Chronological Ageing is an inevitable part of life, but biological ageing doesn't have to be. While getting older is something we cannot stop, the chronic diseases and frailty that are commonly associated with ageing are not inevitable. We have seen many examples of people living long, healthy lives well into their 90s and 100s, without the presence of most of the diseases that we commonly associate with ageing. If this is possible for a select population, is it possible for all of us?
I am going to encourage you to watch this moving video clip made by the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation before reading further:
https://youtu.be/qNkzVz5Aljk
The World Health Organization recently classified ageing as a disease, and while this is a controversial notion, it's true that the chronic decline in our health, the shrinking of our health span, and the increased morbidity is a result of pathological processes that we can treat. If we think about the fundamental problems that go wrong as we age as treatable, then we can create a society where our health span equals our lifespan.
The truth is that 80% of people over 65 have one or more chronic illnesses, and chronic illness is affecting six out of 10 people, with four out of 10 having more than one chronic illness. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, frailty, and disability are all consequences of abnormal processes that can be treated.
So, think about the last 20 years of your life and the way in which you hope to live it as this can be a good motivator for making lasting positive lifestyle changes.
The hallmarks of ageing include insulin resistance, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, alterations in the microbiome, and oxidative stress. These are all concepts that functional medicine practitioners are familiar with, and they are now being described as the hallmarks of ageing. They are also to some extent modifiable.
Functional medicine practitioners can address the modifiable lifestyle factors and clinical imbalances which touch on many of the important hallmarks of ageing. By removing the things that are the impediments to health and adding in the things that are optimising health, we can slow down and even reverse biological ageing.
The majority of the hallmarks of ageing are modifiable, and while they are not all created equally, we are aware that even small changes can set health onto a different trajectory. By understanding the root causes of ageing and addressing the cause of the cause, we can create a society where our health span gets closer to or equals our lifespan.
One way to test biological ageing is through glycanage testing, which measures the age of an individual's immune system. Glycans are complex sugar molecules that are essential to immune system function, and as we age, they become less complex, leading to decreased immune system function. Glycanage testing can measure the level of complexity of glycans in an individual's immune system, providing a measure of biological ageing.
More than that, testing can also indicate which areas of health you are ageing faster, allowing you to work specifically on areas that are going to have the biggest impact.
In conclusion, we don't have to accept chronic disease and frailty as inevitable consequences of ageing. By addressing the root causes of ageing and optimizing the hallmarks of ageing, we can slow down and even reverse biological ageing.
Look out for our Self Care workshop on how you can make lasting changes that will impact on your health.
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