Latest news with #SuperAgers:AnEvidence-BasedApproachtoLongevity
Forbes
6 days ago
- Health
- Forbes
Why Self-Care Has Become The Most Important Form Of Healthcare – And What You Can Do To Improve It
Extending healthspan—the period of life spent free from major diseases—is far more about lifestyle choices than genetics. In his recently published (and very good) book Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity, Dr. Eric Topol emphasizes that extending healthspan—the period of life spent free from major diseases—is far more about lifestyle choices than genetics. His recommendations, grounded in decades of research on individuals who thrive into their 80s and beyond, focus on practical, evidence-based strategies. In addition to the health-related benefits of proper self-care, there are growing financial benefits. As healthcare related to chronic conditions (including heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, and neurogenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's) becomes increasingly expensive, and as more of the costs of healthcare are being passed onto insured consumers in the form of increased deductibles, co-payments, and coverage limitations, and as more individuals are uninsured, avoidance of expensive healthcare conditions and procedures has become essential to financial security. It's NOT All in Your Genes For much of my generally healthy life, I have been hearing that 'you can't beat your genes.' I have always been skeptical of this notion, not due to any hard evidence to the contrary, but because of an instinctive sense based on observation that it must be an oversimplification, and because of a stubborn refusal to accept such a fatalistic approach in my own life and those of friends and family members. Fortunately, there is growing evidence to suggest that my instinct has been correct, including one study highlighted in Dr. Topol's book. Two decades ago, a California research team he led sequenced the genomes of 1,400 adults aged 80 or older without any major illness. The researchers expected to find genetic differences between this cohort (which they called the 'Wellderly') and the majority of older adults who have at least two chronic conditions (which they called the 'Illderly'). However, the Wellderly study found almost no difference between the biological makeup of the two groups. What they did find was that Wellderly members were more physically active, more social, and typically better educated than the general public. That genes don't necessarily determine healthy aging is 'liberating,' and suggests that 'we can all do better' to delay disease, says Topol. In his book, Dr. Topol cites many examples of Super Agers whose parents died in their 50s from chronic conditions. Yet, these people are going strong in their 80s and 90s, and he believes that lifestyle has a much greater impact on health and longevity than genetics. While genetics may set the 'upper limit' for human lifespan—generally 90–100 years—he believes that lifestyle choices largely determine how close individuals come to reaching that potential without significant limitations. Dr. Topol and a growing number of other experts estimate that 80–90% of heart disease, 40–50% of cancers, and nearly half of Alzheimer's cases are delayable or preventable through lifestyle factors such as exercise, diet, sleep, and social connection. Genetics may account for only 10–20% of overall health outcomes and lifespan, with lifestyle accounting for the remaining 80–90%. Evidence-Based Self-Care If you accept this premise, the next question is, 'What kind of self-care will extend my healthspan that is supported by evidence-based research?' There is no shortage of unsupported recommendations. One of the reasons I admire Dr. Topol's approach is that he sticks to what is supported by research and cites the research being cited. As background, he is a cardiologist, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, and a molecular scientist who has published 1,300 articles and multiple books. Following is a summary of what Dr. Topol has to say about what he calls 'Lifestyle+.' However, I highly recommend that you read the chapter in his book on this subject, as it contains many actionable insights that are beyond the scope of this article, including summaries of the evidence supporting some healthspan-promoting practices and casting doubt on the efficacy of others. 