How to MAXIMISE your healthspan and have a Diamond Life

Your Diamond Life

Not in the sense being rich materially, but rich in good 'quality of life' years. So your HealthSpan is the good years, your LifeSpan the total including those bad end-of-life years you have seen others have.

Want help you to limit the effects of ageing and maximise your HealthSpan?

What exactly IS Ageing?

When you say of someone ‘they look old these days’ you aren’t talking about wrinkles or grey hair. You really mean they look frail, shrunken, diminished, less assertive, probably less independent, perhaps a little afraid of their own shadow. They are no longer standing tall and leading the conversation. What you may also observe is that they don’t see or hear as well, their memory isn’t great and they walk more slowly.

 This can be summed up as frailty: but what causes this, what fundamental bodily changes lead to this dramatic loss of critical function? You should also ask – can I slow it or prevent it? 

Let’s face it - I don’t want to go there and I don’t expect you do, either.

 A preventable sequence of events

These frailty changes are not inevitable or universal in any respect. It is quite possible to get to the end of your life whilst retaining a great deal of ‘capacity’.

This may surprise you. 

It is not inevitable that we go through a period of a second childhood – dependent, diminished and vulnerable. Most of what you see around you and what characterizes care home residents is modifiable.

What are the fundamental problems?

Loss of physical capacity comes predominantly from muscle weakness, along with some deterioration in neuromuscular coordination. There is dangerous vulnerability to life changing fractures due to loss of bone strength; loss of the collagen that makes up joints, ligaments and connective tissue; deterioration in the vascular tree reducing the circulation to vital structures; lowered hormone secretion and of course dementia of various types. None of these is set up by our genes in a non-modifiable way. Εven if your genes are less than optimum, they are still always modifiable by what are known as epi-genetic controls: in other words environmental lifestyle choices or anti-ageing medications.

The Basics - is it worth it?

You bet! Keeping out of the Care Home; being fit to socialise, play with your grandchildren, pursue any interests and travel is well worth it.

We can measure success as a life free of diabetes, dementia, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. This was established in the large well known US Nurses Health Study lasting over 30 years. [1]

It is well accepted that non-smoking, regular physical activity, low alcohol intake, optimum body weight, and diet quality affect both total life expectancy and the incidence of chronic diseases. They act separately and in combination by modifying the 10 cell damagers and thus the organ damage and disease that we see clinically.

What is the cellular basis of Ageing?

The ageing process involves 10 ‘Hallmarks of biological damage’ that increase with age, that get worse when ageing is accelerated [for example by smoking] and appear to slow ageing when they are slowed down [2]. 

We are talking very basic deterioration in essential cellular processes. Knowing what these 10 are helps us find ‘treatments’ for them. Here is the list if you are scientifically interested. [You mostly need to know just the answers].

1. DNA damage
2. Shortened telomeres [the caps on chromosomes];
3. Protein problems affecting all our biological mechanisms eg failure to clean up damaged protein, making bad misfolded protein like amyloid or adding sugars to protein molecules [glycation] that causes tissue deterioration;
4. Epigenetic alterations [epigenetics is the code that tells DNA what to do in any specific situation];
5. Accumulation of aged cells [they pump out inflammatory proteins];
6. Mitochondrial loss and malfunction [so poor energy management];
7. Inflammatory damage to cellular signaling [including eg insulin resistance];
8. Reduced diversity in the gut microbiome;
9. Cell exhaustion due to stem cell malfunction [so poor tissue repair and replacement];
10. Reduced immunity.

How do these impact us personally?

These processes combine in various ways to cause the diseases that trouble us and the deteriorations we experience with age. Thus DNA damage is the basic cause of all cancers; reduced immunity means our defence against cancer or infection is reduced; increased inflammation and metabolic signalling problems are the basis of heart disease and with several of the others on the list the origin of dementia. Finally, shortened telomeres are a fundamental ageing process that is known to be greater in syndromes with premature aging and premature death.

What you need to know  is - what things specifically - about your diet or exercise or sleep or lifestyle or supplements make a difference to these underlying processes?

The problem is… you already know the answer to some of these but maybe don't know how to make the changes needed.

What is the plan?

Personally, I have an active program to tackle each of the potential deteriorations and maintain my function at the sort of level I experienced in my mid 50’s. 

So I have at least 4 active hours a week plus as many purposeful steps as possible per day without taking up all my waking hours! 

I eat with specific intention to include certain things in my diet that are the main part of it and have nutritional value aiming to maintain my waist at 50% of my height. 

I take a small number of supplements that either have known value or are theoretically sound scientifically. 

I work hard to get enough sleep in a regular pattern.

Can you do this?

Everyone can start where they are and gradually follow simple steps to incrementally improve.

References

[1] https://nurseshealthstudy.org/

[2] Yanping Li BMJ 2020;368:l6669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l6669)