A recent article in Scientific American discusses a new study showing how the biology of aging helps understand ways to lengthen our health span, years free of serious disease.

Because of the medical interventions during the past century, most people’s lives are said to have increased by 30 years, from 50 to 80. “Longer life spans overall have been a public health success. But they have also created a new and important gap: healthspans, usually defined as the period of life free of chronic disease or disability, do not always match longevity.”

According to WHO statistics, most Americans start facing risks of being ill due to cancer, heart disease and dementia at the age of 63, even though they expect to live up to 79 years of age. Most medical advancements have reportedly been in the area of longevity, but not on healthspans.

Jay Olshansky, a longevity expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told “We’re now saying our focus should be on extending healthy life rather than just length of life, and slowing aging is the tool to do it”. He adds “There are molecular and cellular processes in all our tissues and organs that determine both life span and healthspan. These “pillars of aging” include DNA damage, the aging or senescence of individual cells, inflammation, and stress responses.”

Biological aging can be monitored by molecular markers such as chemical modification of DNA, according to Morgan Levine of Altos Labs in San Diego.

“One way to extend healthspan is through unsurprising preventive maintenance. Experts recommend checkups, staying on top of cholesterol levels and blood pressure, and following guidelines such as those from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition for body fat percentage, lean body mass and bone density”, the Scientific American recommends.

Matt Kaeberlein, founding director of the University of Washington Healthy Aging and Longevity Research Institute and now chief executive officer of Optispan, a health tech company, says “Know where you are so if something needs to be tweaked you can take steps to do that”.

Kaeberlein adds, “Those steps are also familiar: common-sense nutrition, sleep, exercise and social connection are the four main factors. The reason those things work is because they modulate the biology of aging. For example, regular low- or moderate-intensity exercise helps to prevent cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. How much extra health can these steps get us? Ten years is probably pretty realistic.”