"A longer healthspan means spending more years of life in good health"

Healthspan is the period of life without functional limitations, chronic diseases. and disability but with a beginning loss of functional capacity symbolized by a change from green to orange colour (a).

This period may be prolonged by curative medicine (b), but longer disability may also occur. Optimal healthspan can potentially be achieved by preserving or improving the functional abilities of the organism and therefore lead to a shorter period of functional limitations, chronic diseases, and disability at the end of life (c). Good physical fitness is thought to contribute to best healthspan.

Healthspan is a relatively new term that was first seen in 1987, but its use has increased over the last few years. Healthspan is defined as the years of life spent in good health without serious illness, disability or age-related chronic disease. The term is an useful companion to lifespan because it emphasizes that it’s not just about living longer; it’s about living longer in good health.

For longevity research and healthcare, the distinction is important because it puts the focus not only on extending life but also compressing morbidity, which means delaying the onset of age-related chronic disease while possible. We all die of something. Death “by natural causes” is misleading and unscientific because there is always a medical cause or potentially multiple potential causes (e.g. heart failure, infection). It is just not always easy to determine what the exact cause of death was.

Current healthcare models primarily focus on addressing the symptoms of individual diseases, and those diseases are treated as if they are independent of each other. But many diseases are related and have common risk factors. Older people often suffer from more than one condition at a time. A new paradigm is emerging that views aging as a disease itself with many manifestations in the form of specific chronic diseases. The new model should ideally attempt to address the fundamental causes of the biological aging process, in the hopes of increasing healthspan for everyone. Curing individual chronic diseases would only add a few years to the average human lifespan, in order to live longer, it is necessary to slow the aging process.