What is Your Healthspan?

COMMUNITY What Is Your Healthspan?

Dr. Tanya Carroccio, DNP

We’ve all heard of “lifespan,” or the amount of time one lives from birth to death. But most haven’t heard about healthspan. This is the time in a person’s life spent in good health, without decline from chronic illness, suffering from disability of symptoms, or aging. Most of my client’s will say they are in “pretty good health.” However, when we start deep diving, many are on two or more medications or suffer from aches and pains, gastrointestinal issues, or have some chronic illness and ongoing symptoms. How did we decide that this is considered good health? My conventional medicine colleagues will often tell patients that their symptoms are “just a part of getting older” and they should expect continued decline. Not true! Most people think that a prescription to help alleviate symptoms is a type of cure, without ever getting to the root-cause of the problem. We can improve our healthspan at any age. We can slow or even reverse aging by eliminating aging accelerators, such as: Negative Attitude, as people who are negative often are sicker that those with a more positive outlook. Smoking and/or excessive alcohol use causes damage to our mitochondria, the powerhouse of all our cells.

Processed foods/fast foods/excessive dairy and sugar are like poison to our cells, causing inflammation and rapid aging and chronic disease. Lacking whole, organic foods in our diet reduces the number of good bacteria in your gut, which regulates overall health. Being too heavy or too thin are both signs of chronic inflammation and disease.

Lack of exercise increases mortality and chronic disease. Chronic stress causes increased insulin resistance and accelerated aging. More than two prescription meds daily accelerates aging by chemically restructuring our cells. By incorporating a functional medicine practitioner, you can identify areas of improvement to reduce chronic disease, pharmaceuticals, and improve overall healthspan. Functional medicine practitioners are experts at root-cause medicine and whole-body health. https://www.ifm.org/find-a-practitioner/ Note: Dr. Tanya Carroccio, DNP, a nurse practitioner and owner of a functional medicine and regenerative aesthetics practice in Surprise, lives in Corte Bella. For more information on Dr. Carroccio, please visit www.Benehealth.com.