Peter Wang’s Post

With 357 participants surveyed, Ms. Patience Tanko Kure et al explored whether the age-old #TraditionalMedicine is truly a health boost or just a cultural mainstay. 💊🌿 Interestingly, while 67% of respondents still reach for traditional remedies, our findings suggest that these treatments might not significantly extend life expectancy on their own. However, the factors that contribute to the growth and modernization of traditional medicine do show a meaningful impact. The takeaway? Traditional medicine has the potential to enhance life expectancy if it's modernized, made more accessible, and effectively regulated. So, could a blend of old and new health practices be the key to a longer, healthier life in #Nigeria? https://lnkd.in/gBdWVQMd #LifeExpectancy #ModernMedicine #PublicHealth

Clinicians are increasingly being recommended to try to change our patient’s lifestyle. But is our advice helping people change behavior? Is this an effective & feasible approach to improve public health?   Check out our paper in Annals of Internal Medicine! https://lnkd.in/dWUSh4ZG   We argue that even high-quality guidelines recommending lifestyle interventions often overestimate benefit, miss key limitations of the evidence, and neglect possible harms and opportunity costs.   We suggest a set of guiding questions to facilitate for guideline panels to more adequately consider benefits and harms of lifestyle interventions – before deciding whether to recommend them – or not.   Following our approach will likely result in fewer lifestyle recommendations, which almost never should be tied to incentives for clinicians. Instead, clinicians and patients may work out together when it is appropriate to discuss lifestyle habits—and when it is not.   We also hope to inform a debate about whether resources to promote healthier habits should be redirected from individually oriented interventions within healthcare towards population-level interventions addressing the social and commercial determinants of our lifestyle.

The authors argue that "most poor health outcomes are from diseases we already know how to prevent or cure. We just can’t manage to improve overall health because (1) the healthcare system is exceedingly hard to navigate, making it difficult to proactively monitor one’s health and get care, even for those who are highly motivated, and (2) most people struggle to make optimal behavioral choices in terms of diet, exercise, and sleep. These are both issues of consumer experience, not science or medicine. Behavior change might sound like a cultural issue—but the best consumer companies change the behavior of millions, if not billions, of people." The ability to change targeted health behaviors and reverse, arrest, or slow the progression of risk is the essence of Medicine 3.0. And the time for that transition to health care from sick care is now. #unifiedhealthalgorithm

Built on evidence-based guidelines from clinical trials, Medicine 2.0 focuses effectively on treating rather than preventing diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancers, neurodegenerative diseases (including Alzheimer's and other dementias), and metabolic diseases (such as type 2 diabetes). We know that 90% of cardiovascular disease is preventable but it remains the the most expensive disease, costing the US nearly $1 billion a day. Obesity is the second leading preventable cause of death in the US, and it contributes to nearly one in five deaths among African Americans and Caucasians aged 40 to 85. The only way to win this battle is to stop these diseases before they happen - the goal of Medicine 3.0 and patient behavior shaping. An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure! Thanks for the paper Daisy Wolf, Vijay Pande, PhD

Three important themes were mentioned by the government today on the back of the Lord Darzi's report on the NHS: - Focus on prevention - Community based interventions - Switch to digital This is great to hear, and hopefully the government will further support the necessary research into these areas to ensure the best and most effective interventions and practices are put into place. Cross cutting these themes is the issue of health inequalities. I haven't seen much mention of this in the reporting today, but it is mentioned in the Darzi report, and research can further inform how we can ensure new approaches reduce, rather than increase, inequalities. My own research covers many aspects of the three themes mentioned in the specific area of musculoskeletal health, an area which is certainly moving in the right direction in the context of these themes. But there is still lots to do and I look forward to hopefully seeing a greater focus on the development of community-based digital health interventions to help people keep active and reduce risk of long-term health conditions.    School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, EQL, Sweat Economy, Peter Grinbergs, Oleg Fomenko, Simon McMaster, Simon Pickup, #DigitalHealth, #MSK, #PhysicalActivity

What if you could extend the length of your life and spend more years being healthy, strong, and energetic? What if age was not a limiting factor in achieving optimal health and peak performance, both physically and cognitively? What if you could start today to increase your body’s resilience in the face of illness and minimize or prevent it from occurring down the road? You can. Functional Medicine is the new frontier in healthcare, employing the very latest in scientific research to help you turn back the clock, optimize your health, achieve peak performance, and extend your healthspan in ways you never thought possible. And the most important factor? It’s based on YOU. 🔬 Discover the future of health with Healthcode. #HealthcodeDifference #FunctionalMedicine #HealthOptimization #PeakPerformance #Healthspan #PersonalizedHealth

How can we live to 100? Learn from our panel of experts who tackled this question and more, during Day 2 of Global Conference 2024. Moderated by Allison Aubrey of NPR, the Longevity Lab: Can You Live to 100? panel featured James Bethell, member of the UK House of Lords, Dan Buettner of Blue Zones, Peter H. Diamandis from XPRIZE, Kristen Fortney from BioAge Labs, and Lloyd Minor from Stanford University School of Medicine. WATCH NOW: https://lnkd.in/d52d2h97 Despite an increase in life span over the last century, most people spend the extra years in poor health. The future of health care is set to undergo a significant transformation, emphasizing a healthier and more active aging process. Looking ahead, prioritizing "health span" will help us make the most of the opportunities that come with longer lives. During this discussion, experts will share practical approaches to increase the number of healthy years we experience, highlighting the positive impact a healthier population can have on both the economy and society. #MIGlobal #MIHealth #longevity #healthyaging

“It’s not how old you are; it’s how you are old.”   Since the founding of the World Health Organization in 1948, life expectancy globally has increased from 46 to 73 years. Due to advancements in healthcare and modern medicine, this is something to celebrate. However, it has also led to a dramatic increase in multimorbidity – defined as having two or more chronic conditions simultaneously.     Chris Hall, our Strategy Lead here at Aurora, has researched and reflected on how our industry can meet the current unmet needs in managing multimorbidity in this growing, ageing population through three key actions.   We believe focusing on these actions now can help us build a world where everyone can lead a happy, healthy life, regardless of age.   🌐 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/d7nZcz4Q ✉️ Get in touch to find out more: chris.hall@auroracomms.com   #AgeingPopulation #AllForActivation #WhereAbilityMeetsAgility #PatientActivation #HealthActivation

What we do in a nutshell

A week ago today I was at the First Longevity Clinic Roundtable hosted by the International Institute of Longevity at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. It was a spectacular lineup of speakers who each inspired me in different ways.   There was a key topic raised by Andrea B. Maier who discussed a review of the term #healthspan which tried to determine a definition for our standard use in #longevitymedicine.   When I started thinking about the question, it occurred to me that perhaps healthspan needs to be defined as a function of terms.   The word “healthspan” is a contraction of #Health and #Span, which suggests that it is some measure of Health (H) over some defined span of time (t), and presumably a function that we want to maximize. An individual’s Health (H) varies over time from birth (t=0) to the end of their life (t=death), and in a graph of Health (H) vs. time (t) HealthSpan would be the area under the curve over a specified time range.   This sounds like an integral, and here are my first thoughts about the associated terms.  https://lnkd.in/gKFNJkp2   So, I have two questions: 1)     How would you calculate healthspan? 2)     Does anyone know any #mathematicians? (Weizmann Institute of Science) Cory S. Goldberg BSc, MD, MASc, FRCSC, FACS, MBA Healthspan Digital #healthspandigital #healthyear #healthyears Thank-you to David A. Sinclair A.O., Ph.D. whose work inspired me to enter this new realm.