Download the LifeCurve App
A revolutionary smartphone app has been launched across Dumfries and Galloway – aimed at helping people to stay fitter and healthier.
The LifeCurve app allows people to track their own activity levels day by day, and compare them to the expected levels for their age. It will also provide information about suitable activities at home and outside, and other ways to stay healthy and active.
It is free to download and is available for Apple and Android phones. People without smartphones may be eligible for help to acquire one as part of Dumfries and Galloway Council’s digital inclusion efforts.
Anyone is welcome to participate, and you can find more information about the project, including links to download the app, by clicking here.
Further Information about LifeCurve
The LifeCurve app is based on cutting-edge research by UK scientists into ageing and is being employed as part of the STILL Going research project. Dumfries and Galloway is one of the first regions in the country to be a part of this research project which will see learning shared with the team at the University of Strathclyde.
LifeCurve emerged from work carried out by Professor Peter Gore and his team at Newcastle University, who concluded that the decline in people’s health and wellbeing can be plotted on a progressive curve. This ‘LifeCurve’ supports people to assess their current level of fitness and ability, anticipate changes, and take action to help slow or even reverse possible declines.
Professor Gore and his team found that people tend to lose the ability to do various everyday activities in a set order.
- Earlier, they stop being able to walk briskly, get up from the floor, or cut their own toenails.
- Later on, they tend to lose the ability to cook a hot meal, perform light housework and get up from a chair unaided.
Professor Gore’s team mapped these events on to a typical lifespan, producing the LifeCurve.
Someone who follows the typical curve is progressing at an average rate, while someone sitting above the curve is still able to do things that most people their age can no longer manage.
Everyone has the ability to improve their position on the curve and it does not take much to do it. Small, simple increases in daily activity levels can make a huge difference – keeping people fit, active, healthy and happy for much longer.
What is required is to know that it is possible and where to start – which is where the app comes in.
The app was developed by Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing and the software company ADL Smart Care. It is being used as part of Strathclyde’s STILL Going project, led by Susan Kelso.
The Strathclyde team will use some of the data which the app collects to support their own research, but all the data is collected anonymously; the researchers will not have access to anyone’s names or other personal information.
