Fast Facts
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1. What is the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M)?
The A4M is a US federally registered 501(c) 3 non-profit organization comprised of 26,000-plus member physicians, health practitioners, scientists, governmental officials, and members of the general public, representing over 120 nations.
2. WIth the founding of the A4M in 1992, the anti-aging medical movement was established. What is the official definition of anti-aging medicine?
Anti-aging medicine is among the fastest-growing medical specialties throughout the world and is founded on the application of advanced scientific and medical technologies for the early detection, prevention, treatment, and reversal of age-related dysfunction, disorders, and diseases. It is a healthcare model promoting innovative science and research to prolong the healthy lifespan in humans. As such, anti-aging medicine is based on solid scientific principles of responsible medical care that are consistent with those applied in other preventive health specialties. Anti-aging medicine is the following:
It is scientific. Anti-aging diagnostic and treatment practices are supported by scientific evidence and therefore cannot be branded as anecdotal.It is evidence-based. Anti-aging medicine is based on an orderly process for acquiring data in order to formulate a scientific and objective assessment upon which effective treatment is assigned.Is well-documented by peer-reviewed journals. As of this writing, the National Library of Medicine hosts more than 3,000 peer-reviewed articles on the subject of anti-aging medicine.3. What are the key anti-aging medicines?
Anti-aging medicine is a lifestyle, there are no "magic bullet" medicines. Around the world, people are seeking medical guidance for ways to stay healthy, active, and vital well into their older years. As a result, the principles of the anti-aging lifestyle are gaining rapid and widespread acceptance as a framework for lifelong habits for healthy living.
4. What is the anti-aging lifestyle?
Lifestyle is perhaps the most easily modifiable, proven anti-aging intervention. The anti-aging lifestyle can add 24.6 more years of productive lifespan. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that the longest-living Americans are Asian-American women residing in Bergen County, New Jersey USA. They live longer than any other ethnic group in the United States -- to an average lifespan of 91.1 years. In contrast, the Harvard team found that the shortest-living Americans are Native American populations in South Dakota -- living an average lifespan of 66.5 years. The researchers identified several factors associated with the extraordinary longevity of the Asian-American women in Bergen county, namely: high median income, college education or better; occupations in management or professional settings; diet emphasizing fruits, vegetables, fish, and green tea; and lifestyle including Eastern healing techniques. ["Bergen County, NJ is long in longevity," New York Times, September 12, 2006; "Asian women in Bergen have nation's top life expectancy," Free Republic, September 12, 2006.]
5. How can the public improve their chances of living a long, healthy, productive lifespan?
The Anti-Aging Longevity Dividend, a strategic multi-faceted lifestyle featuring diet, exercise, and healthy habits, can help to achieve the younger, happier, stronger you. The benefits to longevity of multiple positive lifestyle choices have been validated in a study published by Rob van Dam, from the Harvard School of Public Health (Massachusetts, USA) and colleagues. The researchers analyzed data from 80,000 women nurses spanning two decades. Over the study period, 1,790 women died from heart disease and 4.527 from cancer. In analyzing the study participants' records of diet, physical activity, alcohol consumption, weight, smoking, and disease history, the team determined 55% of the deaths could have been avoided if the women had never smoked, exercised regularly, eaten a healthy diet (low in red meat and trans fats), and maintained a healthy weight. Smoking was by far the factor to play the biggest role in premature deaths, with the team estimating that it was directly responsible for 28% of the deaths. [Rob M van Dam, Tricia Li, Donna Spiegelman, Oscar H Franco, Frank B Hu. "Combined impact of lifestyle factors on mortality: prospective cohort study in US women." BMJ 2008;337:a1440; published 16 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1440.]
6. Why does the anti-aging medical movement continue a steady growth?
Universally, those involved in healthcare, or those whose fields of expertise intersect with healthcare issues, support anti-aging medicine as a healthcare model promoting innovative science and research to prolong the healthy human lifespan. Public policy organizations and government agencies in a number of nations are now embracing anti-aging medicine as a viable solution to alleviate the mounting social, economic, and medical woes otherwise anticipated to arrive with the trend of unprecedented global aging.
Anti-aging medicine is now practiced by thousands of physicians in private medical offices, as well as at some of the most prestigious teaching hospitals around the world. Involving a patient base in the hundreds of thousands worldwide, anti-aging medicine is achieving demonstrable and objective results that beneficially impact the degenerative diseases of aging.
7. What are the economic implications of anti-aging medicine?
A prolonged healthy lifespan -- and the practice of the anti-aging medical specialty -- beneficially impacts the economic framework of nations around the world. Until we've eradicated the age-related decline in health that leads to many of us becoming dependent and disabled in our older years, society will bear increasing financial costs to sustain the older population. In the absence of scientific solutions that halt the onset of the degenerative diseases of aging, the elderly support burden may swell and compromise the economic and social frameworks of many industrial nations. In that anti-aging medicine is a healthcare model promoting innovative science and research to prolong the healthy lifespan in humans, the field's most important contribution will be in the reduction of disabilities, diseases, and dependencies otherwise associated with aging and greying populations.
8. What does the future hold for anti-aging medicine?
Science now stands on the threshold of a new age in cellular therapy and tissue regeneration which will directly and beneficially impact how long, and how well, we will live in the coming decades. Anti-aging medicine is the pinnacle of biotechnology joined with advanced clinical preventive medicine, and as such, anti-aging medicine complements regenerative medicine, as both specialties embrace cutting-edge biomedical technologies aimed at achieving benefits for both the quality and quantity of the human lifespan. Some of the most promising aspects of regenerative medicine, most notably include:
Stem cell therapeutics, technologies aiming to beneficially alter the very basic cellular sources of dysfunctions, disorders, disabilities, and diseasesTherapeutic cloning, technologies to develop ample sources of human cells, tissues, and organs for use in acute emergency care as well as the treatment of chronic, debilitating diseasesGenetic engineering and genomics, advancements that permit the identification and alteration of genetics to ameliorate dysfunctions, disorders, disabilities, and diseasesNanotechnology, deploying micro- and molecular-sized tools to manipulate human tissue biology for microsurgical repair on a gross level, as well as microscopic nano-biology for repair at the most basic cellular levelTaken collectively, the advancements offered by anti-aging and regenerative medicine to improve the quality of, and/or extend the length of, the human lifespan, are the singlemost potent emerging biomedical technologies today.
9. What is the A4M's projection as to the extension of the human lifespan?
Thanks to current and future advancements in anti-aging and regenerative medicine, the A4M projects that the human lifespan will reach upwards of 125 years and beyond by the year 2049. With the advancements driven by anti-aging medical science, these extended lifespans wiill be full of productivity, vitality, and health.