted to announce that Professor Sir Muir Gray – former Chief Knowledge Officer for the NHS, advisor to Public Health England and internationally renowned authority on healthcare – is now Chief Knowledge Officer for Move it or Lose it.

Muir takes a refreshing approach to ageing and focuses on the things we can control to help us live longer and improve our health and wellbeing. This aligns with our aims at Move it or Lose it, empowering people to be active – physically, cognitively and emotionally –  so we can enjoy living our best life for longer.

Together we want to help people to increase their healthy life expectancy and reduce the time spent in ill health and dependency.

We were very fortunate to be educated and entertained in equal measure by Muir at our annual healthy ageing conference. Here he explained the science behind ageing and demonstrated how many of our issues that we deem to be ‘age-related’ are in fact primarily due to a loss of fitness. Muir believes that exercise is the ‘miracle cure’ and stressed that we should move MORE, not less, as we age.

Our Move it or Lose it classes have proven that with the right combination of exercise, we can drop a decade. We can maintain our muscle strength and prevent frailty creeping up on us into our nineties.

However, it is our approach to ageing that has to change – if we approach it with a positive mindset, we will be able to adapt to the challenges of living longer and improve our overall wellbeing.

We look forward to working with Muir to challenge the stereotypes, to close the fitness gap and to helping as many people as we can to live longer better.