Four Ways to Extend Our Longevity and Healthspan
Technology advancements over the last two decades have enabled vastly more sophisticated research into cellular growth and metabolism. This has led to an increasingly louder buzz on social media as aging baby boomers contemplate their future longevity and healthspan.
Healthspan refers to the period of life spent in good health, free from chronic disease and disabilities associated with aging. Longevity or lifespan refers to the total number of years an individual lives. A google search for healthspan yields more than 5 million hits, while a similar search for longevity yields less than a million.
The National Institue of Health Medicine database of published scientific research lists over a hundred thousand articles on lifespan. In contrast, it lists only a bit more than two percent of that number for published studies on healthspan. Public interest is vastly greater than current knowledge.
Boomers have directly experienced the disabilities, disease and suffering of their own parents and older relatives who lived within the century old paradigm and practices of traditionally trained physicians. As a result of their direct experience, baby boomers want to enjoy the latter stages of their lives in a vastly greater state of good health than their older relatives.
The good news is that guidance for achievement of this aspirational goal is increasingly available. It relies on fundamental principles gleaned from published scientific research and enlightened healthcare practitioners.
These principles fall into four practical baskets: movement and exercise, food and diet, supplements and nutraceuticals, and stress management and meditation.
There are knowledgeable and well publicized thought leaders in each of these spaces. Some of them share links to the published research that guides the information they report in their books, videos and podcasts.
Movement and Exercise
There is universal agreement that movement and resistance training exercises are likely the most important ingredient to enable better health during the aging process. The two most vocal exercise proponents are Peter Attia MD and Rhonda Patrick PhD, but there is a difference in their points of view.
Dr. Attia promotes the benefits of Zone 2 exercise training. Dr. Patrick emphasizes the importance of vigorous exercise using higher intensity intervals interspersed with brief recovery periods.
Identification of the key research supporting Dr. Attia’s view in his book, Outlive, is not so easily accomplished. In contrast, Dr. Patrick clearly shares links and excerpts to the published research she relies on for her clearly stated views.
However, whatever their differences, the key takeaways are:
It’s better to move than to sit,
better to move faster rather than slower, and
better to strengthen aging muscles with resistance training, than to allow them to atrophy.
These guidelines promote the growth of ATP in our cells. This is the primary fuel for energy expenditure and cellular metabolism. The net result of vigorous movement is we have more energy available for more vigorous movement that slows the aging process.
Food and Diet
Michael Greger MD is the recognized expert who curates voluminous research on diet, disease and aging through his free noncommercial website: NutritionFacts.org. His latest book, How Not To Age, includes links to many thousands of published scientific articles related to the aging process, the hallmarks of aging, and dietary recommendations to slow down the aging process.
Supplements and Nutraceuticals
David Sinclair PhD generated quite a buzz with his book Lifespan and related videos. He documents the scientific background for his information theory of aging. Dr. Sinclair explains how each person’s genes are fixed by the twenty-three chromosomes inherited from each of two parents. He proposes, however, that these genes can literally be turned on and off by a set of proteins in the epigenome surrounding them, called sirtuins. He and other innovative scientists are actively studying the variables that accomplish this feat.
Dr. Sinclair promotes the view that nutraceuticals are one of the critical factors in the aging process, along with diet, caloric restriction and exercise. The key nutraceuticals he and his scientific colleagues study tend to be precursors of NAD+, a key molecule that research suggests is involved in mitigating cellular aging.
Stress Management and Meditative Awareness
Our inherent fight or flight response was first identified by Hans Selye MD many decades ago. Dr. Selye discovered a common pattern of unhealthy physiological responses across a wide variety of species when they were subjected to unpleasant harmful conditions. He established the groundbreaking recognition that stress contributes to ill health and disease.
The scientific investigation of stress eventually led American psychologists to study highly experienced Buddhist meditators. The psychologists’ objective was to understand how to better control bodily responses that were previously believed to be involuntary and not subject to conscious control. This research morphed into the beneficial practice of stress management, as well as the investigation of more popularized meditation techniques.
The Beatles popularized transcendental meditation in the 1960’s, but that movement has passed. The buzz now tends to be around mindfulness meditation. This simple and accessible approach involves sitting quietly and observing the breath. When thoughts arise, the practitioner is advised to let the thought go and return their attention and awareness to their breath. This practice enables attainment of a more complete state of relaxation.
The Beneficial Takeaway
The key strategic takeaway from these four richly developing longevity research arenas is that the aging process is not controlled only by our fixed genes. Instead, focusing on these four approaches enables the delightful surprise that, no matter how old one is, we can purposefully bolster our healthspan as we age. This means:
muscles can be strengthened,
fitness can be enhanced,
dietary choices can bring significant benefits,
supplements can help promote healthy aging and
meditative awareness can enhance awareness of solutions to problems that may have previously seemed insurmountable.
Our personal research, conscious decisions and purposeful action can be major determinants of our health and our ability to influence our own longevity.
Please note, this information is provided for informational purposes only. You should always consult your healthcare professional regarding your personal situation.
About the Author;
Irv Beiman earned a Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the 1970’s. Both of his parents suffered from various medical maladies during the last several decades of their lives. Their suffering instilled in him a thirst for credible information about how to avoid a wide variety of diseases, including cancer, diabetes, stroke and osteoarthritis and fuels his desire to learn how to live our best later years. On his website, Irv describes a multicomponent method that simultaneously combines movement, breathing and intention. You can e-mail Irv at [email protected].
