Category Archives: Longevity Medicine

Fitness is important and making sure you get enough exercise is one of the most effective ways for you to stay healthy and protect your longevity. However, sometimes life can get in the way, and it can be hard to get an hour out of your day to do HIIT, and sometimes, you might want to do something simpler. One of the easiest ways to stay fit is walking.

Granted, its not as intense as other exercises, but that doesnt mean that its not effective. In fact, you dont have to feel guilty about getting your steps in this way because according to experts, walking is enough of a workout to keep you living a long and healthy life.

The take-home point here is that even 15 minutes a day of walking, without stopping, provides benefits with regards to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, Michael Weinrauch, MD, Cardiologist, WellandGood

According to a study published last year in JAMA Network Open, individuals who walked at least 7 000 steps a day faced a 50-70 reduced risk of premature death, compared to those who walked less than 7 000 steps. As weve mentioned, walking is an underrated form of exercise, and it can improve your health in a number of ways.

Just over 420 million people worldwide are living with diabetes, and the condition is directly responsible for about 1.5 million deaths every year. For those living with diabetes, and for those hoping to reduce their risk of developing the disease, managing blood sugar levels is of paramount importance.

In addition to following a healthy diet, exercise can help one manage their blood sugar levels. If youre curious as to which form of exercise one should do, walking would be a great option. In fact, one systematic review acknowledged that walking was a useful management tool for people with type 2 diabetes. The findings revealed that walking improved glucose control in participants with type 2 diabetes.

Cardiovascular health is incredibly important, especially because the healthier your heart is, the better equipped your body will be when it comes to dealing with other external stressors.

Staying fit is a great way to keep your heart strong and healthy, and walking has enough power to do this. Per a study published in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society, postmenopausal women who briskly walked experienced a 34% reduced risk of heart failure, when compared to those who walked at a casual pace.

If you and your partner are looking to increase your chances of conceiving, might we recommend a romantic couples stroll?

A study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst set out to examine the modifiable factors, such as exercise, that can affect ones ability to conceive. The study focused on healthy women ages 18 to 40 years old with a history of one or two pregnancy losses. According to the findings, walking served to increase the likelihood of pregnancy,

One of our main findings is that there was no overall relationship between most types of physical activity and the likelihood of becoming pregnant for women who had already had one or two pregnancy losses, except for walking, which was associated with a higher likelihood of becoming pregnant among women who were overweight or obese. Lindsey Russo, health science specialist and study lead.

Have you ever heard of the phrase Go take a walk to clear your head? Well, looks like theres research behind that phrase, showing that walking is a great way to improve your mental wellness.

Be it moderate or intense levels of walking, taking a stroll can strengthen mental health. Additionally, it can also be utilized as a way to reduce the risk of mental health issues among older adults, according to a study published in Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine.

According to the World Health Organization, adults are advised to aim for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week.

Speaking to Eating Well, Austin Johnson, a Texas-based NCSF certified personal trainer, said that this would translate to a brisk pace that would likely fall between 3 and 4 miles per hour, This would equate to a 15- to 20-minute-per-mile walking pace,he says.

If walking has been your primary form of exercise, there are a few ways you can upgrade your workout to make it a bit more challenging. Here are a few things you can do to enhance your walking workout, courtesy of Eating Well,

Yes, walking is an effective form of exercise, but that doesnt mean that its enough to substitute for poor eating habits. A healthy diet is crucial for your longevity, so if you really want to stay healthy, then you need to walk well and eat well.

You may not be breaking a hard sweat, but that doesnt mean that walking isnt a legitimate form of exercise that can protect your health and longevity. While other forms of intense exercise can benefit your health, never underestimate the power of a good stroll.

Han, A., Kim, J., & Kim, J. (2021). A Study of Leisure Walking Intensity Levels on Mental Health and Health Perception of Older Adults. Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1177/2333721421999316

Miremad, M-M,Lin, X,Rasla, S, et al.(2022).The association of walking pace and incident heart failure and subtypes among postmenopausal women.J Am Geriatr Soc.70(5):1405-1417. doi:10.1111/jgs.17657

Paluch, A. E., Gabriel, K. P., Fulton, J. E., Lewis, C. E., Schreiner, P. J., Sternfeld, B., Sidney, S., Siddique, J., Whitaker, K. M., & Carnethon, M. R. (2021). Steps per Day and All-Cause Mortality in Middle-aged Adults in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study.JAMA network open,4(9), e2124516. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.24516

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Walking As Your Only Exercise Is Enough To Boost Longevity - Longevity LIVE - Longevity LIVE

Shards of electricity burned through Mr Ps flesh. Layers upon layers of subcutaneous fat unraveled, filling the operating room with a pungent, metallic odor, like singed hair at the neighborhood barbecue. Within a few minutes, the pearly white bone of the sternum stuck out before a vein split open, filling the operative field with blood.

Zap! Maroon juice turned into a crackly black mass.

Transplant surgery is all about timing, says Dr Brandon Guenthart, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Stanford University School of Medicine. Anesthesiologists put the patient to sleep after the retrieval team confirms the donor heart looks good. Two surgeons start operating an hour before the donor heart arrives in the hospital. They dont begin cutting the patients heart out until the donor heart has landed safely at the local airport.

And if the plane crashes? Knock on wood, says Guenthart. Theres unfortunately no wood in the operating room.

I was at Stanford hospital watching this heart transplant because of my interest in David Bennett, a 57-year-old man who had died back in March. On 7 January 2022, at the University of Maryland Medical Center, Bennett had received a landmark heart transplant from an unusual donor: a genetically modified pig.

