A few months ago I checked my blood pressure with a home monitor. It was several months since I had previously measured it and it had now gone up to a higher than normal reading making me potentially prehypertensive, which is the stage before high blood pressure is officially diagnosed (also known as hypertension). I am naturally self consciousness about my health from my daily yoga practice, so I did my own online research. The doctors on the internet all said it MAY BE caused by aging!

I prefer an affirmative result rather than just saying I am getting older and I should just continue to live as if nothing had happened. Unfortunately, a GP appointment would take weeks before I could see them, months before I could see a specialist if there was a chance of a referral, and I already knew friends who were prescribed life-time blood pressure lowering medication. That is the current method of treating blood pressure in a nutshell!

I thought that I should still have time to slow my body clock down a bit, preventing the health problems that may happen from the result of hypertension. My daily yoga practice wasn’t enough anymore. Luckily, my best friend in the UK, Dr.Trevor is one of the best nutrition scientists in this area. He has researched how foods affect blood pressure and has published the findings in international scientific journals.

I will be amongst you, as one of his participants in the classes, workshops, and retreats in the Age Skilled programme that relate to preventing hypertension. If I still have any questions about my specific diet or lifestyle that I don’t want to discuss in the classes, I know I can always book a one to one consultation with him afterwards.

Ace Pittapan

Senior Yoga Teacher

As we continue to travel along life’s journey, changes in the ways our bodies work can lead to common health problems, such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. We will explore how the foods we eat and the way we move our bodies either make those problems worse or can be used to help prevent them from developing.

We will look at different parts of the body and explore what can go wrong with them. We will then focus on how we can prevent these problems with food and gentle exercise.

We will start off with a three hour session related to;

1. Digestion ; How the body absorbs nutrients from food.

2. Circulation ; How the body moves fluid around.

3. Protection and Regulation ; How the body regulates its metabolism and defends itself against infection.

Facilitator ; Dr.Trevor George

He recognised that the results from human dietary intervention trials and laboratory based experiments conducted in the UK and internationally were meaningless unless the general public made changes to their diet and lifestyles. The World Health Organisation estimate that 80% of premature heart disease, stroke and diabetes can be prevented through diet and lifestyle choices. Consequently, he decided to focus his attention on nutrition education, public health nutrition and public engagement with science to help people improve their health or prevent diet-related diseases.

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In addition, he has created a half acre edible garden as a teaching resource at his home. There are areas for fruit and vegetable production, decorative edible plants, heritage varieties and unusual edible plants from across the world. He is the third generation to grow edible crops on the property, which started with his parental grandparents commercially growing tomatoes and cucumbers.