Dr. Morgan Levine, age expert and Founding Principal Investigator at Altos Labs, challenges the notion of living longer by promoting the idea of healthspan over lifespan. She discusses the ‘compression of morbidity’ concept, aiming to minimize the time spent in ill health. Levine highlights the male-female survival paradox, where women live longer but suffer more from age-related illnesses. She advocates for equitable access to longevity science, emphasizing the importance of improving health over merely extending life.
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insights INSIGHT
Healthspan Versus Lifespan
Lifespan and healthspan are distinct concepts with different value to people.
Morgan Levine emphasizes optimizing healthspan over simply extending lifespan.
insights INSIGHT
Target Aging To Delay Many Diseases
Intervening in the biological aging process can delay multiple age-related diseases simultaneously.
Morgan Levine states the goal is to prolong healthy functioning, with longer life as a bonus.
insights INSIGHT
The Male–Female Survival Paradox
Women tend to live longer but experience more years with age-related disability.
Morgan Levine highlights the male-female survival paradox to question whether longer life always means better life.
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Age expert Dr. Morgan Levine explains why living to 100 is the wrong goal.
Dr. Morgan Levine suggests that we should aim for living better, not just longer. In her book, “True Age,” Levine introduces the idea of healthspan, which is about staying healthy and enjoying life, rather than merely adding years to it.
She explores the concept of “compression of morbidity,” a goal to squeeze most of our inevitable ailments into a short period before we die, mirroring the patterns seen in people who live to 100 or more. Levine also highlights a paradox: Women generally outlive men, but they also endure more age-related illnesses.
Ultimately, she argues that the benefits of longevity science should be accessible to everyone, with the goal of health disparities rather than increasing them.
0:00 The immortality obsession
0:30 The male-female survival paradox
1:34 Prolonging healthy life
2:07 Squeezing morbidity into fewer years
3:05 LIfe extension for all
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About Morgan Levine: Morgan Levine was previously a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the department of Pathology at Yale University where she ran the Laboratory for Aging in Living Systems. In 2022, she was recruited to join Altos Labs as a Founding Principal Investigator at the San Diego Institute of Science. She currently leads a research group at Altos Labs working at the intersection of bioinformatics, cellular biology, complex systems, and biostatistics with the overall goal of understanding the molecular trajectories aging cells, tissues, and organisms take through time.
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