Who they are
A group in Oxford closing the distance between the evidence and the Tuesday
The Oxford Longevity Project runs conferences, research and a public learning programme with one purpose: to close the distance between what the science already knows and what a person actually does on an ordinary Tuesday.
Sir Muir Gray, one of its founders, put the whole argument to us in four words — ageing, loss of fitness, disease, and social factors. Separate those four, he says, and most of what people call “just getting old” turns out to be the second one. And the second one can be reversed at any age. That is the message: close the fitness gap.
Teach
Live Longer Better
A public learning programme built on the evidence — aimed at the person who wants to be well at eighty and has no idea where to begin.
Ask
The global survey
Twenty-five countries asked how long they want to live, and how long they expect to. Run with the Round Glass Foundation in Seattle.
Gather
Conferences
Bringing the scientists, the doctors and the public into the same room in Oxford — which is rarer than it sounds.
In conversation
What Sir Muir told us
Leslie told me you are one of the first to bring evidence-based medicine to the UK.
When I started, if you wanted to know whether a drug was effective, then whatever the most senior doctor in the room said was the truth. And then in nineteen seventy-one a man called Archie Cochrane published a book called Effectiveness and Efficiency, and said that what we needed was randomised controlled trials, and preferably systematic reviews of a number of trials. So that led to the first paradigm shift.
You are one of the founders of the Oxford Longevity Project. What is your goal in it?
When looking at the evidence, firstly we looked at the science of what is happening to us, and I found that people were saying it’s all ageing, the normal biological process. But the evidence is that the normal biological process of ageing doesn’t cause major problems until the late nineties.
At any age, and no matter how many conditions you’ve got, you can close the fitness gap. So that’s the main message, I think — to close the fitness gap.
From our conversation in Oxford, July 2024. Fillers removed; nothing else changed.
In conversation
And what Leslie told us
You are not a doctor and not a scientist. You are a patient who has learned a great deal about longevity and her own health — and you want to inspire people to become the CEOs of their own lives and health.
Absolutely, one hundred per cent. I think everyone needs to feel completely empowered to take control of their health, and they should, because the doctor can only do so much. Every day, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we get lots of data points from our body, and we need to listen to those data points. Whether that’s a sense of feeling tired or depressed or just not quite right, or a niggle somewhere, we need to pay attention to these markers that our body is laying down for us to see.
From our conversation in Oxford, July 2024. Fillers removed; nothing else changed.
What they found
They asked twenty-five countries how long they want to live
The first survey of its kind to go global
With the Round Glass Foundation in Seattle, the Oxford Longevity Project surveyed twenty-five countries on their attitudes to ageing and longevity. Leslie Kenny told us the results on camera, and they are not what almost anybody expects.
What people desire and what they expect turn out to be two different numbers, and the gap between them is different in every country. Northern Europe is the least interested in living longer. The young, growing countries want it most. If you are trying to reach a hundred million people, that is the map.
At Oxford we met Sir Christopher Ball, Leslie Kenny, Sir Muir Gray, Sasi Senga and Dr Paul Ch’en. It was a long conversation about how to help the longevity field grow, and how to empower people with the knowledge we already have.
Behind it
The people we met
Several of the people we filmed for Live Beyond are part of the Oxford Longevity Project, or work alongside it in Oxford. Each has a page of their own.
Co-founder — four factors, one message: ageing, loss of fitness, disease and social factors are not the same thing.
See their profile ↗︎
Ran the twenty-five country survey with the Round Glass Foundation. Also the reason half of Oxford is taking spermidine.
See their profile ↗︎
Holistic cancer care in Oxford — on the two ends of medicine, the metric and the barefoot, and why both have value.
See their profile ↗︎Sir Muir Gray also named Sir Christopher Ball and Denis Noble as people he works with in Oxford — his examples of taking action at any age. Neither has a page here yet.