IF YOU think things get tougher as you get older, it's time to think again.

Over a three-day period global speakers at The International Federation of Aging, 13th Global Conference (June 21-23) introduced a range of new knowledge aimed towards the wellbeing of an ageing demographic.

Speakers included:

Oxford Academic Dr Sarah Harper, Professor of Gerontology and Senior Research Fellow Nuffield College. a world leader in planning for the new demographic of ageing people. She attributes the new demographic to a number of points including a lowered fertility rate - the number of babies born is not equalling those already here and ageing.

She talks of challenges and opportunities. The practicalities of technology will support independent living through home aids. In terms of mature-age employment she cited a particular car manufacturer where robots released older workers from manual labour and increased their working life through the provision of physically easier computer generated design work.

Dr Bradley Willcox is a physician-investigator in geriatrics and gerontology and the man who told us about the health secrets of the long living Okinawa people. Along with a scientific team and his anthropologist twin brother, he examined the dietary habits of what is known as longest living people in the world. Sweet potatoes, he told me, played the biggest role in their diets, particularly purple ones, this along with jasmine tea and miso.