Keeping active is good for you. Why do most older people ignore the advice?

The UK's Chief Medical honcho reckons that adults should participate in 150 minutes of moderate intensity, aerobic, physical activity every week.

I am no doctor, but that strikes me as on the low side. Knowing something about physiological ageing it is vital to also include exercise that reduces the effects of muscle loss and bone density decline.

Clearly most Brits haven't read about all this exercise stuff or if they have they decided to ignore the advice. This report reveals that `physical activity is low, to nearly non-existent among Baby Boomers. Even those in their 50s are less active than those of the same age 10 years earlier. Two-thirds of all Baby Boomers undertake no physical activity lasting more than 30 minutes per month.

Worse still, there are parts of the UK where the rates of inactivity were as high as 80%.

The rising rates of obesity are not limited to older people. Any UK high street is depressing as you see so many young people waddling along. They still have some time to doing something about the problem, although I am sure most will not.

Older people are fast running out of time and fast causing irreversible health problems.

The issue for marketers is that obesity exacerbates many of the naturally occurring effects of ageing. Not only does it make it worse it causes it to happen at a younger age. Designing products and services for all ages now needs to be extended in scope to designing for all physical shapes and sizes. Dick Stroud