In 2021, a record 41,354 human-to-human organ transplants were performed, but over 100,000 Americans are still stuck on the transplant list. Every day, 17 people die waiting because there simply arent enough organs to go around.

Xenotransplantation or transferring cells, tissues and organs between species promises to solve this shortage and to reshape how we think about human longevity.

Lost in this boundless potential, however, is the significance of the human-animal divide. People walking around with pig organs melded into their bodies human-animal cyborgs of sorts can seem dystopian. And with the zoonotic Sars-CoV-2 virus having killed more than 6 million people, violating the interface between humans and animals may just promise more catastrophe.

This tortuous relationship is nothing new, but its often sanitized and hidden from sight think grinning cows on milk cartons and secret bunkers for animal research. Left open is a whole host of questions, starting with the most complex of all: what does it mean to be human?

Humans are animals. But animals are not humans. And yet, our history is rife with a cultural imagination of hybridity. The ancient Egyptian god of the sky, Horus, was depicted with a falcon head and the goddess of war, Sekhmet, that of a lioness. Similarly, the Hindu god Ganesha was beheaded and then resurrected with an elephant head grafted on to his body. In ancient Greece, fantastical creatures roamed the myths, from the bull-headed Minotaur to the snake-haired Medusa.

Within this wealth of options, the International Xenotransplantation Association chose a more obscure mascot: the Lamassu, an Assyrian deity with the body of a bull, the wings of a bird, and the head of a man a grounding wisdom.

Xenotransplantation, as a research field, started only with cells and tissues. In 17th-century France and England, blood was transfused from animals to humans to cure a whole host of medical conditions. Spiritual meaning was imbued into the act: Since Christ is the lamb of God, one recipient wrote in a letter to the Royal Society, sheeps blood possess[es] a symbolic relationship with [his] blood. One patients violent fever was purportedly cured, as was another patients paralysis, but at least two others died soon after these xenotransfusions.

Other early xenotransplants would follow, including ones with the bone, cornea and skin. Perhaps most infamously, the French surgeon Serge Voronoff transplanted slices of chimpanzee and baboon testicles into men, and ape ovaries into women, to rejuvenate his patients zest for life. Thousands of these operations were performed around the world, but any reported benefit, such as reduced fatigue or increased sex drive, was probably only the placebo effect and quickly faded.

While cell and tissue xenotransplants have been performed for centuries, whole organ transplants were more difficult to figure out. Sewing all the blood vessels together is a tricky business. You have to put two floppy tubes together mouth-to-mouth, tying them tight enough that the patient doesnt bleed out, but delicately enough that the patient doesnt have major clotting either.

This was a Nobel prize-level problem that the French surgeon Alexis Carrel solved with a small embroidery needle and fine silk suture, and was recognized for in 1912. Hes sometimes known as the father of transplant surgery.

A half-century later in 1964, the University of Mississippi surgeon James Hardy attempted the worlds first cardiac transplant, transferring Bino the chimpanzees heart into the chest of the rapidly deteriorating 68-year-old Boyd Rush. Rush survived for only 90 minutes, with the chimp heart offering insufficient support and rejection quickly shutting down his body.

It was Baby Fae who truly set the stakes for xenotransplantation. She was a 12-day-old infant with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a congenital abnormality where the left side of the heart is a sliver of its full form. The condition was a death sentence.

So, in 1984, surgeons at Loma Linda University, California, transplanted a walnut-sized baboon heart into Baby Faes chest. The conditions were almost perfect. The heart was well-sized, Baby Faes immune system was immature (and sympathetic), and the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine could suppress attacks on the baboon heart.

After the operation, Baby Fae seemed to be doing well. Resting in her crib with a gauze-covered scar traversing her chest, she was just gulping down her formula and wailing with a lusty cry, according to the hospital spokeswoman. The hospital also released photos of Baby Fae talking with her mother, the phone receiver bigger than her entire torso.

She died 21 days after her operation, her immune system refusing to accept the new infant-baboon hybrid. Outrage from physicians and the public soon followed, with animal-rights activists protesting and bioethicists publishing articles like Baby Fae: The Anything Goes School of Human Experimentation.

Xenotransplantation died with Baby Fae, if only for a little while.

During surgery when the drapes are on, its not really a person, Guenthart said. Its a task.

Technically speaking, a heart transplant is pretty easy. It takes only five incisions to cut out the failing heart, and only five connections to put in the new one. Electrocautery in one hand, scissors in the other, you usually first cut out the superior vena cava the vessel bringing back blood to the heart from the head, neck, arms and chest because its the most accessible structure.

Next is the inferior vena cava, which brings back blood from down south but is a bit hard to reach. So, you cut off a portion of the hearts right chamber where this vessel drains into.

Then comes the aorta and pulmonary arteries in fairly simple, straightforward incisions. More difficult are the pulmonary veins, because these are four delicate vessels that are almost impossible to reconnect. The way around that is to lift the heart up and cut out a rim of left heart tissue from underneath. You create a swimming pool, or a little crater, Guenthart said. He paused. Thats just me giving a description. They dont actually call it a swimming pool.

Regardless of whether youre transplanting a human heart or pig heart into someone, the steps are essentially the same.

If you asked 99 doctors out of 100, they wouldnt be able to tell you if they were looking at a human chest or pig chest, Guenthart said.

