Guest Column: Exercise and eat now for the you you want to be

Published 9:00 pm Monday, December 4, 2023

Good news: Lifespan is once again on the rise. According to estimates published last month, Americans born in 2022 are expected to live 77.5 years, a rebound from the lows of the pandemic. This remains below the 2014 peak of 78.9 years, however, with too many lives still cut prematurely short by cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and despair.

Fortunately, actuarial tables are not destiny. There are steps policymakers at all levels can take to expand the human lifespan. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) is leading an effort to make 2021-2030 the Decade of Healthy Ageing. And at an individual level, people can make choices each day to lead a longer life. Just last month, an international team of researchers published findings that a sustained shift to a healthy diet could expand lifespan by more than 10 years.

If your mental image is a frail 80-year-old suffering physical and cognitive decline in a nursing facility, you might wonder whether adding another decade is desirable. This is why longevity researchers are increasingly shifting focus from lifespan to healthspan. Here the numbers are grimmer. WHO’s most recent estimates pegged the U.S. healthspan at 63.7 years, meaning the average American could expect 15 years of declining health at the end of life. While not all those years would be marked by suffering, surely most of us would prefer robustness to frailty. So how can we maximize our healthspan?

Some in the emerging field of geroscience, including Harvard’s David Sinclair, argue that expanding healthspan requires moving beyond the treatment of the individual diseases associated with aging to the treatment of aging itself. But since the global health system is largely reliant on the International Classification of Diseases for diagnosis, treatment, and reimbursement, WHO would first have to classify aging as a disease, which it has so far proven unwilling to do. Nonetheless, a new longevity industry is booming, with longevity coaches peddling supplements, medications and treatments of as-yet-unproven efficacy. Even Sinclair himself is cashing in.

Although much of this may be snake oil, amidst the noise can be found trustworthy voices with good advice for people to live longer, healthier, and happier lives. One such voice is Peter Attia, a physician, podcast host, and author. While Attia is hopeful that medications like Rapamycin may be geroprotective, his prescription for a longer healthspan largely rests on traditional pillars of preventive medicine like diet, exercise, sleep and psychotherapy. What makes Attia’s approach feel fresh is his argument that the health care industry should be much more aggressive in early prevention, a framework he calls Medicine 3.0. For example, continuous glucose monitors are reimbursed by insurance only when the patient is diagnosed with diabetes, but earlier use can inform choices to adopt healthy behaviors long before developing the level of metabolic dysfunction revealed by a routine blood test.

Attia offers actionable steps people can take to expand healthspan and compress their “marginal decade” to a shorter period of decline. One such step is training for your own Centenarian Decathlon, which begins with listing the activities of daily living you most want to preserve in older age. Say you’re 50 and you want to be able to lift a 30-pound grandchild when you’re 80. Considering the natural decline in muscle mass that comes of aging, you would need to start training now to lift a 50-pound weight from a squat.

What if you’re already in your marginal decade? More good news: It’s not too late! A recent study showed resistance exercises can build muscle even in adults over age 85. And if fall risk is a concern, you can get fit while you sit.

So don’t wait for the new year. Resolve now to make healthy choices. You’ll live longer, feel better and your future self will thank you.

Do you have a point you’d like to make or an issue you feel strongly about? Submit a letter to the editor or a guest column.

Marketplace