29 Apr The future of medicine lies in the “betterment of the well.”
I just finished participating in the fascinating online Vaduz Roundtable on Biomarkers of Aging and Health. I was honored to be included in the august group headlined by David Sinclair, the author of Lifespan, and Aubrey De Grey, the head of the SENS Foundation, among other major longevity and geroscience experts. I gave an overview of the PhysioAge Health Analytics software and how it is used to objectively measure the effectiveness of interventions to increase the healthspan and improve quality of life.
Take home messages from the conference: Aging is a deleterious process that not only leads to a progressive loss of function and chronic disease, but also to increased susceptibility to acute diseases as is being made painfully clear during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Aging is a lifelong process that we can measure with biomarkers of aging that assess key aspects of the aging process as laid out in the 9 Hallmarks of Aging theory. Human aging is considerably variable and chronological age can be vastly improved upon as a risk factor for disease with validated biomarkers of aging.
Echoing the definition from the WHO: Health is more than the absence of disease, and there is a continuum between the two, not a clear division.
Therefore, medicine must do more than just treat disease, for its future lies in prevention and the “betterment of the well.”
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