Pigs are filthy animals, as conventional wisdom goes. Judaism and Islam prohibit consumption of pork and other unclean meat. The insult cops are pigs bears undeniable teeth. And in the Odyssey, the sorceress Circe transforms Odysseuss gluttonous men into swine.

Pigs are also highly intelligent animals, capable of showing emotions. Some 11,000 years ago, wild pigs may have domesticated themselves, recognizing a benefit to allyship with humans. They like playing fetch, are whizzes at navigating mazes, and can outsmart dogs and chimpanzees, according to their IQ tests.

Following the Baby Fae experiment, primates fell out of favor for xenotransplantation, and pigs became the new model organism for researchers to develop.

If you ask xenotransplantation experts today, theyll give a laundry list of reasons why pigs are better than baboons: they are more easily genetically manipulated, they can be raised in a sterile environment to reduce infections, and they can be grown to give organs of any size needed.

Its a nice packaged narrative, but Dr Brad Bolman, historian of science at the University of Chicago, argues that sheep, goats or some other animal could have been deemed suitable instead. At the outset, Bolman said, it wasnt obvious that pigs were the right replacement for non-human primates. But when pigs were chosen, the scientific ideals were constructed retroactively to make them seem like the clear choice all along.

Bolman says that pigs were chosen because it was socially and economically convenient. They produce large litters quickly, with piglets reaching adult human size in six months. Theres also an almost unlimited supply of them 700 million worldwide and as agricultural animals, they arent covered by the Animal Welfare Act.

We treat pigs in ways that we would never treat people, but we also recognize theyre so similar to us that theyre our models, said Dr Lisa Moses, a bioethicist and veterinarian at Harvard Medical School. You cant make sense of that because it doesnt make sense. Its one giant paradox. Pigs are close enough to give their lives for ours but not close enough that their plight gives us pause.

Maybe it should. If you subscribe to Kantian ethics, its wrong to use others as a means to an end, so it feels downright exploitative to genetically modify a pig and kill it for its heart. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) has thus decried pig-to-human transplants as unethical, dangerous, and a tremendous waste of resources, asserting that animals arent toolsheds to be raided but complex, intelligent beings. Kathy Guillermo, a senior vice-president at Peta, went even further to proclaim, pigs are people.

These ethical concerns arent new. In 1999, the Campaign for Responsible Transplantation protested in New York Citys famous Halloween Parade, with members dressed up as genetically engineered monsters. As millions of Americans watched the parade on TV, these snout-wearing attendants hoisted a 13ft-tall mad scientist puppet, sporting a dollar sign tie and clenching a pig-human hybrid.

But the xenotransplantation experts I spoke to often dismissed these ethical concerns by citing the structural fact of the global pork industry. The thinking goes that, if pigs are going to be eaten anyway, they might as well be used for science, a more valuable and noble pursuit.

If you think about eating in a slightly more capacious sense, Bolman said, eating is really about consumption and rendering animals destroyable. More than anything else, the edibility of pigs justifies their usage for xenotransplantation and research at large.

What science does is consume animals, even if they arent literally eaten, said Bolman. Science remains carnivorous.

Mr Ps new heart had arrived in the operating room a half-hour ago, and Guenthart was zigging and zagging a fine thread across the arc of two vessels to cinch them together.

Six oclock, seven oclock, eight oclock Guenthart stitched together one half of the artery before he grabbed another needle to run around counterclockwise. Once the two sutures had circled around and met at noon, he threw a right-handed knot, and then another. Then left-right-left-right-left-right, each opposing throw locking the last one into a square knot, Guentharts hands dancing with the fine thread.

During the entire operation, everyone in the operating room was chatting away, but now it was so silent you could hear the faint music that had been playing all along. This was the crucial moment where, with the donor heart actively dying, Guenthart was sewing as fast as he could to restore blood flow to the heart. Every second counted.

Clamp off, Guenthart finally announced. With the pressure released off the aorta, blood rushed into the coronary arteries and fed the heart.

Having graduated from medical school a decade ago, Guenhart joked that xenotransplant is the promise thats 10 years out and always will be. But he also sees Bennetts 60-day survival as an amazing milestone and xenotransplantation as the most promising solution for the organ shortage killing his patients.

After about 30 seconds, Mr Ps new heart started beating on its own, like a zombie rising from the dead. Guenthart hadnt connected any of the nerves and definitely nothing to his brain. The hearts internal pacemaker is the circus master of its own show.

Xenotransplantation requires selective humanization of a pig. If you transplant a pig heart into a human, just like that, it will get rejected. Specifically, itll turn an ugly black and be flooded with blood clots, according to Dr Richard Pierson, director of the Center for Transplantation Sciences at Massachusetts general hospital. (I spoke with Pierson as he was speeding down to the hospital for a human-to-human lung transplant, ambulance sirens hollering in the background.)

Because our immune police force is so good at its job, the Virginia-based biotech company Revivicor used the gene-editing technology Crispr to create a special line of pigs with 10 modifications. Four genes are knocked out, and six genes are added in.

So, what is the recipe for making a pig heart fit for humans?

1. Knock out three sugar genes that are only found in pigs. Most of us think if you have a pig with those three genes knocked out, thats probably better than just one. We dont know that for sure, Pierson said.

2. Knock out a growth hormone gene to prevent the pig heart from overgrowing its new home. Pierson said, Is growth at the graft going to be a problem? We dont know.

3. Add two complement inhibitor genes that prevent antibodies from destroying the pig heart and two anti-clotting genes that stop the patients blood from curdling inside the foreign organ.

