Slowing the Aging Process

Today there is still no fountain of youth, yet we have more and more knowledge of how to slow the process of aging down. For example 50 years ago we were taught that normal systolic blood pressure should your age + 100, so for a 70 year old 170 was considered normal. Now of course we know that ideally BP should be less that 135/85 for all ages. By applying this knowledge using lifestyle changes & blood pressure tablets to optimise blood pressure, the heart attack and stroke rate has been halved over that 50 years. This is anti aging medicine.

In a complete anti aging program we extend this to OPTIMISING AS MANY PARAMETERS AS POSSIBLE.

Some of these parameters are Blood Pressure, Nutrition ( see anti-aging Diet), Exercise, Cholesterol, Homocysteine, Male & Female Sex Hormones, & Proactive Screening for common diseases AND conditions (e.g. Bowel or Breast Cancer & Diabetes) which may may run in your particular family PLUS psychological parameters such as stress, anxiety and depression.

By aiming to get these parameters to an optimum level for a person 10 - 20 years younger than your age we can increase the chances that your physiological age is 10 - 20 years younger than your chronological age. We can actually measure your physiological age at Royston Clinic.

The younger you are when you start this process the better the chances of maximising your anti-aging potential.

For most people 30 is a good time to start seriously looking at this, but often great strides can be made no matter how old you are.

The important difference between " Normal" and "Optimal"

In medicine normal values are derived from measuring a large number of values for a parameter e.g. blood pressure in a wide range of different ages in males and females. From this a "normal range" of values is attained. Because without intervention BP readings went up as people got older, this was regarded as normal. We now know that by treating those with BP >135/85 we can greatly decrease heart attacks and strokes; so "optimal" BP is < 135/80.

Similarly with cholesterol levels, 25 years ago a cholesterol of 6.5 was considered normal, because studies had shown that a large proportion of the population had cholesterol over 6.5. Now we know that to minimise heart attack and stroke risk especially if other risk factors are present we want cholesterol to be much lower than this - so the cholesterol goal for those with pre existing heart disease or diabetes is now < 4.0.

Yet with many other parameters most doctors still regard that a decline (or sometimes increase) with age is "normal". A major example of this is the sex hormones. We know that people feel better if they can keep their levels of these higher for longer, but there is controversy whether this is safe and there is good evidence that long term treatment with synthetic hormones is not safe. Luckily we now have access to natural bio-identical hormones which enable us to keep hormone levels at an optimal level as we get older.

Every year we gain more and more knowledge of OPTIMUM values for a wide range of parameters, and good anti-aging medicine is largely about helping you the patient optimise as many of these parameters as normal.

I believe the best setting to do this within Australia today is from a general practice. For anti - aging medicine to be of value we need to optimise as many of your body functions as possible. A heart doctor or even an endocrinologist cannot really do this, they treat a part of your body only. A General Practitioner with a special knowledge of and interest in Anti - aging medicine can treat you holistically, both mind and body and help you maximise your potential and wellbeing for as long as possible.