1. Exercise as the Cornerstone 2. Mediterranean Diet 3. Sleep Quality and Duration 4. Social Connection and Cognitive Engagement 5. Avoiding Unproven Longevity Hacks Measuring Your Risk Dr. Topol recommends a personalized and dynamic approach to health risk evaluation, including but also moving beyond traditional population-based screening and annual tests. His logic is based on the fact that many potentially debilitating diseases develop over decades, and that understanding one's vulnerability to one or more of them well in advance can facilitate interventions to prevent or delay the onset of symptoms. His key recommendations include: 1. Longitudinal Tracking of Lab Tests 2. Emerging Blood-Based Screening 3. Genomic and Polygenic Risk Scores 4. Brain Health and Alzheimer's Disease 5. AI and Digital Tools 6. Avoiding Unnecessary Full-Body Scans 7. Reservations about Aging Clocks Recommended for a Reason I rarely endorse a single work as I am with Super Agers, but as it has become increasingly clear that we must take more responsibility for our own health care—for both healthy aging and financial security—it has become equally difficult to find trusted sources of information about how best to do this among the torrent of possibilities that are not evidence-based (e.g., more than 60,000 diet books are sold on Amazon). With that said, the combination of rapid advances in life science and information technology, including polygenic risk scoring, genome sequencing, imaging, and multimodal AI, is accelerating the pace of change and identifying new opportunities to increase healthspan that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. So, there is no healthspan 'handbook' available today that will be completely relevant tomorrow. Our ongoing challenge will be to sort through the many possible breakthroughs to identify the few that are truly supported by evidence. There are 326 research citations in Dr. Topol's nearly 100-page bibliography in Super Agers, which is the kind of scientific rigor we need to guide us today and hope to have at our fingertips tomorrow.
Scientific American
14-07-2025
- Health
- Scientific American
A Longevity Expert Breaks Down the Science and Hype of Biological Aging Tests
How old are you really? Counting birthdays may be a common tally, but your 'age' isn't determined by time alone. New research increasingly shows the importance of considering chronological age as something very different from biological age—in which the body and its cells, tissues and organs all have separate 'clocks' that can tick at different speeds. 'Calculating biological age, I think, is core to the advances we've made in the science of aging,' says Eric Topol, a cardiologist and genomics professor at Scripps Research in California. 'It's a way you can tell if a person, organ, or any biological unit is at pace of aging—if it's normal, abnormal or supernormal.' In his new book Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity, Topol delves into the recent surge in public interest in biological aging and the accelerating quest to refine ways to measure it—giving a more precise picture of a person's longevity prospects and of potential ailments that can be prevented or treated early. Scientific American spoke with Topol about the latest research in biological aging, factors that might speed it up or slow it down and what it can tell us about our health. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. [ An edited transcript of the interview follows. ] How is biological age determined and how has the research evolved? The real beginning of this research started more than a decade ago by geneticist Steven Horvath with his 'clock' [test], with which, basically using saliva, you could look at specific genetic markers in a genome and predict a person's biological age. His clock is really known as an epigenetic clock, or methylation clock. As people age, DNA changes and gets methylated—this is when a methyl group [molecule] attaches to specific nucleotides of DNA. I kind of liken it to the body rusting out. Basically, you're getting marks at specific parts of the genome that track with aging in humans and every other species of mammal. In Horvath's initial test, there clearly was a detection of both alignment with the person's real age, or chronological age—and when it wasn't matching up. In other words, if a person's biological age was off by a few years from their real age, you'd wonder why that is. Then what's proliferated in the more than 10 years since has been all these other clocks: protein clocks, RNA clocks, immune system clocks—you name it. Using plasma proteins from a blood sample, we can also clock organs—whether it's the heart, brain, liver or kidney. So we have seen just enormous advances in these clocks, and they keep getting refined with added features. There's a race to get the best clocks to predict survival. What can biological age tests tell us clinically? We can detect in an individual if something's not right at different levels. For example, if your biological age is five years older than your real age, is there an organ that might be linked with that? Then you can use these clocks to see if lifestyle, prevention or treatment can slow down the pace of aging and get it into alignment with your actual age. The question is: When will doctors actually start using them? The medical community is very hard to change. So it hasn't happened yet, but I believe it will eventually. Tests are also made available by commercial companies, but they can be very expensive. You can run an epigenetic test in a very simple way for $10 or $20, while some of these companies are charging $200. I haven't seen their publications to be able to say with confidence that they are doing things right, and the lack of standards from one company to the next is disconcerting. They don't