4. Add two anti-inflammatory genes to prevent the pig heart from swelling up. One of these genes signals to the immune system that the pig heart is a friend (self), not food (nonself). That may or may not be necessary, said Pierson. It probably is helpful, but we havent proven that.

After all this cutting and pasting, the next challenge is to keep the pig clean. The last thing you want is to transplant a pig heart with viruses, bacteria and parasites that cause infections in humans.

Therefore, these pigs are raised in pathogen-free facilities. There are no windows. They dont go outside. The air is filtered and sterilized, said Dr Leo Buhler, editor-in-chief of the journal Xenotransplantation and professor of surgery at the University of Fribourg.

After the genetically engineered embryos are implanted, the surrogate sows have to undergo caesarian sections (a vaginal birth is more likely to cause an infection.) The piglets are then immediately taken to isolation boxes under infrared lights, allowed to suckle their mother only every two hours under scientist supervision.

After 24 hours, the sows are all removed from the facility, and the piglets are artificially fed with a motherless rearing system and formula. Any interaction with humans must happen with the highest level of personal protective equipment.

With this pig-in-a-bubble approach, you should get a line of pigs that has never had any contact with the outside world and whose exogenous, or external, viruses have all been eliminated. These pig hearts are safe to implant into humans then, right?

Not exactly. Bennetts heart still tested positive for pig endogenous retroviruses (PERV) viruses built into the porcine genome that can jump into human cells, at least in a Petri dish. Its an alarming example of zoonosis that could lead to a pandemic like Covid-19.

Whether or not those viruses can infect humans remains to be seen, but Pierson doesnt think it will be a major barrier to xenotransplantation. HIV drugs seem to be relatively effective against them, and Boston-based biotech company eGenesis has already made a 60-gene PERV-free pig.

So what does worry Pierson about xenotransplantation?

The unknown unknown, he said. You can run a battery of tests in search of viruses, but you might only find what youre looking for. And with a cocktail of immunosuppressants required to sedate our trigger-happy immune system, any infection that crosses the pig-human barrier could wreak devastating consequences.

Doesnt this all feel a bit premature, then? I ask Pierson.

Worry is not a reason not to do things. You need to take cautious steps forward. If the problem presents itself, you figure out a way to solve it. You dont just go home.

For months, Bennetts transplant had been shrouded in secrecy, but the details of the operation were finally unveiled in a mid-June report of the New England Journal of Medicine. One of the studys blockbuster findings was that Bennett was infected with a pig virus. The paper itself is neutral on the cause of death, but the cardiothoracic surgeon and study first-author Dr Bartley Griffith is slightly betting that a pig virus killed Bennett.

The pig virus hes referring to is not a PERV, however; its an external virus called porcine cytomegalovirus (pCMV).

pCMV is a member of the herpes family, and its human form is known for causing mononucleosis, the kissing disease. Dont let that fool you though. Cytomegalovirus causes inflammation and damage to the organ, Pierson told me. A lot of damage.

pCMV is also one of the viruses that Revivicor had supposedly eliminated from pigs through all their precautions; it has been a well-recognized threat to xenotransplantation for decades.

When it first showed up, we thought maybe it was just an error or something, Griffith said, discussing how a routine blood draw on the 20th day after surgery returned a tiny blip.

Possible pCMV infection was so unimaginable to Griffiths team that they werent even looking for this pig virus and discovered the infection only on accident. Griffith told me, The first thing we did is we went to the company and said, How can we possibly be seeing this?

One xenotransplantation expert who wished to remain anonymous for legal reasons thinks that Revivicor may have gotten a bit slack about their protocol. He says the evidence is clear that, with early weaning and all other precautions, pigs dont get pCMV.

Revivicor, of course, tested the donor pig several times with a nasal swab and PCR, getting negative results every single time. It looks like PCR is not sufficient to exclude silent pCMV that can reactivate in an immunosuppressed environment, Buhler wrote to me. He suggests that Revivicor made an honest mistake by not using a more specific test. (Revivicor did not respond to repeated queries sent by the Guardian.)

Regardless of why pCMV was missed, the results were gruesome on autopsy. After hitchhiking into Bennett, the virus seems to have exploded some capillaries and killed the heart.

But Griffith is continuing to march along, hoping to do another xenotransplant in the next few months, even if he isnt entirely sure yet why Bennett died. Whatever it was, hes confident that it can be overcome. A pCMV infection? Exclude it. Too much immunosuppression? Reduce it. The anti-pig antibodies they gave Bennett? Dont do that again.

Thats how you make progress, Griffith said. You admit where you made errors, and you try to limit them. But you move on.

In a world where we are humanizing pigs with Crispr and piggifying humans with xenotransplantation, what does it even mean for there to be a human-animal divide?

In some ways, the word divide is problematic. After all, theres no bright red line separating humans from other animals. Pigs and humans share 98% of genes, and that 2% is critically important. But its also just 2%.

Moses, the Harvard bioethicist, believes that the notion of a human-animal divide is an artificial construct. Theres been a concerted effort from the biomedical research community to enhance the perception of that divide, going back as far as Descartes and Francis Bacon, she said.

Built on a shaky foundation, the separation between animals and humans has been reified over millennia. Look no further than the impossibly low sticker prices of a pack of bacon that hides environmental externalities and inhumane conditions under a crisp cellophane wrap. Its easier to not think too hard about it.

But we cant not think hard about xenotransplantation. If its promise is to be realized, well have to, at the very least, create a whole new economy of factory farming, where pigs will be manufactured and slaughtered en masse to give us life.

