A word of caution for employers—you may be hiring someone whose age is 30 based on his birth certificate, but is probably already 50 biologically because of a health condition called “arterial aging”.
“The biological age differs from the chronological age. Your chronological age is the age you see in your identification cards and driver’s license, while your biological age is the real age of your functioning body,” Dr. Reuven Zimlichman, chairman of the Department of Medicine and head of the Department of Hypertension at the E. Wolfston Medical Center, said during the Experts’ Convergence for Health Outcomes (Echo) Summit 2017 news briefing
on Wednesday.
“Your chronological age is 60, but your arteries are in the age of 80 or could be 40. This is a result of accumulated factors during many years that affected arteries, like improper way of life and bad genes,”Zimlichman added.
Arterial aging, which is categorized as a degenerative disease, is an inevitable health condition wherein arteries and blood vessels undergo series of functional and structural changes that occur with age, according to Zimlichman.
BioFemme Medical Director Dr. Caridad Purugganan said if one’s arteries are getting older at an unprecedented speed or time at a young age, the person could suffer from cardiovascular diseases, like hypertension, myocardial infarction, stroke and renal failure, among others.
Zimlichman identified several factors that could catalyze the aging of one’s arteries and blood vessels: genetics, smoking, alcohol drinking, lack of physical activities, mental stress and unhealthy diet.
With this, Zimlichman said the government and private companies should be wary of the overall health conditions of their employees, particularly the individual’s biological age.
“It has to be supported by the government, and the government must define a budget for it and a place where they would start. You cannot just start with the 100
million population, you have to start somewhere, say in a specific company or work place,” Zimlichman said.
“It’s been done by many companies; it’s been done all over the world, in many places, and it should be done everywhere. If you take care and examine the population in a specific company, then you will benefit because it’s cheaper to prevent a disease than treating it,” Zimlichman added.Zimlichman said the kind of work and environment that one belongs could also affect the rate that a certain person’s arteries age.
“Farmers, for example, live a very different way of life, which has less stress and more physical activity, which makes their biological age younger than their chronological age, unlike those living in the cities,” he said.
Zimlichman, who also serves as the director of the Brunner Cardio-vascular Research Institute at Tel-Aviv University, said companies should incorporate arterial-age testing in the annual medical checkup of their employees.
Zimlichman said there are already available equipment and methods to determine the age of arteries. An equipment could cost from $1,500 to $50,000, depending on the needed information.
“Because with this equipment we can evaluate and monitor the status of the arteries. The status of arteries is determined by high lipids, high blood pressure, high cholesterol,” he said. “Because to technology is improving it would become cheaper in the future.”
Unlike chronological age, Zimlichman said arterial aging, or the biological age, could be reversed through proper lifestyle check, balanced diet and medications.
“Many people do not know these, but biological age can be made younger if somebody starts physical training, changes diet, takes medicines and normalizes many factors that were not in normal level before,” Zimlichman said. “Change what we eat, change the activity we do, change unhealthy things, like lifestyle, and change is whatever you define to be very difficult. Yes, you will add number to your chronological age but you will lower your biological age.”
Citing data from the World Health Organization, Purugganan said between 2000 and 2050 the number of people aged 60 and above was expected to double; meaning by 2050, more than one in five people would be aged 60 or older.
“Increasing life expectancy is good, but it depends on where you are. If you are in a developing country, it poses economic challenges,” Purugganan said. “There is a medical need to address chronic, degenerative diseases and improve quality of life. There’s no point in extending life expectancy if the quality of life is poor—it’s also important to improve the quality of life.”
Chronic degenerative diseases, she added, are the most common and costly in terms of treatment, but the most preventable of all health problems. “Humans are like machines, there’s wear and tear.”
“The body does not know its chronological age, it only knows its biological or functional age. You could be 60 years old but if you have a good diet then you will have a body of a 40-year-old and you might be 25 years old chronologically but your body is of that a 50-year-old,” she added.
Dr. Siegfried Kasper, professor and chairman of the Medical University of Vienna Department of Psychiatry and Psychotheraphy, said the government should also focus on the growing case of depression, as this remains underreported, untreated and undiagnosed in most parts of the world.
Kasper and Zimlichman are in the country to give lectures to at least 1,000 Filipinos doctors at the ECHO Summit 2017 on April 27 at the Marriott Hotel.
Kasper will share his knowledge on how diabetes and cardio metabolic syndromes lead to complicating factors, particularly mental disorders, like depression and anxiety, among diagnosed patients. Meanwhile, Zimlichman will focus on how to address
arterial aging.
Also with them are Dr. Rod Baber, Clinical professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Sydney Medical school, and Dr. Paresh Dandona, a distinguished professor at the University of Buffalo and founder of the Diabetes-Endocrinology Center of Western New York.
Baber will shed light on the importance of building up one’s bone mass, which defines the healthiness of a person’s bones, to prevent early brittleness of bone structure leading to osteoporosis.
Meanwhile, Dandona will lecture on the latest breakthroughs on the effects of testosterone-replacement treatment in relation to people diagnosed with diabetes.
The ECHO Summit, which started in 2015, is part of Unilab’s efforts to support Filipino doctors and provide them a venue for excellent continuing medical education.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes