Optimal Age to Begin Anti-Aging and Longevity Interventions

Jump To Section

• Clinical Intervention Age Range
• Life Course Healthspan Approach
• Early Education & Healthy Lifestyles
• Biomarkers & Biological Age Assessment
• Shifting Focus to Preventative Care
• Full Transcript

Clinical Intervention Age Range

Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, identifies a specific age group for current clinical anti-aging intervention studies. His research in Singapore focuses on individuals between 45 and 60 years old. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, explains the reasoning behind this target demographic. He notes that the biological network may not function well in frail, older individuals, making interventions less effective. This age range, 45 to 65, represents a critical window where people are at significant risk of developing chronic diseases in the near future. Dr. Anton Titov, MD, explores this timing with Dr. Kennedy to understand where interventions can have the biggest impact on longevity.

Life Course Healthspan Approach

The most effective strategy for maximizing healthspan is a life-course approach. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, emphasizes that different interventions are needed at different life stages. He advises governments and health organizations to adopt this comprehensive perspective. The goal is to implement tailored strategies from youth through older adulthood. This method ensures a sustained impact on functional output and late-life health. Dr. Kennedy's discussion with Dr. Anton Titov, MD, highlights the need to move beyond treating sickness to proactively preserving health across a lifetime.

Early Education & Healthy Lifestyles

Longevity prevention begins with instilling healthy habits during childhood. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, outlines the core pillars of a healthy lifestyle for young people. These fundamentals include eating a nutritious diet, engaging in regular exercise, ensuring adequate sleep, and managing stress levels. Establishing these behaviors early creates a powerful foundation for long-term health. Dr. Kennedy believes this early education has a huge impact on both lifelong functional capacity and health in later years. This proactive education is a central theme in his conversation with Dr. Anton Titov, MD.

Biomarkers & Biological Age Assessment

Biomarkers of aging provide a crucial tool for early diagnosis and population stratification. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, recommends incorporating biological age checks into annual physicals for adults as young as 25 or 30. If a person's biological age is calculated to be 5 or 10 years older than their chronological age, it serves as an early warning sign. This data allows for proactive interventions long before any clinical disease manifests. Dr. Kennedy stresses that these biomarkers are valuable not just for measuring treatment efficacy but for initial diagnostic purposes. This precise monitoring is a key part of the modern longevity strategy he discusses with Dr. Anton Titov, MD.

Shifting Focus to Preventative Care

The current healthcare model often waits until people are very sick before acting. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, describes this as spending money to keep people sick for as long as possible. He clarifies that he deeply appreciates the life-saving care doctors provide, drawing from his own medical experiences. However, he advocates for a powerful complement to reactive medicine: better prevention. This shift involves embracing a life-course approach that targets the biology of aging itself. Dr. Kennedy's insights, shared with Dr. Anton Titov, MD, present a compelling vision for a future focused on preserving health rather than just managing disease.

Full Transcript

Dr. Anton Titov, MD: What do you think, from the wealth of your experience: What is the age when people should start thinking about longevity? Because obviously, I realize no old is too old and no young is too young, but where is that balance when the aging really starts to kick in? Whatever anti-aging intervention is available at this time, or will be available in the future?

Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD: Two answers to that. We are doing our clinical intervention studies in Singapore; we're starting with people around 45 to 60. But we're hesitant to go all the way to frail people because they have a lot of things that are wrong. If you believe in this network concept, that network isn't really working well anymore, and so it may not be possible to preserve it.

We think that people 45 to 65 are the ones that are really at risk of getting chronic diseases in the very near future. Those are the people that we can have a big impact on to start with.

I think the real answer, though, is that if you really want—I'm telling the Singapore government and anybody else that wants to listen—if you really want to have the biggest impact on healthspan, it's a life-course approach. We need to be doing different things at different times.

It starts with educating children about healthy lifestyles. By healthy lifestyles, I mean eating well, exercising, sleeping appropriately, and managing your stress levels. If you can instill that behavior in someone when they're young, that's going to have a huge impact, probably not only on their functional output throughout life but also on their health late in life.

Then when people get a little bit older and become adults, we should be measuring the rate that they're biologically aging using these biomarkers. So if someone is 25 or 30, they go to their annual checkup; we should look at their biologic age. If it's five or 10 years older, we should be thinking now about what to do before they get sick.

I think the biomarkers are not just good for measuring interventions; they're good for diagnostic data, stratifying the population. Then when you get in your 40s and 50s, maybe you're thinking about these kinds of interventions for testing natural products, drugs, etc. Maybe you're willing to try more radical things as you get older.

But right now we're doing healthcare pretty much opposite of the way it should be. We wait till people get really sick, and then we spend a lot of money keeping them sick as long as possible. I say that a little bit facetiously.

I appreciate the medical care that doctors give. I've had a birth defect; I got in a bit of a car accident. Doctors have saved my life a few times, and so I'm very appreciative of that. Certainly if I get sick with something of old age, I want to be treated for that, too.

I'm not saying we should throw that stuff away. What I'm saying is we should complement it with better prevention. And that's a life course approach and thinking about aging as one of the key components.