Most of us hope we’ll be healthy into our late 80s or early 90s and then die peacefully in our sleep, preferably after a wonderful evening with loved ones. But that’s rarely the way it works out. All too often, our later years are plagued with ill health.
Life expectancy has been steadily increasing throughout the world since 1900, but “those gains have not been matched by equivalent gains in health,” says Armin Garmany, a researcher who studies regenerative medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
People outlive their good health by an average of 9.6 years — 12 years for those who live in the U.S. — according to research by Garmany and Andre Terzig, a pioneer in the field of regenerative medicine, also at Mayo.
Garmany and Terzig were the first to quantify the gap, but the idea has been around for decades. In a paper published in Science in 1987, John Rowe and Robert Kahn introduced the term “health span,” a measure not of how long we live but of how long we live without significant health problems. Since then, scientists have increasingly embraced the concept and are working to close the gap.
Read More: Rate of Biological Aging Is Accelerating In Young People, Leading To Medical Issues
Addressing Shorter Health Spans
Recent advances in medicine, both surgical and pharmaceutical, have made aging much easier, dramatically improving the quality of life of older people. Joint replacements, stents, and medicines for controlling cholesterol blood pressure, and maintaining heart function are just a few examples.
But these therapies do not eliminate illnesses; they just make them easier to live with. And they come with a cost, says Kenneth Boockvar, geriatrics director at the Integrative Center for Aging Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The trade-off is that we face a life of taking medicines, getting injections, and interacting with the healthcare system.
“We may be maintaining our health,” he says, “but it is taking some work.”
Garmany and Terzig think we can do better. In a 2021 paper, they describe several new approaches that would go much further toward eliminating illness. For example, as more patient data becomes available, scientists can use artificial intelligence to analyze that data and identify people at risk for developing disease, enabling physicians to intervene before people become ill, or as Terzig puts it, “extinguish the fire before the fire even starts.”
Another approach involves targeting aging cells and preserving healthy cells, something called anti-senescence. And then there’s regenerative medicine, therapies that aim to restore the form and function of diseased or aging organs using stem cells or other methods. Advances in these areas open the possibility of not only mitigating the symptoms of disease but ultimately finding cures, says Garmany.
Preventing the Gap
However, closing the health span/lifespan gap is not just about cutting-edge technologies. Prevention plays a huge role, too. We can reduce the chances of getting those illnesses that so often plague our later years by eating well, exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, and avoiding behaviors that put us at risk, such as smoking and excessive alcohol use, says Boockvar.
The consequences may come late, but prevention starts early and is often a matter of public health. Terzig points out that the foundation of a healthy life begins with programs that get children off to a healthy start, as well as education, both at school and at home, about healthy living.
Maximizing Good Health
The steady increase in lifespan over the past two centuries is partly due to factors such as better nutrition, sanitation, neonatal healthcare, vaccines, antibiotics, reductions in poverty, and an emphasis on disease prevention. Maximizing the years of good health will also require extending these improvements in public health to more of society.
“We have a healthcare — I hesitate to say system because it doesn’t feel like a system to me — that is largely commercial, and insurance is not available to everyone,” says Boockvar. “People often defer healthcare because of the cost or because they don’t have access to care. A federal campaign to provide basic healthcare to everybody could narrow the disparities.”
If we are to narrow the gap between lifespan and health span, we’ll need to focus on all these approaches — new technologies, improved public health, greater access to care, timely interventions, and better prevention.
“The impact of medicine, even during my career, has advanced more than I would have expected,” says Boockvar. He’s hopeful that this progress will continue until we’re able to enjoy robust health until the moment we die.
Read More: Dinosaurs May Be the Reason Why Humans Have Low Lifespans
Article Sources
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Avery Hurt is a freelance science journalist. In addition to writing for Discover, she writes regularly for a variety of outlets, both print and online, including National Geographic, Science News Explores, Medscape, and WebMD. She’s the author of Bullet With Your Name on It: What You Will Probably Die From and What You Can Do About It, Clerisy Press 2007, as well as several books for young readers. Avery got her start in journalism while attending university, writing for the school newspaper and editing the student non-fiction magazine. Though she writes about all areas of science, she is particularly interested in neuroscience, the science of consciousness, and AI–interests she developed while earning a degree in philosophy.
