Promoting healthy ageing: the importance of lifestyle.

The UK has a rapidly ageing population with increased healthcare needs. While the population can, on the whole, look forward to longer years of good health, many people will be living with one or more chronic conditions. However, modifiable lifestyle, such as a healthy diet and physical activity, can encourage healthy ageing and improve the quality of life of older people. Nurses are ideally placed to provide advice on nutrition and physical activity to older people in an effort to reduce the burden of age-related disease. This is likely to require new ways of working, with nurses being trained to recognise opportunities for health promotion with older patients, as well as how to plan for and conduct health promotion so that it becomes integral to practice.