4 1GT Monday August 10 2020 | the times

times

N

ever has a doctor

been more aptly

named than

Norman Lazarus.

At the age of 50 he

was unfit and

overweight. He was

heading squarely

towards an old age rattling with pills

and replete with any number of the

lifestyle-related diseases associated

with ageing, from diabetes to heart

problems and high blood pressure.

Then one day, at lunch with his wife,

Lazarus looked down at the bulge

hanging over his belt, put down

his fork and decided that enough

was enough.

He lost weight, started to exercise

and embraced life with new vigour.

Now 84, he still works as a professor at

King’s College London. He has no age-

related diseases, is medication-free

and has a theory, backed up by

decades of research, that how we age

is not out of our hands. It is not a

question of genes or bad luck. How we

age is up to us. When we hit middle

age we can choose to age well and

wisely, as he did. Or we can sit on the

sofa eating pizza and, when we retire,

we will reap what we have sowed.

“The way we approach ageing is

totally inadequate,” Lazarus says on

the phone from his home near

London. “Ageing is not a disease and

the diseases of ageing have little to do

with genetics. The real problems are

social and lifestyle. If you eat properly

and you exercise and you do that for

a lifetime, your probability of getting

one of these so-called diseases of

ageing — I call them lifestyle diseases

— is very small. And if you do get one,

your probability of recovery is higher.”

Lazarus’s approach has the

advantage of being blindingly

obvious and the disadvantage of

requiring self-discipline. In an

age in which some people

effectively subcontract

responsibility for their

health to their GP and

ward off disaster with a

cocktail of pills, Lazarus

urges us to eat less,

move more and enjoy

ourselves. The last part

is not just to keep

cheerful, but to actively

stimulate our brains.

The problem, he thinks, is

that for years people have

received mixed messages.

Magazines promise exercise plans

to help us to lose weight. Fad diet after

fad diet obscures how the only way to

lose weight is to consume fewer

calories. Exercise is seen as a penance,

not a way of life, and that, Lazarus

says, is why we have such a horrifying

problem with obesity.

“The idea has somehow been

fostered that ‘I do not need exercise,

but you are foisting it on me’. You

mustn’t think of exercise being

Norman Lazarus

imposed on you. You must internally

generate the idea that it’s for

enjoyment. A dog running down the

road isn’t thinking, ‘I’m raising my

heart rate.’ It’s enjoying itself.”

Lazarus was born in South Africa.

His parents ran a general store at

a mine and his mother gradually

acquired a reputation for knowing

her way round what passed for

medicine at the time. Lazarus

remembers the treatments as

being crude and useless, but

listening to her give advice

is one of his earliest

memories. He qualified as

a doctor in South Africa,

but moved to the

University at Buffalo in

New York state to do his

PhD. Horrified by the

apartheid regime, he was

nonetheless aware that

protesting against it would

put his life, and those he loved,

in jeopardy. “I guess it turns out

that I’m not a very brave person,” he

says with great sadness. “I felt I just

had to get away, and so I left.”

He still speaks with a strong South

African accent. In Buffalo he met his

British wife, June, an immunologist,

and in 1970 the couple moved with

their two children to the UK. His wife

is now 87 and, thanks to watching her

weight and being a keen walker, is in

the same robust good health as him.

His career has encompassed academic

research into diabetes, working for the

Wellcome Trust and the Department

of Health, and, for the past 15 years,

the research into ageing at King’s. He

jokes that he’s waiting for them to say,

“You silly old man,” and boot him out.

His new book, The Lazarus Strategy:

How to Age Well and Wisely, argues

that exercise is intrinsic to who we

are, vital for our physical and mental

wellbeing and the magic bullet when it

comes to ageing well. It benefits not

just our muscles and lungs, but our

immune and hormonal systems,

cholesterol levels and organs, thanks

to the extra blood being pumped

round the body.

In 2018 research conducted by

Lazarus and others was published in

the journal Ageing Cell. A veteran

long-distance cyclist, he found it

curious that, having been taught at

medical school that age brings with it

disease, he and his fellow cyclists —

including some who were, like him, in

their eighties — did not have these

illnesses. The narrative of inevitable

Exercise

improves muscle

structure and

mental agility

he

gly

ge of

an

s

e plans

ad diet after

only way to

ewer Norman Lazarus

a mineand hi

acquired a re

her way r

medicin

reme

bein

list

is

m

a

b

U

N

Ph

ap

non

prote

put his

iin jeopar

tthat I’m no

says with grea

had to get aw

He still spea

She can do the

plank at 70. So

could you if you

change your

lifestyle now

Longevity expert Professor Norman Lazarus

is in his eighties — and remarkably healthy.

His research has revealed why. It’s about

what he did at 50, he tells Hilary Rose