want to shock [customers by telling them] that they're 10 years older than their real chronological age. Eventually, I believe, we're going to have high-fidelity epigenetic clocks with no motivation for a provider to hold things back if a person's data are really bad. Why might someone biologically age 'faster' or 'slower' than their actual age? If you had to pick one mechanism behind why biological age and chronological age are misaligned, it would most likely be because there are some genes that are either protective or linked with accelerated aging—but that's such a small part of the story. Another root cause appears to be that our immune system gets weaker and less functional as we get older. In the average person, this starts around age 55 to 60. It drops its level of protection, or it gets dysregulated—off track—and it can have an untoward, hyperactive response. Now when you have that happen, you start to see inflammation in the organs, such as in the arteries of the heart or the brain—it's what I call 'inflammaging.' Obviously our lifestyle also has a big impact—eating a really healthy diet that's not proinflammatory and doesn't have a lot of ultraprocessed foods or red meat. Good sleep health helps reduce inflammation. There's only one thing that's been definitively shown to slow the epigenetic aging process, and that's exercise. I think these clocks ultimately are going to be very good incentives for people to adopt a healthy lifestyle. We can't get everybody to do all these things that we know help them, but if they get their own data and they see something's off track, the hope is that they'd [change their lifestyle]. That's, of course, just one of the ways to prevent diseases. There are also drugs and other treatments. What environmental factors are also important to consider? We have all kinds of food deserts in the U.S. We have air pollution and unmitigated accumulation in the air and water of microplastics and nanoplastics, which get into every part of our body and induce inflammation. And we have forever chemicals as well that are pervasive. These all play a factor in lifestyle, health and aging. Let's talk more about 'inflammaging.' We know some inflammation can be good for the body to fight infections, for instance, but a lot can be bad. How does chronic inflammation potentially accelerate aging? Inflammation and aging are so tightly intertwined. The immune system is really the driver for good [when it attacks pathogens] and for bad when it promotes too much inflammation in walls of arteries or the brain. That's heart disease and neurodegenerative disease, respectively. But what's so exciting is we can dial up or down the immune system now. For example, [there have been] natural, amazing experiments with the shingles vaccines, which reduce dementia and Alzheimer's disease 20 to 25 percent. So how does that work? Well, [the vaccine] amps up the immune system in people and older adults. That's going to be the critical thing in using these metrics: zooming in on the immune system and inflammation to keep people's immune system intact and stop it when it starts to go haywire. That's the future. In the last chapter of the book, I presented the first cut of my ' immunome '—an assay of every virus and pathogen I've been exposed to, every antibody I have. But that's just scratching the surface. The immune system clock could turn out to be the most useful of all; if I could pick one, that's the one I would want. But the immune system is very complex. Maybe we don't have to do a systematic, comprehensive assessment of our immunome [that would include checking antibody titers and] sequencing B cells, T cells and interferons. If we can use just a group of plasma proteins, that would be terrific. That remains to be seen. There's a human immunome project just getting started to try to compare things such as the proteins with the much more sophisticated and expensive ways to get at the health of an immune system. What are the downsides of slowing down biological aging, or extending lifespan? We feel really great if we get to age 85. 'Super agers' who don't get one of the big four age-related diseases [type 2 diabetes, cancer, or heart or neurodegenerative disease] say 'Well, I did it.' Of course, if you get up to age 98, you're really doing well. I think we're going to have a whole lot more super agers. But that's not going to get around the fact that eventually they're going to develop some problems—one of the big four or other conditions. It could be you get an infection because your immune system is just too weak. Or it could be you break your hip because your bone density is so low and you wind up with a pulmonary embolus [a clot that blocks blood flow to the lungs]. Eventually you die, and you may have a chronic illness between that point of extended health span and when you die. I don't want to put a sense out there that super agers won't see problems in the latter stages of their lives. But the point is, let's extend the health span—high-quality life without these big age-related diseases—as much as we can before getting into the downturn of a health arc.
