Longevity science is increasing the “dose” of medicine applied to healthy people.

More testing and clinical attention may find disease earlier, but evidence is evolving.

Longevity’s great experiment may be discovering the optimal dose of care.

Longevity certainly seems to be the word of the day. There are longevity clinics, longevity conferences, longevity experts, longevity supplements, and a mind-bending collection of tests and technologies designed to drive both life extension and life expansion.

Of course, there's something very “vital” about the idea. Medicine has traditionally waited for something to go wrong, and longevity flips that model around. The idea is to measure earlier. And look deeper to find risk before it becomes disease. And increasingly, intervene before the problem even arrives—finding “stage zero” disease. And as medicine pushes to earlier and earlier detection, it might find itself adjacent to the elusive goal of prevention.

But there's a basic question hiding underneath all this enthusiasm. How much of what we now call longevity medicine is established medicine?

From Prevention to Prediction

A good deal of longevity medicine is conventional and well established. Things like exercise, maintaining bone and muscle mass, controlling blood pressure and cholesterol, avoiding smoking and managing metabolic disease aren't particularly cutting edge. And they have years of evidence behind them.

Today, longevity medicine has expanded the options. Whole-body MRI, biomarkers, genomic sequencing, disease risk scores, biological age........

© Psychology Today