Longevity Medicine: A Prescription for a Longer and Fuller Life

Our healthcare system excels at reacting to injury and illness – treating broken arms or fevers. We fall short, however, when it comes to prevention.

Benjamin Franklin, put it well, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This observation holds with many health conditions, and certainly applies to some of our biggest areas of illness and death: heart disease and cancer – the top two causes of death in Canada and the United States. (1,2)

Let’s turn our gaze to prevention, also known as proactive healthcare or longevity medicine.

So, what is longevity medicine?

Longevity medicine isn’t to be confused with sci-fi ambitions to live forever. Rather, it’s about delaying the onset of chronic illnesses for as long as possible and maintaining the ability to live a full life. It’s based on peer-reviewed literature. The goal in longevity medicine is to “compress functional decline”. (3) We remain healthy and vibrant deep into old-age, and then compress our decline to our final years; because, alas, we don’t yet know how to cheat death. Although people are working on that…

Anyway, this graph shows you what we mean by compressing functional decline:

Figure 1. The compression of functional decline through Longevity Medicine. ADL = Activities of daily living.

Longevity medicine focuses on six key levers:

• Regular screening

• Exercise

• Nutrition

• Sleep

• Stress/emotional health

• Drugs and supplements

Presently there are not many longitudinal studies examining the effects of a lifetime of longevity medicine. These types of studies take a lifetime to conduct. However, based on available evidence, we can still draw some bold conclusions. One of the most important things that centenarians have in common is good health. Their age-related diseases are usually minor. (4,5) This is in contrast to the population as a whole. In fact, centenarians have lower rates of many age-related diseases, including cancer and heart disease. On this note, we know that 43% of Canadians will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime. (6) Similarly, atherosclerosis begins as early as childhood and 100% of Canadians will die with it, and 1 in 3 will die from it. (7,8)

We also know that purposeful, goal-oriented exercise carries with it benefits far greater than any pharmaceutical and is a wonder-drug on its own. (9) A healthy diet can decrease risk of all-cause mortality by upwards of 10%. (10,11) Similarly, high quality sleep gives our bodies a chance to recover, maintain, and improve. Effective management of stress and emotional health is in some ways more important than physical health, and often overlooked. With these statistics in mind, we can see that optimization of the six levers above are key to a long and healthy life.

How do I optimize these pathways?

The first step to optimization is knowing where you currently stand. We begin this process through cutting-edge biometrics, VO2max testing, detailed DNA analysis, and DEXA body composition, reviewing all of this with you in a one-on-one consultation with a physician. From here, we get to work. We make an individualized plan that goes straight at the metrics that need work. Medical management comes into play and lifestyle adjustments too. By performing follow up testing six months later, we see if we’re making progress and make sure we’re not flying blind.

Evan Carey, Health Researcher

1. Leading causes of death, total population, by age group. Accessed December 12, 2022. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1310039401

2. FastStats - Leading Causes of Death. Accessed December 12, 2022. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

3. Gore PG, Kingston A, Johnson GR, Kirkwood TBL, Jagger C. New horizons in the compression of functional decline. Age Ageing. 2018;47(6):764-768. doi:10.1093/ageing/afy145

4. Martin P, Gondo Y, Arai Y, et al. Cardiovascular health and cognitive functioning among centenarians: A comparison between the Tokyo and Georgia centenarian studies. Int Psychogeriatr. 2019;31(4):455-465. doi:10.1017/S1041610218001813

5. Sebastiani P, Perls TT. The genetics of extreme longevity: Lessons from the new england centenarian study. Front Genet. 2012;3(NOV). doi:10.3389/fgene.2012.00277

6. Brenner D, Poirier A, Demers A, et al. Members of the Canadian Cancer Statistics Advisory Committee Project management. Published online 2022.

7. Schipper HS, de Ferranti S. Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Risk as an Emerging Priority in Pediatrics. Pediatrics. 2022;150(5). doi:10.1542/PEDS.2022-057956/189711

8. Abramson BL, Al-Omran M, Anand SS, et al. Canadian Cardiovascular Society 2022 Guidelines for Peripheral Arterial Disease. Canadian Journal of Cardiology. 2022;38(5):560-587. doi:10.1016/J.CJCA.2022.02.029/ATTACHMENT/C1A23EDE-1FCE-4F6B-B0A0-A379D7E4122A/MMC1.PDF

9. Mandsager K, Harb S, Cremer P, Phelan D, Nissen SE, Jaber W. Association of Cardiorespiratory Fitness With Long-term Mortality Among Adults Undergoing Exercise Treadmill Testing. JAMA Netw Open. 2018;1(6):e183605. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.3605

10. Soltani S, Jayedi A, Shab-Bidar S, Becerra-Tomás N, Salas-Salvadó J. Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet in Relation to All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies. Advances in Nutrition. 2019;10(6):1029. doi:10.1093/ADVANCES/NMZ041

11. Ferreiro CR, Martín-Arriscado Arroba C, Cancelas Navia P, Pablos DL, ´ Omez De La Cámara AG. Ultra-processed food intake and all-cause mortality: DRECE cohort study. Published online 2021. doi:10.1017/S1368980021003256

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