Time of India
08-06-2025
- Health
- Time of India
Longevity decoded: 70-year-old cardiologist reveals the one change that made him stronger than ever
'If I'm Going to Be Old, I'd Rather Be Strong and Old' The Science Behind Strength You Might Also Like: No supplements needed: Longevity doctor shares the one daily nutrient that could add years to your life — EricTopol (@EricTopol) Heart-Healthy Gains Beyond the Gym It's Never Too Late to Begin You Might Also Like: Stanford longevity expert reverses his age by 10 years with one radical lifestyle shift At an age when most people begin to slow down, 70-year-old cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol is doing the opposite — lifting, lunging, and powering through a new chapter of vitality. Once a traditional advocate of aerobic exercise for heart health , Dr. Topol is now rewriting the rulebook with one transformative shift in his fitness routine: strength single line sums up the philosophy behind Dr. Topol's dramatic lifestyle change. After decades in cardiology and publishing cutting-edge medical research, the acclaimed physician began digging deeper into what truly supports healthy aging . The result? A rigorous commitment to resistance training — and a body that now, remarkably, feels fitter and stronger than to Dr. Topol shared that over the past year, dedicating one-hour sessions three times a week — or 30-minute sessions four to five times — has radically boosted his strength and endurance. 'I'm more fit and stronger than I can ever remember,' he Topol's findings aren't just anecdotal. The benefits of strength training are backed by a growing body of research, particularly in the field of cardiology. His book Super Agers : An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity emphasizes the critical role resistance workouts play not just in muscle building but in comprehensive cardiovascular to a report from The Mirror, Physiotherapist Helen Alexander from Nuffield Health echoes this in her work with cardiac rehab patients. She highlights that strengthening muscles improves arm and leg function, reducing strain on the heart during daily tasks and aerobic exercises. The key, she says, is consistency: 'Start with an exercise that you can repeat 10 to 12 times, with the last couple repetitions starting to feel a bit challenging.'Assistant professor Abbi Lane of the University of Michigan, an American Heart Association fellow, adds another layer to the conversation. Resistance training, she explains, impacts more than traditional heart risk factors like blood pressure and cholesterol. It boosts sleep quality, uplifts mood, enhances blood vessel function, and even improves overall quality of Lane advocates for a combined approach of aerobic and strength training, describing their effects as 'additive or synergistic.' But even if you can't commit to both, she says, 'any type of exercise is better than no exercise.'For those who think strength training is a young person's game, Dr. Topol is living proof that age is no barrier. He recommends starting small — bodyweight exercises like planks, push-ups, and squats — before progressing to light weights. His message is simple but powerful: it's never too late to become stronger, healthier, and more the world grapples with the secrets of longevity, this 70-year-old heart expert may have just lifted the lid — literally — on one of the simplest, most powerful steps toward a longer, stronger life.
