VividLife takes an inside out approach to wellness and longevity. We are huge advocates for regular and thorough health tests and checks. Some of the tests we recommend are free or inexpensive, some are not. Here we make the recommendations and how you can get the tests.  It is up to you how far you go. The reality is however, that many of the things that will shorten your life, or shorten the quality of your life are only going to be discovered by taking a look inside your body and the technology is very much available to do that.  One of the founders of US longevity company Fountain Life describes it as the difference between driving with your eyes open as opposed to driving with your eyes shut.

Our goal here is prevention or worst case, early detection, of the conditions that might shorten your life.  If something looks like it might go wrong or is starting to going wrong, the earlier it is addressed, the less invasive the treatment will be and the higher the chance of success will be.

Similarly, when we understand the indicators from your body, we can best tailor our recommendations to you for what to do next.  Our overall goal is to recommend a number of lifestyle choices to you that are geroprotective (protective against the effects of aging).

There are a number of actions essential to sustaining life.  We all do them to a greater or lesser extent.  These include things like sleeping, eating and exercising.  Then there are lifestyle activities like socialising and hobbies.

To support those actions we take in exogenous molecules in all sorts of forms, solid foods, whole foods, liquids, vitamins, supplements, and medicines.  These are all substances that contain molecules that affect our ability to perform short term, help our body deal with its issues, be comfortable and strong, and live a vibrant long life.

We can all take in exogenous molecules that will damage our cells and shorten our lives. Things such as cigarette smoke, excessive quantities of alcohol, ultra and hyper processed foods are examples of substances that are proven to cause damage at a cellular level.

Conversely, we can take in exogenous molecules that are geroprotective.  To live longer we must give our body everything it needs to be healthy and strong and delay the onset of chronic disease.  Our ultimate goal is to push out the onset of the conditions that will rob you of the enjoyment of life or that might end your life early.  These diseases fall broadly into 6 categories and are as follows:

• cardiovascular disease,
• cerebral vascular disease,
• cancer,
• neurodegenerative disease,
• dementing diseases, and,
• metabolic diseases.

VividLife makes recommendations on tests you can have done and programmes to monitor known indicators of the progressions of these diseases.

There are medications you can take that will have a direct and targeted effect on slowing some of them down such as a low dose statin for cardiovascular and cerebral vascular disease or metformin for insulin resistance which is one of a broad range of metabolic diseases.

There is a medicine called Rapamycin that, from all indications so far, is geroprotective.  Then there are a range of vitamins and supplements that are generally geroprotective.  They are proven to have a general, wide spread effect on your long-term wellbeing and enjoyment of life.  These target the hallmarks and pathways of aging rather than being disease specific.