Precision medicine – aging a thing of the past!
Jul 23, 2020 Posted by tamara Videos 0 thoughts on “Precision medicine – aging a thing of the past!”“Today you are you, that is truer than true . There is no one alive who is youer than you.” Dr Seuss
We have all been told, from the day of our birth how special and unique we are. We should celebrate our strengths and identify our weaknesses. By doing this, we can optimise our lives, careers, sports etc. We all believed that we are unique, with our own set of skills, talents, likes and dislikes; with features that make us recognisable at a glance.
We believe this to be true of our outside appearance and our emotional reaction to our environment and circumstance.
Why then is it such a leap to extend this uniqueness to our physiology, our biochemistry, our genes and their interactions with the environment we plunge them into?
Why can one person misbehave their whole lives and be healthy for 90 years? And a child falls ill with minimal exposure to environmental influence?
A Study from the on going New England Centenarian Study shows that centenarians had a very similar genetic make-up to those who did not live long lives. This include genetic variants that predisposed them to disease states.
In the last 100 years the average life expectancy has increased dramatically from 50 years to 80years.
This is almost certainly due to a leap in the evolution of medical technology, the understanding of nutrition and lifestyle, and our environment.
We cannot be attributed to human genetic evolution, this takes a smidgen longer.
This in itself is evidence of the influence of our surroundings and experiences on our genes and our ability to live longer, healthier lives.
What this study illuminated is that in the first 75 years of life our genes have a relatively small influence on our health and susceptibility to disease, a mere 20-25%. Does this mean that we have up to 80% control over our health destiny? Are the habits that we are passing down to our children more detrimental than our genes?
This is an amazing opportunity and a huge responsibility.
If we are able to influence our health and that of our families so greatly by manipulating our environment and habits to best suit our genes. We have no more excuses.
We are fortunate to inhabit a time and space where science and technology are moving at an astronomical pace. Stop for a second and you are left behind.
We now have the capacity not only to detect a disease state, but we are able to identify the onset of a disease process long before clinical signs and symptoms appear.
Auxiliary blood and genetic testing have provided a crystal ball of technology in which we are able to seek out patterns and trends that highlight vital forks in our path to health and longevity.
If we change our diet and lifestyle according to these unique biochemical talents and weaknesses, we could change our health destiny and that of our children. Could we break this epidemic of chronic and lifestyle related diseases?
Be Proactive Not Reactive!
When we change our medical focus to one of health rather than disease, we are able to change our life curve.
We currently accept that we have our best health years before the age of 30 after which we slowly decline for 50 years getting sicker and slower until we finally stop.
But what if we could be healthy and independent and live a pain free life of vitality for 75 years, then only start to decline in function in our last 3-5 years?
James Fries, a Stanford researcher calls this the Compression of Morbidity Hypothesis. According to Fries, the road to a happy, healthy, long life may lie in our ability to compress the time that we are ill and ailing to the last few years of life.
I would certainly sign up for 75 healthy years rather than 50 ailing ones. Who’s with me? Lets set ourselves up to be the life of the party at our grandchildren’s weddings!
Great!!! So how do we do it?
At the moment aesthetics and skincare is a symptom focused profession.
We wait until the pigmentation appears, or the dark circles, or the acne. And only then do we embark on a journey to try to reverse it.
But what if we could look into a crystal ball, and know with great certainty that this will happen in the future? And then we put in place a protocol that can prevent it from ever happening by 75%…
This is a game changer!
Precision medicine and advanced preventative medicine is our chance to revolutionise skin care!
The body is incredibly wise and complex. It will continue to compensate and balance itself until eventually it becomes too much. Only then do signs and symptoms of diagnosable diseases become apparent.
Long before this happens does changes in individual genetics nudge at us. It tells us to change what we are doing, giving us several opportunities to turn this symptom picture around.
By understanding your unique genetic code and identifying your skins strengths and weaknesses. This way we are able to treat your skin condition before it even appears.
We can then advise the best ingredients to go topically on your skin, and the best ingredients to take internally. We also recommend the best professional treatments for you as an individual to optimise your genes for the best possible chance at a healthy skin.
This elevates skincare to far more than just the absence of disease. A one size fits all approach is fast becoming obsolete. We want better results in a shorter time period, with fewer side effects.