Why people stop moving as they get older
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What is the background of Martina Calvey and why did she start Hello Good Life?
Alive and kicking with Claire McKenna on News Talk. Martina Calvi is the founder of Hello Good Life, a growing network of health and well-being hubs for people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond. Based on her own health experience, she travelled to the UK and saw firsthand a very different approach to exercise, recovery, and aging well. One that was far more practical, accessible, and supportive than what was available to many back home in Ireland. And Martina joins me in studio. Martina, you're very welcome. Morning, Claire. Now this whole idea didn't come from you just spotting a business opportunity. This came from your own personal experience. Tell us a little bit about your health journey.
Um the idea came from necessity really because I'd had years of illness. Um it was cancer layered with the debilitating underlying condition. And I had got myself through that and um What happened was that it was literally kind of overnight. Um the rheumatoid arthritis that kinda had been managed, um I was off the treatment going through the cancer and it took a while to get back on it and it just exploded. And um what happened was it was my ankle and my foot really But it took a long time to diagnose what it was. They thought it was related to the cancer and so on. It just was so swollen. It was just red. It was so painful. It just knocked me into bed. I was bedridden for months. I ended up in a wheelchair.
Long story short. Um I'd come through everything. The challenge then became Um I my body strength was seriously impacted. Um my fitness, my everything. And the most thing was the muscle wastage. And can I ask what age you were at that time, Martina? So that's just like that was going through COVID. So it's not that long ago. I was just kind of in my early fifties um at that time.
And how had you been health wise up until that? Would you have been fitness conscious, health conscious, would you have been a an exerciser?
Yeah, so even though I had an underlying health condition um all my life. It was in remission for about twenty years of that. It had represented again about twenty twelve or thereabouts, but it was managed. I was getting I get inj infusions every four weeks and whatever. So people I was independent. I was w I walked a lot. I was, you know, yeah, absolutely. I I was I was, you know, healthy and happy and fit.
How did Martina’s cancer and rheumatoid arthritis lead to severe mobility loss?
And I never expected that I was going to be fast tracked into the aging process. process and into the body of a much older person, but that is really what happened to me. And th the challenge, as I said, was, um, I knew myself the and the way I was going to get myself better and back to good health was through exercise. Okay. The problem was When you have um, you know, the best way I can describe it is if you take it the the equipment we know uh that we're all used of and familiar, and I too, I lived in gyms, um you must present with a hundred percent capability to make the effort to work the machine. Okay? You have to be able to work the machine to meet the demand of the machine. But what happens when you can't?
And typically when we're into our our fifties and into that stage of the ageing process and into our sixties, seventies and so on all the way up. We just aren't able anymore. Our bodies are changed. So what happens is um Where's the exercise solution? Like we know that, you know, say longevity, for example, you know, um the the some of the the strongest indicators of longevity are strength training, cardiovascular exercise and social engagement regularly, consistently and so on. Like just yesterday, if a data from the Department of Health showing us that um the lifespan for m males now is eighty eighty one point one and for females um it's eighty-four point six. That's all grand. But how do we access um regular, consistent strength training cardiovascular in a social setting?
And that was what I found when I Was trying to recover, I couldn't access exercise in that way. It wasn't available in Ireland. There's no safe, structured exercise exercise solution in that way where you can go a couple of times a week or whatever.
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