Can You Be at Peak Health and Live a Long Life?
Cast off your old ideas about what aging is and how healthy you can be. Several recent studies show that those who accept illness and disease and have no concept that their health could be better will be suffer more ill health and disability. Why would this be? Because they stop trying when they get sick, assuming nothing can be done, perhaps because of a diagnostic label that leads them to believe the disorder is not understood and not treatable. So as Dylan Thomas said:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
In the science of Anti-Aging Medicine, this keeping up of health while increasing the longevity has several names. It is called statistically the "Rectangularizing of morbidity curve," but in brief it is extending your healthspan, the number of years where you are healthy and have minimal disability and morbidity. This requires prevention, which is a marked contrast to the prevailing "insurance" model of medicine, where health insurance only pays for treatments of illnesses, not for prevention. This results in the frequent absurdity of spending up to a million dollars in emergency or ICU care at the end of life, while paying nothing for prevention, because there is no illness or diagnostic code to justify this treatment.
Our philosophy is to be proactive regarding health, and to combine the best of Anti-Aging Medicine, Integrative Medicine and Wellness Preventative Strategies with Allopathic Medicine (conventional medicine) to increase your healthspan. There is no doubt that there is significant research in this regard, even if has not fully percolated into medical practice. And there is no doubt that with the increase in knowledge accessible on the maturing internet, that those individuals with the intellectual and financial resources are increasingly pursuing this. The books on anti-aging medicine now hitting the bookstores have also contributed, especially the two books written by Suzanne Somers, who is not a doctor but a celebrity. But her celebrity status has brought Anti-Aging Medicine to more people than any doctor could have. Her first book, The Sexy Years, talked about her health challenges with breast cancer and hormone deficiencies, while her most recent book, Ageless: The Naked Truth about BioIdentical Hormones, interviews seventeen Anti-Aging and Integrative Medicine doctors about what is possible. And while Anti-Aging doctors may not agree with everything she says, her writing certainly has captured the essence of the new science and medicine of Anti-Aging. As such she was one of the speakers at the December 2006 Annual International Congress of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine's (A4M) in Las Vegas.
