At its best, healthcare isn't just about extending lifespan—it's also about enhancing the vitality of our years. Over the last century, the healthcare system has made enormous strides in keeping sick people alive. The next step is to use proactive, preventative healthcare to stop them from getting sick at all. The Lost Decade—the 10 or so years that many people spend suffering from poor health and/or disability in older age—doesn't have to be a given.

In this episode, Matt discusses why he left academia to help start a healthcare revolution, why sickness and decline don't have to define our final years, how decades of geroscience research have informed his views of healthcare, and what he thinks healthspan optimization should look like.

Check out the links below for further information and/or reading about some of the things we discussed in this podcast episode. Note that we do not necessarily endorse or agree with the content of these readings, but present them as supplementary material that may deepen your understanding of the topic after you listen to our podcast. This list is in no way exhaustive, but it’s a good start!

Healthy aging: The ultimate preventative medicine

Matt and colleagues make the case for placing greater emphasis on research into the biology of aging in a review for the journal Science. Traditional biomedical research has created significant advances in medical care by focusing primarily on understanding and treating individual diseases, but has not addressed the accumulation of age-related morbidities in aging populations. The study of aging biology, or geroscience, aims to plug this gap by identifying the mechanisms that underlie aging and developing interventions to extend healthy lifespan. By targeting aging processes themselves rather than individual diseases, researchers hope to delay the onset and progression of various age-related conditions.

It is Time to Embrace 21st-Century Medicine

In the journal Public Policy & Aging Report, Matt asserts that we are in a good position to extend human healthspan through more effective means than the 20th century’s reactive disease care model. Instead of taking a one-by-one approach to healthcare, where we tackle diseases one at a time as they occur, we should directly target the biological aging process—and in so doing, add years to people’s health- and lifespan. He lists sources of federal funding for geroscience research and calls for more initiatives within the biomedical research community that center on research into the biology of aging.

Translational geroscience: A new paradigm for 21st century medicine

Matt provides a high-level overview of the geroscience approach and its potential impact. He introduces several efforts to translate current research to the clinic, including clinical trials of rapamycin in humans and dogs as well as the Targeting Aging with Metformin (TAME) trial, which aims to investigate the impact of the antidiabetic drug metformin on non-diabetes comorbidities in older patients. The article also discusses some of the regulatory hurdles involved with developing interventions that target aging biology.

From lifespan to healthspan (1)

Matt spoke at the recent a16z crypto Founders Summit about his decision to leave academia to found a startup, opportunities for disruption in the healthcare space, and foundational concepts in geroscience. He notes that we are nowhere near close to “longevity escape velocity” or immortality, and advises skepticism of anyone who makes overoptimistic claims about the field.