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Healthspan: What It Is and Why You Should Care - E68
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What is healthspan?
You may have heard the word, but what does it actually mean?
Living longer isn’t the real challenge - it's spending those extra years feeling strong, clear-minded, and truly alive.
Most of us chase the number on the calendar, counting birthdays and hoping for longevity. But we rarely stop to ask how many of those years are spent fighting chronic illness, running low on energy, and losing out on what makes life enjoyable. The line between “lifespan” and “healthspan” is the difference between simply surviving and thriving.
This episode is the first of a micro series diving into what healthspan actually means. Join me to learn why it’s becoming urgent, and what steps can help you add vitality - not just years - to your life.
In this episode you will learn:
- The clear difference between lifespan and healthspan, using simple road and car analogies.
- Why healthspan matters more than just living longer, and how it relates to real life quality.
- The history and growing scientific focus on healthspan, with roots going back to the 1980s.
- How biological age shows the true state of your health, beyond just the number of birthdays.
- The major health gap in the US, where many live long but much of that time is unhealthy.
- Why focusing on healthspan is not a trend, but a shift toward adding energy and clarity to daily life.
Resources
- Connect with Andrew on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mandrewmcconnell
- Follow Alively on Instagram for regular updates and insights: https://www.instagram.com/alively_official
- Learn more about healthspan from Andrew’s blog: https://www.mandrewmcconnell.com/blog
This podcast was produced by the team at Zapods Podcast Agency:
Find the products, practices, and routines discussed on the Alively website:
Recommended
Transcript
Understanding Chronological vs. Biological Age
00:00:00
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Two classic cars. They were manufactured the same year. But one was kept in a climate-controlled garage. It was meticulously maintained and polished and driven carefully. The other was left outside in the rain and the snow. It was driven hard and rarely serviced.
00:00:15
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That's the difference between chronological and biological age.
Healthspan vs. Lifespan: What Matters?
00:00:23
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This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
00:00:36
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Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Home Healthspan. In our first season, we met some of the world's most incredible Healthspan role models.
00:00:47
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But as i reviewed everything we covered and captured and shared, ah realized I didn't do a very good job in setting the table on what HealthSpan actually is.
00:01:00
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This micro series of five episodes is going to change that. So we're all told that living to 100 is the new goal. It's presented as the ultimate prize of modern medicine.
00:01:14
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All can be centenarians. But let's pause and really think about that. What if those last 15 or even 20 years are spent battling chronic illnesses in and out of hospitals and working with the body and oftentimes a mind that means you can't any longer do the things you love?
00:01:39
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What if the real goal isn't really adding years to your life, but adding life to your years?
Differentiating Lifespan and Healthspan with Metaphors
00:01:47
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Today we're talking about the most important number you've probably never tracked, your health span.
00:01:54
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This will kick off a series on the concept of health span specifically. As this podcast is the home health span, today we're starting to actually dive in to what that means.
00:02:07
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So let's get started on solid ground. And we need to establish some clear, memorable definitions. The first term is one we probably all know, and that's lifespan.
00:02:20
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Lifespan is simple. It's a quantitative measure. It's the total number of years you're alive, from birth to your death. It's concept we're familiar with.
00:02:33
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And an effective analogy to kind of set it all up is to think of lifespan as the length of the road, right? The start and finish, the road you're driving on your life.
00:02:44
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It has a starting point. It has an ending point. And that distance between the two, that is your lifespan. It's a number. But the term this podcast is focused on in this series is healthspan.
00:02:58
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And it's different. It's a qualitative measure, meaning it's defined as the period of your life spent in good health. Not just how long your life, but how long you're healthy and alive, free from chronic disease or significant disability.
00:03:14
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So let's go back to that road analogy. If lifespan is the total length of the road, your health span is a portion of that road that's well-paid, that it's smooth and it's enjoyable to drive on and it's free of obstacles.
00:03:28
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It's a part of the journey where the sun is shining down on you, the scenery is beautiful, and your car is running perfectly. The end of health span, you're still going on the road, but it's where that road starts to crumble.
00:03:42
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It's where you encounter the potholes of chronic illness, detours to constant hospital visits, and a general breakdown that prevents you from enjoying the drive.
The Rise of Healthspan in Academia
00:03:54
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The core distinction is this. global focus that is pivoting from a singular obsession with the sheer quantity of years we live to the more nuanced and vital goal of enhancing the quality of those years.
00:04:11
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It's about maintaining full physical and cognitive function for as long as possible. We're shifting the goal from merely living longer to living better.
00:04:24
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Now you might be hearing this term healthspan more and more, and it's easy to dismiss it as just another wellness buzzword, a fad for social media and easy clicks. But this isn't a marketing term invented in the past week or month or year.
00:04:39
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To lend scientific credibility the concept, it's crucial to trace its history. The term's recent surge in popularity is quantifiable, and it's significant.
00:04:51
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Consider this, the number of academic papers on the medical database PubMed that mention healthspan has exploded. So before the year 2000, there were only 14 such papers in all of PubMed.
00:05:07
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By 2024, so 24 years later, this exponential growth proves that healthspan is a serious and rapidly expanding field of scientific inquiry, not some fleeting trend that's going to disappear overnight.
