Delaying Ageing: What's Being Done for You to Achieve Healthy Ageing?

When we talk about living longer, it's important to understand the difference between lifespan and healthspan. Lifespan refers to the total number of years a person lives, but healthspan is about the quality of those years. Healthspan is all about maintaining vitality, mobility, and sharp cognitive function, without being burdened by chronic diseases or disabilities. 

This distinction is crucial because the goal shouldn't just be to live longer, but to live better. It's not enough to simply prolong our lives; we want to ensure that those extra years are spent in good health, where we can be active, independent, and mentally sharp.

The longevity field is gaining a lot of attention these days, with influential figures like Dr. Peter Attia emphasizing the importance of extending our healthspan¹. They argue that the key to a truly fulfilling life is not just maximizing the number of years we live, but maximizing the number of healthy, vibrant years we get to enjoy.

HealthSpan: A Paradigm Shift

Healthspan is about the quality of life, ensuring our years are marked by vitality rather than survival. It involves proactive measures to maintain our physical and mental health, delaying the onset of age-related diseases. By focusing on healthspan, we aim to make our later years as enjoyable and fulfilling as possible, characterised by an active engagement with life rather than a gradual decline. 

Understanding Ageing in Hong Kong

As Hong Kong’s ageing population grows, the city focuses on three key pillars: healthy and active ageing. These concepts guide efforts to ensure that older adults live longer and maintain a high quality of life.

Healthy Ageing: A Priority for Hong Kong

Healthy ageing is central to managing Hong Kong's ageing population. Preventive healthcare measures, such as regular screenings and health education, are prioritised to help older adults maintain independence and manage chronic conditions effectively. This holistic approach combines modern medicine with traditional practices to support overall well-being.

Active Ageing: Engaging the Ageing Population

Active ageing encourages older adults to stay physically, mentally, and socially active. Hong Kong provides accessible public spaces and offers programmes like Tai Chi classes and cultural activities to keep older residents engaged. These initiatives aim to reduce isolation and promote a vibrant, connected community for the elderly.

Innovations in Life Extension

Ozempic and Pharmacological Advances

Ozempic, initially developed for diabetes management, has garnered attention for its potential in weight management—a crucial factor in longevity. Its role in promoting weight loss and improving insulin sensitivity demonstrates how modern medicine can contribute to extending healthspan by mitigating risk factors associated with chronic diseases. Such pharmacological innovations are integral to a comprehensive approach to healthy ageing, complementing lifestyle modifications to achieve optimal health outcomes.

Mimicking the hormone GLP-1, drugs like Ozempic have anti-inflammatory effects that can even be used for treating diseases with brain inflammation markers like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Case studies have found² that GLP-1's ability to reduce inflammation may underpin the protective effects against cardiovascular diseases, suggesting wider implications for healthspan extension.

Wearables and Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM)

Wearable technology, including Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM), represents a significant leap forward in personalised healthcare. These devices offer real-time insights into our body's glucose levels, providing a window into how our lifestyle choices—diet, activity level, sleep patterns—affect our metabolic health. By enabling individuals to monitor their physiological responses and adjust their behaviours accordingly, wearables and CGMs are powerful tools to extend healthspan.

Incorporating Wearable Device Metrics

Devices like Apple Watches are changing the dynamics of health data interaction, offering a broader spectrum of health insights, including pulse, heart rhythm, oxygen levels, sleep quality, exercise intensity, HRV (stress), blood pressure, VO2 max (estimated), and blood sugar levels, all represented graphically on our smartphones. The breadth and depth of data available—and the sophistication of analysis—are expanding, rendering these insights, especially the trends over time, invaluable for health monitoring. This ongoing data collection provides a more comprehensive view of health than the occasional snapshot obtained in a doctor's office, potentially skewed by the stress of the visit. The key lies in effectively processing and integrating this data into personalised health programs, enhancing proactive health and well-being management.

Emerging Technologies in Longevity

The horizon of longevity research brims with emerging technologies such as AI technologies, nanotechnology, and regenerative medicine. These innovations promise to target the underlying mechanisms of ageing, offering the potential to not only extend life span but also to enhance healthspan by preventing or reversing age-related decline.

Case Study: AI Technology in Personalised Health Optimisation

In the quest to extend healthspan and optimise personal health, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology stands out as a pivotal innovation. The complexity of predicting future health outcomes and the effectiveness of personalised health interventions underscores the indispensable role of AI in longevity medicine. By collecting and analysing vast amounts of data from a variety of sources—including wearable device metrics, physical ability assessments, DEXA scans for body composition, diet logs, regular blood tests, and individual preferences—AI systems can synthesise this information against the extensive database of human medical knowledge.

This integration allows for the creation of highly personalised health and wellness plans³, far surpassing what traditional medical practice could achieve alone. AI's ability to monitor and adjust these plans in real-time, based on ongoing data input, enables a dynamic approach to health management. This ensures that interventions remain optimally effective over time, adapting to changes in an individual's health status and lifestyle.

An illustrative example of AI's potential impact is its application in predicting and managing chronic diseases⁴. By analysing patterns in blood sugar levels collected from CGMs, alongside dietary intake and physical activity data, AI can predict potential future spikes or drops in blood sugar. This allows for preemptive adjustments to diet or medication, potentially averting adverse health events.

The Importance of Body Composition and Physical Capacity

A crucial aspect of extending healthspan is maintaining optimal body composition and physical capacity. As we age, our physical capabilities inevitably decline, making it essential to enter old age with as much "spare capacity" as possible—be it in kidney function (GFR), neural health, or muscle mass. This spare capacity acts as a buffer, helping to maintain functionality and independence in later life.

The shift towards focusing on healthspan also calls for a reevaluation of traditional health metrics like BMI. Advanced metrics focusing on muscle mass, fat distribution, and functional capacity offer a refined view of health. These metrics pave the way for developing health and wellness plans tailored to individual needs, fostering a journey towards sustained well-being and an enriched life.

The convergence of medical science, technology, and personalised health strategies is paving the way for an era where the length of our lives is matched by the quality of our health. The promise of Medicine 3.0, with its focus on optimising the health spectrum, shows a future where each individual can realise their potential for a long, vibrant life.

Embracing these innovations and integrating them into our healthcare models enhances our capacity to manage and improve human health and aligns with our evolving understanding of what it means to live well. As we look to the future, the role of AI, wearable technologies, and advances in pharmacology will be instrumental in shaping a healthcare landscape that prioritises the healthspan, ensuring that the years we add are years lived to the fullest.

References

1. Harris, J. (2023). The healthspan revolution: how to live a long, strong and happy life. The Guardian. [online] 28 Mar. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/mar/28/healthspan-revolution-how-to-live-long-strong-happy-life. (Accessed: 14 March 2024). 

2. Graham, F. (2024). Daily briefing: Drugs such as Ozempic could help with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Nature. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00272-9. (Accessed: 14 March 2024). 

3. Garth, E. (2021). AI fast-tracks human longevity extension - Deep Longevity. Longevity.Technology - Latest News, Opinions, Analysis and Research. [online] 29 Jan. Available at: https://longevity.technology/news/ai-fast-tracks-human-longevity-extension/#:~:text=By%20harnessing%20the%20power%20of,and%20healthspan%20could%20be%20expanded. (Accessed: 14 March 2024). 

4. Sanjana Singareddy, Vijay Prabhu SN, Jaramillo, A., Yasir, M., N. Gopalakrishna Iyer, Hussein, S. and Tuheen Sankar Nath (2023). Artificial Intelligence and Its Role in the Management of Chronic Medical Conditions: A Systematic Review. Cureus. doi:https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.46066.