Unhealthy longevity has become the worst pandemic of the 21st century. In the United States, 90 percent of the population over age 65 suffers from one or more degenerative diseases related to accelerated and unhealthy aging, from diabetes to autoimmune diseases, kidney, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, and bone and joint diseases, and cancer. In addition to human suffering, this challenge imposes unsustainable health care costs, which already amount to $4.7 trillion a year (20 percent of GDP) in the United States alone.
What can we do to reverse this trend?
Maximizing physical and mental health lifespan requires a cross-cutting and inclusive “Healthspan Medicine” strategy, which includes 4 levels of intervention:
- Preventing people from becoming patients (predictive diagnostics to identify and neutralize invisible risk factors that precede disease progression by years);
- reversing disease progression in the early stages;
- treat those already affected;
- prevent disease recurrence after initial therapeutic success.
In the lecture scheduled at the Italian Cultural Institute in Miami on Wednesday, May 14, starting with his essays The Code of Healthy Longevity and Therapeutic Revolution (both published in Italy by Mondadori, Professor Camillo Ricordi will explain how we could change health care as we know it today and improve healthspan. This concludes the series of talks dedicated to the Miami celebration of Italian Research Day.