00:05:22
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And while Merriam-Webster defines the term is used as far back as 1931,
00:05:30
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The modern scientific framing for the word healthspan is widely credited to two pioneering gerontologists, John Rowe and Robert Kahn. In the 1980s, a field of aging research was almost entirely focused on treating diseases of old age as separate problems.
00:05:51
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Heart disease over here, cancer over there. Roe and Kahn proposed a paradigm shift in a landmark 1987 article in the prestigious journal Science.
00:06:02
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They declared that a corresponding increase in, quote, health span, then they used two words, was the maintenance of full function as nearly as possible to the end of life, and that it should be the next gerontological goal.
00:06:19
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They had the foresight to see the problem we'd be facing today. This historical context is so important because it positions this entire conversation within a respected scientific framework grounded in decades of dedicated research.
00:06:36
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So it's a scientific concept with a history. But how do we make this idea tangible and personal to you?
The Impact of Life Circumstances on Biological Age
00:06:45
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Well, we do it by introducing two more concepts that you might be familiar with or may not.
00:06:51
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idea of chronological age and biological age. So chronological age is one you're used to. It's straightforward. It's what you're used to celebrating each year on your birthday.
00:07:03
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It's the number of birthdays you've had. So how many years you've been alive chronologically. It's fixed and unchangeable other than by father time. If you're 50 years old, you're 50 years old.
00:07:15
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That's the end of the story. Biological age, however, is ah much more dynamic and informative measure for our purposes. It reflects how your body is aging on a cellular and physiological level.
00:07:31
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It's a measure of your true functional health, taking into account a whole host of biomarkers and lifestyle factors. Your biological age can be significantly different from your chronological age.
00:07:46
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Think of it like two classic cars. They were manufactured the same year. They have the same chronological age. They're both made in 1955.
00:07:56
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But one was kept in a climate-controlled garage. It was meticulous maintained and polished and driven carefully. The other was left outside in the rain and the snow. It was driven hard and rarely serviced.
00:08:10
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Which one of those two classic vehicles do you think runs better? which has more rust and decay. That's the difference between chronological and biological age.
00:08:23
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And here's the key. The fundamental goal of extending your health span can be effectively framed as an effort to lower your biological age relative to your chronological age.
00:08:36
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To understand how profound this difference can be, here's a powerful and sobering real-world example. Studies have shown that due to prolonged exposure to extreme stress, poor nutrition, and harsh living conditions, older homeless adults often experience a form of premature aging.
00:08:56
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Their biological age is often 10 to 20 years older than their chronological age. makes the concept immediate and it's tragically clear.
00:09:07
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Our life circumstances and our daily choices have a massive, measurable impact on our aging process.
Shifting Focus: From Longevity to Quality of Life
00:09:15
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This brings us to the final and perhaps most important question for today's episode.
00:09:21
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Why this topic so urgent right now? There's a massive societal and scientific shift happening. The global health conversation is fundamentally changing, moving away from a focus simply on prolonging life toward enhancing the quality of those extended years.
00:09:41
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This change is a direct and necessary response to both the successes and the limitations of 20th century medicine. Think about it. The last century's medical model cured deadly infections, vaccines eradicated diseases, emergency procedures, stopped a heart attack in its tracks.
00:10:03
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These triumphs meant people were surviving illnesses that would have killed our ancestors. But in doing so, modern medicine inadvertently created a new challenge, a prolonged period in late-life morbidity or sickness.
00:10:19
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We become very good at keeping people from dying, but not necessarily very good at keeping them healthy. In a lot of ways, we're getting less healthy. The result is that many people now live for years, sometimes even decades, with these chronic conditions.
00:10:38
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And as Roe and Kahn predicted back in 1987, focusing on healthspan is our next gerontological goal. precisely because we largely achieved the previous one of extending our lifespan.
00:10:53
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And that success revealed its own set of unintended consequences. For disadvantaged communities that have long borne the burden of health inequities, the pursuit of extending healthspan is even now being framed as a act of justice.
00:11:10
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It's about ensuring that everyone has the opportunity not just to live longer, but to live better. Now in the spirit of scientific honesty, it's important to acknowledge that there is currently no single standardized definition of healthspan within the scientific community.
00:11:28
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This can make it hard to compare data across different studies. What is healthy? What is your healthspan versus chronological age, which is subjective? But while scientists work on a technical definition, the goal for us is still clear.
Defining Healthspan: Disease-Free Living
00:11:43
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So for our journey together in this series, we'll use a straightforward and actionable definition between us. And so we'll define healthspan as the years of life free from disease and disability where you maintain high physical and cognitive function.
00:12:01
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Let that sink in. yeah The years of life free from disease or disability where you maintain high physical and cognitive function.
00:12:14
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It's not just about avoiding disease. It's about maintaining high function. It's about having the physical energy and the mental clarity to live a full and active life for as long as possible.
00:12:27
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So that's our foundation. We defined healthspan. We understand where it came from. And we've made it personal. We are moving beyond just counting the years of our life to focusing on the life in our years.
Preview: The Longevity Paradox - A Question of Quality?
00:12:44
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In the next episode in the series, we'll build on this by creating a sense of urgency. We'll dive into the compelling and frankly shocking data behind what's called the longevity paradox.
00:12:56
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Why we're living longer, but we're sicker than ever. And why the United States in particular has the largest gap between lifespan and health span in the entire world.
00:13:09
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Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other Healthspan role models on Alively.com.
00:13:22
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Enjoy a lively day.