Research in Healthy Ageing

We aim to increase our understanding of the human ageing process in various tissues and understand the onset of respiratory and metabolic disease related to age and a sedentary lifestyle. 

We study the impact of detrimental changes experienced during life in lifestyle (smoking, physical (in)activity), (mal)nutrition) and the environment (e.g. air pollution, microplastics) and their interaction with our genetic background. We focus on early identification of people with an enhanced risk for disease onset and progression and hospitalisation due to sarcopenia and cachexia and on developing effective lifestyle intervention strategies to modify chronic disease progression and support more active, healthy ageing.

Translating insights from muscle biology to personalised nutrition and exercise interventions is used to reverse or slow down the ageing process and increase health and well-being in all disease phases.

Changing habits in diet, smoking and physical activity have been instrumental in the greater incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases. Our belief is that early development of chronic metabolic disorders can be prevented by an active, healthy lifestyle thereby supporting more active, healthy ageing. This knowledge will be applied to develop more effective strategies to add life to our years instead of years to our lives.