Economic Times
08-06-2025
- Health
- Economic Times
Longevity decoded: 70-year-old cardiologist reveals the one change that made him stronger than ever
iStock At 70, renowned cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol transformed his health by embracing strength training. Once focused solely on aerobic workouts, he now reports feeling fitter than ever, proving it's never too late to start. (Representational image: iStock) At an age when most people begin to slow down, 70-year-old cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol is doing the opposite — lifting, lunging, and powering through a new chapter of vitality. Once a traditional advocate of aerobic exercise for heart health, Dr. Topol is now rewriting the rulebook with one transformative shift in his fitness routine: strength single line sums up the philosophy behind Dr. Topol's dramatic lifestyle change. After decades in cardiology and publishing cutting-edge medical research, the acclaimed physician began digging deeper into what truly supports healthy aging. The result? A rigorous commitment to resistance training — and a body that now, remarkably, feels fitter and stronger than ever. Speaking to , Dr. Topol shared that over the past year, dedicating one-hour sessions three times a week — or 30-minute sessions four to five times — has radically boosted his strength and endurance. 'I'm more fit and stronger than I can ever remember,' he Topol's findings aren't just anecdotal. The benefits of strength training are backed by a growing body of research, particularly in the field of cardiology. His book Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity emphasizes the critical role resistance workouts play not just in muscle building but in comprehensive cardiovascular health. According to a report from The Mirror , Physiotherapist Helen Alexander from Nuffield Health echoes this in her work with cardiac rehab patients. She highlights that strengthening muscles improves arm and leg function, reducing strain on the heart during daily tasks and aerobic exercises. The key, she says, is consistency: 'Start with an exercise that you can repeat 10 to 12 times, with the last couple repetitions starting to feel a bit challenging.' Assistant professor Abbi Lane of the University of Michigan, an American Heart Association fellow, adds another layer to the conversation. Resistance training, she explains, impacts more than traditional heart risk factors like blood pressure and cholesterol. It boosts sleep quality, uplifts mood, enhances blood vessel function, and even improves overall quality of life. Dr. Lane advocates for a combined approach of aerobic and strength training, describing their effects as 'additive or synergistic.' But even if you can't commit to both, she says, 'any type of exercise is better than no exercise.' For those who think strength training is a young person's game, Dr. Topol is living proof that age is no barrier. He recommends starting small — bodyweight exercises like planks, push-ups, and squats — before progressing to light weights. His message is simple but powerful: it's never too late to become stronger, healthier, and more resilient. As the world grapples with the secrets of longevity, this 70-year-old heart expert may have just lifted the lid — literally — on one of the simplest, most powerful steps toward a longer, stronger life.
Business Insider
06-06-2025
- Health
- Business Insider
Forget 'biological age' tests — longevity experts are using an $800 under-the-radar blood test to measure aging in real-time
Doctors and scientists are using a blood plasma test to study longevity. The test measures proteins and can tell you about your organ health. This field of proteomics could one day help detect diseases like cancer before they start. Should you have that second cup of coffee? How about a little wine with dinner? And, is yogurt really your superfood? Scientists are getting closer to offering consumers a blood test that could help people make daily decisions about how to eat, drink, and sleep that are more perfectly tailored to their unique biology. The forthcoming tests could also help shape what are arguably far more important health decisions, assessing whether your brain is aging too fast, if your kidneys are OK, or if that supplement or drug you're taking is actually doing any good. It's called an organ age test, more officially (and scientifically) known as "proteomics" — and it's the next hot " biological age" marker that researchers are arguing could be better than all the rest. "If I could just get one clock right now, I'd want to get that clock, and I'd like to see it clinically available in older adults," cardiologist Eric Topol, author of the recent bestseller "Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity," told Business Insider. Topol said armed with organ age test results, people could become more proactive stewards of their own health, before it's too late. "When we have all these layers of data, it's a whole new day for preventing the disease," Topol said. "You see the relationship with women's hormones. You see the relationship with food and alcohol. You don't ever get that with genes." A test like this isn't available to consumers just yet, but it's already being used by researchers at elite universities and high-end longevity clinics. They hope it can become a tool any doctor could use to assess patient health in the next few years. A startup called Vero, which was spun out of some foundational proteomics research at Stanford University, is hoping to beta test a proteomics product for consumers this year. "Knowing your oldest organ isn't the point; changing the