Interview: Sir Muir Gray

When someone asked how it felt to be 60, Sir Muir Gray replied: “F . . . 60!” and decided to write a book about it.

At the time, he was busy creating the National Library for Health, having already helped to pioneer Britain’s screening programmes for breast and cervical cancer.

Now, ten years later, his book — now called Sod 70! — has been launched. It encapsulates the beliefs formed during his spell as Medical Officer of Health in Oxfordshire, chiefly that inactivity is a killer.

He said: “When I started my career in public health in Oxford in 1972, all the doctors were looking for rickets in children and that kind of thing, but we recognised that the next problem was ageing, and I took responsibility for old people being discharged from hospital.

“Almost every day for ten years, I did a home visit in Oxford, and I realised that a lot of the problems were not to do with ageing, but to do with fitness and disease. So then I started to promote activity.”

He is particularly passionate about the benefits of walking — one of his earlier books is called Dr Gray’s Walking Cure.

Like his latest book, it allows readers to get a glimpse of the charisma and enthusiasm he has used to get his views accepted in the highest echelons of the NHS.

By the time he moved on from his first role, he had introduced healthier diets in old people’s homes in Oxford, and went on to help set up the Cochrane Collaboration, now a worldwide network of evidence-based medicine.

He has stayed in Oxford since he moved here from Glasgow in 1972, commuting to London when he worked in national NHS roles. He received a knighthood for pioneering foetal, maternal and child screening.

Having turned 70 in June, he has at least three part-time jobs, working for NHS England, Public Health England and as an honorary professor in Oxford University’s Department of Surgery.

He said: “I’m going to do more work in Oxford. There are still too many people getting on planes and flying to America to find out about healthcare. People should be coming here — Oxford is a centre of expertise.”

He realises he faces an uphill battle to banish stereotypes about older people.

The nature of time means even Dr Who fans will get older one day, and he points out that people who have negative beliefs about older people are likely to become disabled and dependent at a younger age.

His list of mantras to be recited by anyone at risk of becoming depressed by a big birthday include: “I don’t care what other people believe about ageing; much of what they believe is wrong.”

He says older people are likely to be nicer than 20-year-olds, as well as wiser.

“Younger people may be able to make decisions faster, for example, but that’s not necessarily a good thing,” he says.

“It’s important to make the right decision, and that’s more likely to happen if you take your time.”

A positive attitude makes a big difference to health, he says, and biological ageing alone has little effect until about 90.

“The message of this book is that 70-year-olds can still increase their strength, stamina, suppleness and skill,” he says.

As well as brisk walking and stretching, he also recommends mental and social activity, such as volunteering or looking after grandchildren.

“The evidence shows that one of the best things you can do for your health is to help other people.”

Sod 70! has cartoon images of older people exercising at home. Does he think many people will actually do strengthening routines at home every day?

“If people don’t want to become disabled and incontinent when they are 84, now is the time to start exercising. Every year fitness becomes more, not less, important.

“There is good evidence that we can push back the years of disability.

“Of course, we all die in the end, and we need to think much more about recording our wishes as regards medical care.”

He champions Advanced Care Plans setting out, for example, whether you want to be resuscitated if you have severe brain damage.

“We need a good death as well as a good life, and we need to discuss that more.”

He practises what he preaches. He admits he is lucky to live in Oxford and cycle to work, but he also uses the stairs rather than lifts.

Even more impressively, his laptop lives on top of a high filing cabinet, so that he can work standing up.

He also balances on one leg while brushing his teeth, and tries to do most of the exercises in his book every day. “Ageing is not terribly important until 90. I am a little bit breathless sometimes, perhaps due to growing up in Glasgow in the terrible smogs.

“I had a little heart attack at 67 and had a stent fitted.

“I had noticed before my heart attack that I was getting a bit breathless and it is important to notice these things. I had measles in the days before antibiotics and it left me with some damage to my lungs.”

He adds: “People are a lot healthier now than they were.

“A hundred years ago, only one person in five reached 70, and our longer lives are a tribute to advances in public health by people like Sir Richard Doll, and to medical science.

“An increasing number of people are working after retirement age, and one of my messages is that we should stop using the word ‘elderly’ for people over 60.

“The frail elderly are from 85 up, when people start having three or four diseases.

“People in their 70s are not elderly in that sense.”

Sod 70! is published by Bloomsbury, priced £12.99.

The author will be speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival in March.

For more information, see oxfordliteraryfestival.org

Tickets are on sale online and at Blackwell’s bookshop in Broad Street.