Healthspan - Putting Life in the Years

Back when I was a massage student working in the student clinic, one of our regulars brought her mum along for a massage as a kind of a birthday gift.

I didn't realise our client was Italian but when her mum turned up for her massage she was the real Italian Nonna. She was only short, up to my shoulder height, quite sturdy and dressed in all black. It was her 80th birthday, and this was her first ever massage.

I can’t remember her name, but I do remember her being shy ( understandable) and English not being easy for her so we were talking louder (as you do) helped with hand gestures to keep communications along.

For the massage plan I asked whether she had any pains - back or neck perhaps? The look on her face said she had nothing, no pains to report, until she remembered and bunched her hands up into round fists holding them up to me saying - “My hands. From-a mowing the lawn-a”.

It was utterly delightful working with this client's mum and to me this was just a small illustration of the healthspan concept (though I didn’t know it by name till years later). And while mowing the lawn might not be the thing we’d picture ourselves doing in our 80’s (or look forward to especially) it was impressive that she could do it and also, here she was, enjoying time with her daughter and trying her first ever massage.

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‘Lifespan’ is about length of life and ‘healthspan’ is about the length and quality of those years.

Healthspan as a concept is relatively new. It's a concept that emerged in the late 80’s and has become gradually more well known and has been elaborated by Dr Peter Attia (you can find his work online and he has a recent book, ‘Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity).

It’s about extending the span of time lived in good health to keep doing the things we need to do and love to do, and lifestyle measures that delay chronic disease onset - so that our healthspan takes up as much of our lifespan as possible.

Studies of centenarians have really shone a light on this idea; those that live to one hundred years and beyond don’t just live longer - they live healthier, longer.

For both centenarians and those living the ‘average lifespan’ ( 83yrs here in Australia) the length of time in ‘functional decline’ (where there’s a loss of independence due to ill health) is about the same. What’s different between centenarians and others is that, this decline happens 20 or so years later compared to those with the ‘average lifespan’.

That extra 20 years of life of the centenarian groups is enjoyed within their healthspan.

Another dimension to this is simply the amount of time that (on average) is spent living with the onset of chronic conditions (and seeing quality of life and independence slip away) - i.e. outside of our healthspan.

Borrowing from US studies, it’s just shy of 20% of the average lifetime.

The great big silver lining here is that we can influence our future health and the measures required are available to everyone. They are simple as attending to

• Exercise

• Diet

• Stress management

• Sleep

• Social connection

Each of these can be straightforward to enhance or they can be a real deep dive into health,

a personal project.