Sure, 1.5 billion pigs are already killed each year. And sure, if the people you loved most had heart failure, lungs slowly drowning in fluid, their dilated heart twisting agonizingly, youd probably take the pig heart instead of gambling with the transplant list. I would, at least. But that shouldnt obviate the need to tread carefully here.

Dr Chris Walzer, executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Society, thinks xenotransplantation could benefit from the OneHealth framework the idea that human, animal and environmental health are all connected.

Take the Nipah virus as an example. Nipah is a zoonotic disease that has caused deadly outbreaks in Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh and India. For years, these outbreaks were a mystery to epidemiologists, who couldnt understand how the transmission chain worked between fruit bats the natural hosts of the virus and humans. And ultimately, it took a broadened perspective to solve this puzzle tracing how date palm trees bloomed in the winter, how fruit bats infused tree sap with saliva and urine, and how humans consumed that infected sap and got Nipah.

Its too simple to say pigs are people. And its too simple to say pigs are an unlimited supply of organs. Seventeen people die every day waiting on the transplant list, but xenotransplantation is about a whole lot more than just saving these lives.

Were all part of a shared ecology. And theres a danger to ignoring our interconnectedness.

Earlier that day, Guenthart had told Mr P that he was getting a new heart. Mr P started crying. Hes in his early 20s, and three months ago, his heart started failing without any apparent reason. His doctors still arent sure why.

It was hard for me to not also start crying, Guenthart said.

A heart transplant is a highly technical operation, but for the patient, its a chance at life. When David Bennett had his xenotransplant, he didnt just get a pig heart; he got two more months of life. He watched the Los Angeles Rams win the Super Bowl. He sang America the Beautiful with his therapist. He spent time with his five grandchildren, every day begging his surgeons to let him go home to his dog Lucky.

Now that the transplant was over, Guenthart was calling Mr Ps mom.

The surgery went really well. The new heart looks beautiful, and hes doing amazing. Hes asleep right now, and were sending him over to sleep in the ICU.

Yes, hes going to be two floors above where he was before.

Normal visiting hours are from 8am to 7pm, but you can call them at any time and get updates directly from his nurse.

Of course, youre so welcome, and I hope to see you tomorrow.

Original post:
Pig to human heart transplants are the future. Are we ready for it? - The Guardian

Making the U.S. healthcare system sustainable in the future is only possible if there is a recognition that many chronic diseases can be prevented, but it is a complex challenge. The strong correlation between chronic disease outcomes and mental health disorders underscores the disconnect of working to improve chronic disease outcomes without addressing mental health. Innovation also requires correcting healthcare disparities in areas of inequity in quality of, access to, and affordability of preventive remedies. The connecting tissue to all of this is a holistic view of body, mind, and spirit as the pathway to good health, wellbeing, and longevity.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the costs associated with caring for people with chronic disease and mental health conditions comprises 90% of the nations $3.8 trillion spend on healthcare. Because of this, investors are increasingly seeking out wellness companies that foster harmony or life balance to drive health and wellness. The application of this approach connects the masses with medical professionals and services in a low friction and economical manner through enhanced user experiences driven by things such as home health, telehealth, and digital health solutions that reduce costs and ease time constraints for users by solving systematic healthcare inefficiencies.

In particular, investors will increasingly seek out companies that disrupt old models and promote a baseline of wellbeing via innovations that mitigate and/or prevent increased medical and social costs of poor health through affordable solutions that deliver flexible, easy access and customized services that contribute to improved outcomes.

Advances in science, medicine, and technology have created a tremendous capability to treat and cure chronic disease, but the wisdom of prevention is better than cure, is often lost in the process. With its focus on treatments and cures, the perplexing, profit-driven, one-size-fits-all model for health care in the United States in particular, fails to deliver the benefits of fundamental wellness that result from early attention to disease prevention. Whats more, in the last two years the sudden shift to working from home, social distancing, and isolation has led to declines in health and wellbeing through a troubling mix of perceived positives in the form of flexibility and increased free time, and alarming negatives in the form of burnout, depression, and reduced physical activity. This new normal makes good health even harder to maintain, and the companies who address this situation are potentially evermore valuable.

Creative health innovations are key to delivering health for all

The World Health Organization Council on the Economics of Health for All published their manifesto last September in the run-up to the October 2021 G20 summit in Rome. The creation of the Council, and the goals laid out for the G20 Summit, signal a sea change in policy design and a related realignment of sectors and financing to prioritize public health. This paradigm shift in health security places human wellness and the common good as a priority for economic policy design. Creative health innovations will be an important part of the ecosystem.

We actively seek investment offerings that include choices positioned at the intersection of healthy living, healthy lifestyle, and efficient delivery of healthcare services. These are companies that enhance financial, community, and corporate wellness. Companies that illustrate the potential of these wellness investment philosophies include HelloBetter, Iris Telehealth, and Talkiatry, who are a group of companies pioneering the tech-enabled, customized mental health space. Another group of companies in this area are Cara Care, FoodMarble, and Ombre, who are leading the in-home gut biome testing space. Finally, you have JOON, Limeade, and Headspace for Work, who are charging forward in areas of corporate personalized wellness (Talkiatry and Ombre are portfolio companies of Relevance Ventures).

Talkiatry clears two major pain points for patientswait times and affordabilitywith online providers that accept major insurance plans. Ombre self-testing delivers affordable, easy-to-use kits that remove the main barriers to getting useful health insights: access to gut biome testing, testing costs, and lack of information and actionable suggestions. And JOON is helping companies create healthy and productive work settingsfrom health to lifestylefor their employees.

