Title: How to Invest in Your Longevity: Steps to Personalize Health and Aging Plans
Introduction
How well are you aging? This question transcends physical appearances. To live a healthier, more active life as we age, it’s vital to understand our current health baseline and identify potential health issues to prevent or manage now.
As we approach the end of 2024, why not make next year’s resolutions ahead of time and proactively take your health into your hands? One can create a personalized healthy aging plan by utilizing next-generation services like genetic sequencing, and understanding your biological age beyond calendar years.
Not sure where to begin? Here are five proactive steps to leverage for a healthier and longer life.
Find Your Baseline
The first step begins by understanding your family medical history, but this is just the beginning. You need more details to establish your baseline health status.
The next step is considering genetic screening, which offers a wealth of information and forms the foundation of health. A platform that offers advanced genetic testing called exome sequencing can be beneficial. This type of testing evaluates high impact genes associated with health conditions that could have preventive measures and clinical interventions if detected early.
Genetics are truly personal and offer a lifetime’s worth of insights into your longevity.
Go Beyond Routine Lab Tests
The third step after genetics is to add more data to get a comprehensive picture of your health profile. Traditional blood tests provide vital health information. However, regular comprehensive blood tests can offer continuous insight into prevention and early disease detection.
A comprehensive test can measure things like blood sugar levels, kidney, liver and thyroid function, along with cholesterol and advanced lipoprotein levels. This is exceptionally crucial if you have a family history of cardiovascular diseases.
Knowing your cholesterol level forms just part of the story. When you undergo a comprehensive blood test, you can find out your lipoprotein(a) (Lp(a)) and Apolipoprotein B (ApoB) levels. High levels of both markers are associated with an increased risk of heart and blood vessel disease, heart attacks, and strokes.
Understanding both genetic and blood biomarker data is crucial to designing your health baseline. Combined, they can help you pinpoint screenings, treatments, and lifestyle changes promoting longevity and resilience.
Combine Genetic Results with Bloodwork and Take Action
Both genetic and blood biomarker data are imperative. Your genetic data offers deep insights into potential future risks, whereas your blood biomarker data informs about the present. Together, they provide answers.
For example, genetic test results can guide you towards concrete preventative measures against diseases related to a genetic variant. This helps in identifying potential health risks for hereditary cardiovascular, neurological diseases, and different types of cancers — risks that would otherwise have remained undetected.
Make Lifestyle Changes to Lower Your Biological Age
Your chronological age doesn’t necessarily tell you how your body is truly aging. Therefore, it’s crucial to determine your biological age number and potentially slow down or even reverse course if your biological age surpasses your calendar age.
Make a Tailored Health Plan with a Clinician Who Understands Genetics
All this sophisticated health data is only beneficial if you can interpret and use it properly. Once you have your genetic and blood work results, collaborating with a clinician to create a customized health plan that incorporates lifestyle, screening, and other health management tools is a sensible idea.
For instance, if you have high cholesterol and Lp(a) levels, a clinician can help you take concrete steps to lower your risk of cardiovascular disease. They can discuss the benefits of statins and how genetic results can inform your doctor’s prescription to help reduce the risk of side effects.
In Conclusion
Rather than dealing with health issues as they arise, a proactive approach can potentially increase your odds of aging better. By embracing these steps, you can learn more about genetics, blood testing, and personalized care to live a healthier and longer life.
