Many of us will surpass the age of 90. Advancements in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare will likely make this a reality. The number of years you live is an easy metric – Lifespan.
But the quality of this journey is subjective. Will your life be a chain of chronic diseases, or will you remain relatively disease-free? This ‘quality of life’ metric is Healthspan.
Longevity is a function of both.
A very long lifespan in the absence of healthspan will be miserable. Conversely, a wonderful healthspan with an insufficient lifespan is undesirable.
Lifespan is a linear function. All you need to do is stay alive. Somehow.
Healthspan? That’s slippery… and heavily biased against you.
Why? Because our default factory settings are terrible. Evolution didn’t design us to be centenarians. Its priority was to get us to reproduce, raise our offspring to survive, and then step aside. Evolution doesn’t care if you want to appear on the cover of Time at 50 or run marathons at 70. From its perspective, you’re dead meat once you’ve become a grandparent by 30.
Take arteriosclerosis (heart disease), for example – the great equalizer. In this podcast, Dr. Peter Attia explains how this disease begins its work in childhood:
“It’s a slow burn process. About 50% of men who are going to have a coronary event in their lives will have it by the age of 65. If you want to prevent that, you can’t wait until you are 50. We must take prevention much more seriously… and as soon as possible.” – Peter Attia
Healthspan is the deliberate act of ‘balancing our energies daily’ between mind and body activities.
It’s a choice: Do you dedicate every day to the service of success, grinding through a 40+ hour workweek in the illusion of a happy and active future? Or do you practice mindful productivity, spending only the necessary hours on meaningful work and using the rest of your day soaking in the deep sea of your conscious well-being?
The state of your body’s inflammation is a far more accurate predictor of your future happiness and success than the stress you take over inflation, taxflation, and monetization… combined.
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🍪Fortune Cookie:
“What gets measured, gets managed.”
Unfortunately, we measure only the immediate and easily quantifiable: income growth, hours worked, steps walked, calories burned, and so on.
Metrics to measure a well-lived, happy, and mindful life do not exist. These concepts are deeply subjective, multidimensional, and evolve with your priorities.
So you are perpetually stuck mistaking the map (lifespan) for the territory (healthspan).
But here’s the good news: there are healthspan proxies – great alternative metrics to guide us.
Nikhil Kabadi 