Balance an ancient concept to balance modern life

At home disease prevention and health management has the potential to dramatically reduce costs for insurers, Medicare and the consumer. Scientific evidence suggests healthy diets, physical activity, and eliminating tobacco use can possibly prevent and control chronic diseases. Recognizing the symbiotic relationship between chronic diseases and mental wellbeing highlights a need for common sense solutions that embrace a holistic, more balanced-oriented approach that has proven successful in nature for hundreds of thousands of years; solutions that may achieve better whole patient outcomes and a reduced total cost of care for the users, companies, and the total healthcare system.

Photo: 123456, Getty Images

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Exploring strategies and innovations that deliver balance and wellbeing, expand access to health care, and dramatically improve health outcomes -...

Zone 2 training has become a trendy term among fitness professionals in recent years, but what does it mean and what are the benefits?

Zone 2 is one of five cardio heart rate zones (opens in new tab) experienced during different intensities of training zone 1 being the lowest effort and zone 5 being the highest. These zones reflect how hard your cardiovascular system (your heart and lungs) is being made to work by the activity you are doing, whether thats a weightlifting (opens in new tab) session or a long run on one of the best treadmills (opens in new tab).

The benefits of incorporating a large amount of lower intensity work into your training schedule (also known as polarized training) are well-documented. Not only can this concept help create a more sustainable exercise routine by preventing you from burning out or becoming injured through overtraining, but studies such as this one, published in the international Healthcare journal (opens in new tab) have also shown it can improve athletic factors including strength and cardiorespiratory function.

Research (opens in new tab) has even found it can be more efficient than alternative training methods such as HIIT and high volume training for upping several benchmarks of athletic performance such as VO2 peak, time to exhaustion and power output.

To find out more about zone 2 training, its many benefits, and how to incorporate it into a wider training regime, Live Science spoke to orthopedic surgeon Howard J Luks MD, author of Longevity Simplified (opens in new tab).

After graduating with honors from New York Medical College, Luks completed his Orthopedic Surgery residency in NY in 1996 and a fellowship in Sports Medicine at the Hospital For Joint Diseases in NYC in 1997.As the Chief of Sports Medicine and Arthroscopy at New York Medical College for over 20 years, he was entrusted to teach the next generation of Orthopedic Surgeons about the needs of athletes of all ages.He currently works as an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon.

Zone 2 is one of five heart rate zones you can enter when training. It usually refers to intensities where your heart rate is 60-70% of your maximum, with most athletes choosing cardiovascular exercises like walking, running, cycling and swimming to achieve this.

This training method has many benefits, from enhancing athletic performance and overall health to improving body composition when twinned with an appropriate diet.

You can estimate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. This figure can then be used to calculate where your 60% and 70% thresholds lie, although a normal heart rate (opens in new tab) can be hard to pin down as it varies from person to person.

Luks says there are more precise methods to tell which training zone you are in while exercising, with blood lactate testing being the most effective among them. However, if you dont want to invest in a pricey device or time-consuming testing process, there are also physical cues that can reveal when your heart rate is in zone 2.

Most athletes are in zone 2 between 60-70% of their maximum heart rate, Luks says. They should be able to hold a conversation without pausing.

Paying attention to our breathing is also important. There's a moment when you start to take a deeper breath or can no longer breathe for distance through your nose. For many that represents the moment they are starting to transition out of zone 2.

The payback for including zone 2 training into your weekly routine can be immense, with potential impacts including improved athletic performance and a lower risk of injury.

Whether it's improved endurance, resilience, a lower heart rate or simply improved health, zone 2 training is worthy of your consideration, Luks says.

Zone 2 or low heart rate training is also one of the best tools we have to achieve metabolic health and longevity. (Metabolic health is defined in a study published in the journal Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders as having optimal levels of waist circumference, glucose, blood pressure, triglycerides, and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and not taking any related medication.)

During low heart rate training, we are generating adenosine triphosphate (ATP, an energy-carrying molecule found within cells) or energy from fat oxidation. This process occurs in the mitochondria, but most folks (even most athletes) have significant aerobic deficiency syndrome. This means they tend to start burning glucose a process known as glycolysis far too soon during their efforts.

...Most runners run too fast on their slow days and too slow on their fast days. They are stressing their energy systems and not deriving the benefit of a strong aerobic base. Zone 1 and 2 activities will improve all zones above it, even VO2max.

In the simplest terms, whether youre chasing a PB over 5km or a marathon, taking a train slow to run fast approach can improve your performance at all intensities. And the benefits extend beyond athletic performance, positively impacting everyday health factors too.

In terms of the overall health of our nation, most people have poor mitochondrial flexibility, which is the ability to burn fat versus glucose for low demand activities. Our mitochondria need to be trained to function properly. That mostly occurs with low heart rate (zones one and two) activities.

Luks says training to increase mitochondrial efficiency will not only benefit athletic performance, but also everyday health and longevity.

Humans die of very predictable causes, he says. The majority of those diseases are rooted in poor metabolic health, which in and of itself is due to mitochondrial dysfunction.

Long zone 1 and 2 sessions are critical for athletes to build their aerobic base, Luks says. When considering the epic proportions of disease that people are contending with now, low heart rate activities are crucial to building mitochondrial flexibility and improving metabolic health.

Many people choose to incorporate zone 2 work into their exercise regime through polarized training a plan that involves activities of different intensities to improve multiple areas of cardiovascular health and fitness.

