Everybody Promises a Secret Longevity Nectar, But the Truth is Less Flashy
Longevity means, to live better, longer. Longevity has two components. The first is how long you live, the second is how well you live. This is called healthspan. Healthspan is the period of life when we are free from disability and disease.
Over the last 100 years, lifespan has almost doubled. This improvement is due to advancements in treating infectious diseases with the discovery of antibiotics and in trauma surgery, that is, we have gotten better at treating fast deaths. Death rates from chronic disease, or slow diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and dementia have barely improved. Morbidity rates, which is the suffering from disease, have also not improved.
The reason for this is that modern medicine is playing catch-up. We only start treating the disease once it begins to cause suffering.
The Four Horsemen Diseases
There are 4 categories of disease that contribute to loss of health in our world. I call them the four horsemen diseases.
1. Cardiovascular Disease
The first is cardiovascular disease: high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes. High blood pressure is silent, symptomless, until it is not, at which point it is often too late. In our high-paced modern world high blood pressure is occurring earlier than before. Once diagnosed, it is relatively easy to treat with medications that relax your blood vessels, or regulate your salt-water balance.
2. Metabolic Disease
The next horseman is metabolic disease. This includes diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol. Did you know, you can be skinny but still be metabolically unhealthy? Diabetes and obesity develop commonly with our modern diet, because our bodies did not evolve to deal with such calorie and sugar dense foods. Diabetes is so difficult to treat, that I have had professors admit, that they would rather live with HIV than diabetes.
Both genetics and diet plays a role for metabolic disease, but the first step is gauging ones metabolic health. This can be done using blood tests.
3. Neurodegenerative Disease
Neurodegenerative disease is the third horseman. Known as dementia, this terrible disease process can be screened for genetically, and up to 40% of causes of dementia are modifiable.
4. Cancer
The final horsemen is cancer. The only real way to combat cancer is to catch it early, and modify exposure to carcinogens from smoke to HPV.
Our Approach at Fluid Medical
At Fluid Medical all four horseman are addressed by our doctors in longevity consults.
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