trajectory is," Vero co-founder and CEO Paul Coletta told a crowd gathered at the Near Future Summit in Malibu, California, last month. Coletta told Business Insider Vero's not interested in doing "wealthcare." The company plans to make its test available to consumers for around $200 a pop, at scale. Their draw only requires one vial of blood. Why measuring proteins could be the key to better personalized medicine The big promise of proteomics is that it could be a more precise real-time tool for tracking important but subtle changes that emerge inside each of us as we age. Genetic testing can measure how our bodies are built, spotting vulnerabilities in a person's DNA that might predispose them to health issues. Standard clinical measurements like a person's weight, blood pressure, or cholesterol readings are a useful proxy for potential health issues. Then there are the increasingly popular "biological age" tests available to consumers at home. Most of those look at "epigenetic changes" — how environmental factors affect our gene expression. Proteomics does something different and new. It measures the product that our bodies make based on all those genetic and environmental inputs: proteins. It offers a live assessment of how your body is running, not just how it's programmed. If validated in the next few years, these tests could become key in early disease detection and prevention. They could help influence all kinds of medical decisions, from big ones like "What drugs should I take?" to little ones like "How does my body respond to caffeine or alcohol?" Elite longevity clinics already use proteomics Some high-end longevity clinics are already forging ahead using proteomics to guide clinical recommendations, albeit cautiously. Dr. Evelyne Bischof, a longevity physician who treats patients worldwide, said she uses proteomic information to guide some of the lifestyle interventions she recommends to her patients. She may suggest a more polyphenol-rich diet to someone who seems to have high inflammation and neuroinflammation based on proteomic test results, or may even suggest they do a little more cognitive training, based on what proteomics says about how their brain is aging. Dr. Andrea Maier, a professor of medicine and functional aging at the National University of Singapore, told BI she uses this measurement all the time in her longevity clinics. For her, it's just a research tool, but if the results of her ongoing studies are decent, she hopes to be able to use it clinically in a few years' time. "We want to know what kind of 'ageotype' a person is, so what type of aging personality are you, not from a mental perspective, but from a physical perspective," Maier said. "It's really discovery at this moment in time, and at the edge of being clinically meaningful." "Once we have that validated tool, we will just add it to our routine testing and we can just tick the box and say, 'I also want to know if this person is a cardiac ager, or a brain ager, or a muscle ager' because now we have a sensitive parameter — protein — which can be added," Maier said. The two big-name proteomics tests are Olink and SOMAscan. For now, their high-end screening costs around $400-$800 per patient. "I'm losing lots of money at the moment because of proteomics for clinical research!" Maier said. Proteomics could soon help predict who's most likely to get certain cancers, fast-tracking both prevention and treatment Top aging researchers at Stanford and Harvard are pushing the field forward, racing to publish more novel insights about the human proteome. The latest findings from Harvard aging researcher Vadim Gladyshev's lab, published earlier this year, suggest that as we age, each person may even stand to benefit from a slightly different antiaging grocery list. To research this idea, Gladyshev looked at proteins in the blood of more than 50,000 people in the UK, all participants in the UK Biobank who are being regularly tested and studied to learn more about their long-term health. He tracked their daily habits and self-reported routines like diet, occupation, and prescriptions, comparing those details to how each patient's organs were aging. He discovered some surprising connections. Yogurt eating, generally speaking, tended to be associated with better intestinal aging but had relatively no benefit to the arteries. White wine drinking, on the other hand, seemed to potentially confer some small benefit to the arteries while wreaking havoc on the gut. "The main point is that people age in different ways in different organs, and therefore we need to find personalized interventions that would fit that particular person," Gladyshev told BI. "Through measuring proteins, you assess the age of different organs and you say, 'OK, this person is old in this artery.'" For now, there's too much noise in the data to do more. Dr. Pal Pacher, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism who studies organ aging and injuries, told BI that proteomics is simply not ready for clinical use yet. There's just too much noise in the data. But he imagines a future where a more sophisticated protein clock could help link up which people may be most vulnerable to diseases like early cancer, kidney disease, and more. (A California-based proteomics company called Seer announced last weekend that it is partnering with Korea University to study whether proteomics can help more quickly diagnose cancer in young people in their 20s and 30s.) "How beautiful could it be in the future?" Maier said. "Instead of three hours of clinical investigation, I would have a tool which guides me much, much better, with more validity towards interventions."
