We’re living longer, but are we living healthier?

In much of the world people are living longer, but how can we make sure those extra years are healthy? Professor Dame Linda Partridge tells Alisha Wainwright how our ever-growing knowledge of health and ageing could lead to more personalised medicine, and Professor Mika Kivimäki explains how new methods for measuring the "biological age" of our organs could be used to predict disease. We also hear from Shamita Sharmacharja, curator of the new Coming of Age Exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection, about how changing society could help us all age better.

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Mentioned in this episode and further reading:

• Hallmarks of ageing: an expanding universe (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36599349/)

• Biological organ ages predict disease risk decades in advance, Mika Kivimäki , UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/feb/biological-organ-ages-predict-disease-risk-decades-advance)

• The Coming of Age Exhibition, Wellcome Collection, London. Open until November 2026 (https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/the-coming-of-age)