Anti-aging has come a long way. On the aesthetics front, you have a lot of options: You can get Botox in Beverly Hills to help you look younger. You can even use our stem cell lift – technology that people wouldn’t have dreamt of 30 years ago, to rejuvenate your appearance. There is, however, a lot more affected by aging than just your looks. You’ve probably heard talk of billionaires investing in anti-aging companies. Given that we want you to look and feel your best, we thought it would be a good idea to look at what exactly anti-aging is.
Anti-aging is primarily concerned with two things: healthspan and lifespan. Lifespan is the term you’ve probably heard before, and it’s quite a simple concept – the longer your life, the longer your lifespan. In other words, if people in North America tend to live around 80 years right now, but they start living 81 years on average in 10 years, that’s a 1-year increase in lifespan.
Lifespan is a fine metric for evaluating the length of life, but what about quality of life? Let’s say you can live until 200, but you’re plagued by health problems and cognitive decline, confined to a hospital bed for the last 80 years of your life. There are not a lot of people who would prefer this life. That’s where healthspan comes in – it’s the number of years that you live a healthy life.
“Healthy” is a very broad term. You could make (we think a very good) argument that the way you look plays an important part in your overall health. When you look healthy, it can help you feel healthy. In the same way, when you’re unhealthy, it’s going to affect the way you look. That’s why we advocate a holistic approach to healthcare and skincare. Our consultations with patients include a detailed analysis of why their skin has changed and the ways that they can slow the aging process.
The companies that billionaires are investing in right now are primarily concerned with increasing healthspan, with the belief that an increase in lifespan will follow. The techniques being used to increase healthspan are truly astounding, ranging from finding ways to encourage the natural regenerative processes of cells to gene modification. One can certainly hope that these experiments bear useful fruit – we can’t wait to see the applications they may have for dermatology!
The lofty end goal of anti-aging might be immortality – the youthful vigor of your 20s for the rest of time. There are a lot of ethical, philosophical and moral questions that come up when you consider an immortal population. How do you feed everyone? Do governments start limiting the number of children we can have? These lofty considerations are for another time, and maybe for a different blog. For now, remember that if you’re worried about how aging is affecting your skin, we already have wonderful tried-and-true techniques to rejuvenate your looks.
