Page 50 - Tracy Anderson Magazine - Fall 2021

You eat well, you exercise, you get your annual wellness systems. It’s how old you are based on your body and not
check, and your doctor says your labs are all “normal.” just your birthday. While your chronological age may be
Sometimes you may feel a little tired, have this ache or that 37, your heart may be working like the average 25-year-old
pain, notice a sagging chin or waning libido, and your doc- (CardioAge 25), thanks to all your high-intensity cardiovas-
tor says, “That’s just normal aging.” cular training, while your PulmoAge comes in at 52, thanks
to maybe a touch of asthma or a history of smoking, and your
This is the embodiment of traditional medicine’s focus on NeuroAge at 48, perhaps due to some sleep deficit.
disease rather than on declining function and appearance.
In this third millennium, is that the best we can do? Being The composite PhysioAge is an excellent indicator of a per-
normal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially as many lab- son’s functional status and longevity potential. A person
oratory and functional performance tests are age-adjust- whose biomarkers indicate a young physiological age is on
ed, and what’s “normal” at 55 wouldn’t have been normal the road to living longer and healthier. And it gives some-
during your peak health, which for most people is around one whose physiological age has overtaken their chronolog-
age 25. ical age a chance to slow or reverse the process. Tracking it
over time enables doctors to know whether the therapies
I think of aging as a disease process that slips in through the they’re prescribing—along with the lifestyle, diet, and exer-
back door, taking hold when we’re still in our twenties, a cise changes their patients are making—are having a posi-
decade at least before most people start tive impact on their aging trajectory. We
thinking about it. It begins gradually, can even tell patients how much they age
causing subtle changes in the function biologically in the past year, which gives
of our various organ systems. It comes them a rate of aging that can predict fu-
in a thousand shades of gray and won’t ture functional status and even longevity.
show up in the tests you’re given at a typ-
ical yearly physical. As we get older, it’s At Raffaele Medical, our treatment
mainly genetic inheritance and lifestyle approach draws from an explosion in
that determine if and when the aging knowledge from two fields: gerontology,
process flies under the radar or mani- the study of the aging process, and en-
fests in officially labeled disease. docrinology, the study of the effects of
hormones on our health. It also draws
Longevity medicine takes a different view from research establishing the impor-
from disease-based care that broadly tance of chronic inflammation, telomere
recommends preventive-health practic- Dr. Joseph shortening, and epigenetic changes in
es and “age-appropriate” screening for Raffaele disease and aging. We treat adults of all
disease. This new and expanding field—a ages through an individualized program
subspecialty I became interested in during my years as a gen- after an extensive baseline evaluation that includes genetic
eral internist—operates on the premise that aging is neither and lifestyle factors. Their care plan may involve nutrient op-
planned nor inevitable and can be tracked by a multitude of timization, lifestyle interventions, hormone optimizations,
biomarkers evaluated by “optimal” rather than “normal” peptides, and other pharmaceuticals.
range standards.
We believe our approach is the best way to expand the
PhysioAge Analytics is a web-based system I created to help health span by maintaining high performance and pre-
me, and many other doctors around the world, practice venting disease. The goal of medicine should be not only to
personalized health optimization across the lifespan of my treat and prevent disease, but also to preserve function so
patients. I see each patient as an N=1, longitudinal lifelong that one can die young as old as possible. ■
clinical trial in which a large array of biomarkers (labs and
other functional and diagnostic testing) is measured at Dr. Joseph Raffaele has been exclusively practicing longevity med-
baseline and then monitored periodically. This approach icine from his Central Park South office for more than 20 years.
HO W TO DIE Y OUNG process and optimal functioning. It’s the ultimate in cus- hormone optimization, immune system rejuvenation, and monitor-
He lectures internationally on the science of healthy aging through
tells us whether or not a therapy is working for their aging
ing biomarkers of aging. He is a pioneer in the clinical application
tomized medicine.
of telomere science. A graduate of Princeton University, Dr. Raffa-
( A S OLD A S POS SIBLE ) Our algorithms calculate the equivalent physiological age ele received his medical degree from Drexel University and trained
of seven important body systems, nine biomarkers of aging,
in internal medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center. He posts
and a growing number of aging and disease risk markers. regularly on @RaffaeleMD about the latest science of aging news
Your PhysioAge is the aggregate age of your major organ and ways to increase your health span.
Dr. Joseph Raffaele shares his approach to increasing your longevity.

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