Several studies have explored the health and athletic benefits of polarized training. A 2014 study published in Frontiers in Physiology (opens in new tab) found that polarized training (POL) has greater impact on key endurance variables than threshold (THR), high intensity (HIIT), or high volume training (HVT).

During the study, 48 elite endurance athletes were assigned a 9-week training program based on one of the four conditioning concepts listed above. At the end of the testing period, it was found that polarized training triggered the greatest improvements in several benchmarks of athletic performance among endurance athletes, including their VO2 peak, time to exhaustion and power output.

A second 2021 study published in the MDPI Healthcare (opens in new tab) journal found that 12 weeks of polarized training had a positive impact on the body composition of male and female cross-country skiers.

It was confirmed that it contributed to the improvement in the athletic performance of cross-country skiers by improvement of cardiorespiratory function and upper-body strength, the study states.

On average, both male and female athletes taking part in the study saw a decrease in body fat (from 18.1% down to 12.7%, and from 29.1% down to 21.4%, respectively).

As part of a typical polarized training schedule, at least 80% of training should be in zones one or two, Luks says. However, he adds, the proportion of zone 2 training to higher intensity work will depend on several factors, including your age and fitness goals.

For example, I am an aging endurance runner. My goals are to be healthy and active and suffer as few injuries as possible I am not searching for a podium.

My current mix is nearly 95% zones one and two, and 5% threshold or VO2 max. It does not take much to maintain upper training zone function, health and conditioning. A few hill repeats or sprints at the end of a long zone 2 effort suffices.

The rest is here:
Zone 2 training: Definition and benefits - Livescience.com

Expected to reach a market size of $128 billion by 2028, the longevity sector is no longer something that those outside the medical world can ignore. In the next few years, life-extending technologies and treatments for aging-related diseases will reach human trials. There is an exciting wave of development happening in research labs and technology centers across the globe, with more and more early adopters embarking on their longevity journeys.

As Ive remarked in my earlier article, the crypto community would do well to learn more and engage in the growing longevity field. Longevity not only incorporates disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence and distributed ledger technologies but also has a visionary spirit and is supported by stakeholders dedicated to improving the human aging experience.

To share more about this up-and-coming sector, I spoke with three individuals about their alignment with longevity science and why they want you to know about the opportunities afforded by embracing longevity. The sector has already shown tremendous support in favor of the industry. The insights from one of the worlds foremost longevity physicians, the founder of the worlds leading full-service blockchain technology company, are unique but share a common theme: It is time for the world to pay attention to what the future holds for human lifespans.

As a longevity physician, my goal is to maintain or even improve the quality of life for someone. But the term longevity conjures images of living longer. But its more than just that. Life has to be fulfilling. It has to be fun. In longevity medicine, it is essential to focus on physical health as well as behavioral and mental health. All these pieces fit to make a healthy human.

In general, I am not a fan of sweeping recommendations. I like personalization. I like structure. I especially like structure when developing treatment trajectories for a patient. Of course, there is a foundation of longevity that incorporates common themes. However, I do not have typical recommendations for everybody.

I look at the unique characteristics of each patient in several different categories. The first category is metabolic optimization. This category encompasses nutritional improvements, exercise and hormones. Some people are athletes, and I also work with pre- and post-menopausal women. Some patients are preparing for pregnancy. These unique characteristics factor into the recommendations.

The second category is sleep. Many people underestimate how important sleep is to maintaining healthy bodily functions. As part of patient evaluation, I look at how easily the patient falls asleep and how optimal the sleep is based on oxygen levels, the number of apnea episodes, and more.

The third optimization area is cognition. Neurodegeneration is a significant concern for individuals as they age, and optimizing this area requires early prevention of any cognitive decline or neurosurgical health. Cognition also includes mental health. I am trained in psychiatry, so mental health is essential to me. A lot of people are already on antipsychotics or antidepressants. I meet patients where they are and help them achieve their goals of improving mental health.

As you can see, we very much focus on the granular level in longevity treatment. We focus on all aspects of a person to ensure treatments work in harmony. Physicians and patients need to remember that flexibility is key for any medical success. Longevity treatment should be just as flexible.

My interest in longevity began as a personal one. Running a global, billion-dollar company takes a toll on you. To achieve our mission, I realized that I needed to optimize not only my health but also my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual development. Health is usually one of the first things people neglect when they are focused elsewhere.

I started reading about everything that was considered cutting-edge in the field, from intermittent fasting to veganism. I even went as detailed to evaluate the micronutrients of different fruits and vegetables I was eating to balance them. When you start researching these things, you will eventually come to the field of longevity because longevity is all about the optimization of your life and health. That speaks to the engineer in me. We look at what we can optimize and how to do it. I spent more than a year optimizing my health, food, sleep everything. And now, I feel better than I did in my 20s!

I became a patron of the Longevity Science Foundation because I genuinely believe longevity should not just belong to one group of people. Everyone deserves access to the tools and science to live longer and healthier lives. I support the mission of the foundation to democratize access to this information because everyone has the right to it. Longevity should be shared.

What is the point of living a longer and healthier life if you are the only person benefiting from it? What kind of a world will you inherit? How can you build a better one if you are alone? Longevity is a crucial piece of our collective future. Crypto, blockchain and Web3 make it easier for us to work together and support each other while protecting ourselves. Longevity science means we can do that while living longer, being healthier and being happier. In other words: A better existence is out there for humans if we collaborate and create more open systems accessible to everyone.

Ive been an early pioneer in emerging technologies since 2005, entering spaces, such as mobile payments, renewable energy, the Internet of Things, CRISPR and cryptocurrencies, years before they reached mainstream understanding and recognition. Working at this leading edge requires one to constantly question the status quo and to search for optimization. Im bringing the same pioneering attitude to longevity: There is more to longevity medicine than the extension of life. Its about nudging our evolutionary engine. It is a challenging yet thrilling quest.

Our ancestors had countless challenges to overcome as we moved from caves to dwellings to tribes to cities to where we are now. We had to deal with predators, disease, famine, war, infection. While many of these challenges still exist, we have defenses against many of them. These are defenses that we developed outside of ourselves. There was nothing evolutionary about them. Today, it is a combination of internal and external development that is furthering society. Thanks to incredible technological breakthroughs, we are able to access products that aid in our evolutionary process.

However, our biological evolution has been outpaced by a technological revolution. Simply put, the human brain cannot advance with the same inertia as current technological progress. This might seem like a scary concept, but its also an exciting one. This unprecedented progress is inspiring. I see this spirit in the crypto community, and I see it again in longevity medicine. There is a powerful movement to improve the way existing systems like the financial sector function by disrupting and democratizing them. I see the longevity thesis as a disruptor of the way we age.

Longevity medicine is about the balance of technology and our own awareness to be more present and a reminder of the basics. In some aspects, our quality of life is even worse than that of our ancestors, as we have less time to do the things we love. Our appetite for connection is decreasing as a result of constant technology usage and less human interaction. Thus, longevity is about making a plan for yourself that looks beyond a pill, injection, hyperbaric chamber or an expensive health spa. Instead, it is about establishing a daily routine and lasting, sustained change versus mindless, endless growth for the sake of growth. It requires planning, restrategizing our healthcare costs, and upgrading where it makes sense.

You commit to that in your work. Are you ready to do that for your life?

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Garri Zmudze is a managing partner at LongeVC, a Switzerland- and Cyprus-based venture capital firm accelerating innovative startups in biotech and longevity. He is a seasoned business expert and angel investor with several successful exits across biotech and tech companies. He is a long-time supporter and investor in biotech companies, including Insilico Medicine, Deep Longevity and Basepaws.

Read more here:
Why longevity matters to everyone: Living longer lives in the world of Web3 - Cointelegraph

HONG KONG, July 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ Endurance RP Limiteds (Endurance Longevity or the Company and together with its subsidiaries, the Group; stock code: 0575.HK) wholly owned subsidiary Deep Longevity, Inc, a Hong Kong-based AI innovator anda leading provider of deep biomarkers of aging and longevity is pleased to announcethat the company has been granted a patent issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) covering the applications of microflora profiles in the anti-aging industry: Aging markers of human microbiome and microbiomic aging clock.

This landmark invention was originally published in Cell as a research article: Human Gut Microbiome Aging Clock Based on Taxonomic Profiling and Deep Learning in 2020. This article described a neural network that can estimate the age of a person based on their gut flora composition. Deep Longevitys scientists identified bacteria that could slow down or speed up the basic aging processes and thereby affect the longevity (lifespan) of a person. The article also displayed diabetes as an aging-related disease that promotes the aging of the gut community.

Deep Longevity filed the USPTO application and converted it to an international patent application in 2019. The granted patent includes claims on inventions that measure the pace of aging based on the gut community composition. More specific applications of this technology described among the claims include: altering the gut flora in a way that rejuvenates the host, AI-generated reports on the pace of aging, digital apps, personalized anti-aging diet plans and probiotics.

Jamie Gibson, Chief Executive Officer of Endurance Longevity said, We are delighted that we have been granted the patent issued by USPTO. The issued patent strategically guarantees that Deep Longevity holds priority over any anti-aging applications based on gut community profiling and ensures that it will be the leader in this field. Looking forward, Deep Longevity is planning to commercialise products based on its microbiomic aging clock in 2023.

About Deep Longevity

Deep Longevity is a wholly owned subsidiary of Endurance Longevity (SEHK:0575.HK), a publicly-traded company. Deep Longevity develops explainable artificial intelligence systems to track the rate of aging at the molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, system, physiological, and psychological levels. It is also developing systems for the emerging field of longevity medicine, which enables physicians to make better decisions about interventions that may slow down or reverse the aging processes. Deep Longevity developed the Longevity as a Service (LaaS) solution to integrate multiple deep biomarkers of aging dubbed deep aging clocks to provide a universal multifactorial measure of human biological age.

Originally incubated by Insilico Medicine, Deep Longevity began its independent journey in 2020 after securing a round of funding from the most credible venture capitalists specializing in biotechnology, longevity, and artificial intelligence: ETP Ventures; the Human Longevity and Performance Impact Venture Fund; BOLD Capital Partners; Longevity Vision Fund; LongeVC; Michael Antonov, the co-founder of Oculus; and other expert AI and biotechnology investors. Deep Longevity established a research partnership with Human Longevity, Inc., one of the most prominent longevity organizations to provide a range of aging clocks to a network of advanced physicians and researchers.

https://www.deeplongevity.com/

About Endurance Longevity (Stock code: 0575.HK)

Endurance Longevity is a diversified investment group based in Hong Kong currently holding various corporate and strategic investments focusing on the healthcare, wellness and life sciences sectors. The Group has a strong track record of investments and has returned approximately US$298 million to shareholders in the 21 years of financial reporting since its initial public offering.

http://www.endurancerp.com

More here:
Deep Longevity Published and Granted the First Microbiomic Aging Clock Patent - TechNode Global