Thought leadership in healthy longevity

Health Performance is how you feel today.

Do you wake feeling full of energy and free of pain with a sharp, clear mind? And stay that way through the day, everyday?

If so, how can you confidently maintain that state throughout your life.

And if not, how can the bad drivers that could be weakening your immunity and reducing your vitality be counterbalanced and overcome? How can your health and immunity be boosted to bring you back to the state of a healthy young adult?

Viavi have found that this can be managed, as long as all of the elements of your health are addressed together in the context of your health fundamentals, to maximise your healthy longevity.

Absence/management of ill-health

Healthy Longevity also depends on the absence or management of ill health.

There are four sets of health insults that act to reduce your Healthy Longevity:

• Chronic diseases, such as cancer, Alzheimers, cardiovascular disease or autoimmune conditions
• Physical trauma, due to accidents or environment
• Emotional issues, traumas and fatigue
• Unintended impacts of medications and surgical interventions

Not all health insults can be cured or removed, but those still  need to be identified and managed to minimise their negative impact and maximise healthy longevity.

Viavi uses state-of the art diagnostic tools to identify and analyse any emerging or evident ill-health, and then to understand their root causes and complications so they can be effectively overcome or managed.

There are five health pillars, each of which must be as strong as possible to support healthy longevity:

• Physical health – how well are your cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems working?
• Nutritional health – how well-nourished are you? How well-suited is your diet to your individual genetic, metabolic and microbiome needs?
• Cognitive health – is your brain working to its full potential and protected from future deterioration?
• Mental health – how are you feeling? is stress affecting the quality of your life?
• Endocrine health – how well is your hormonal system working?

Each of these affects your health performance, and your proclivity for ill-health.

Viavi understand how each is in turn affected by the layers that underpin them – your cellular and microbiome health, and your individual health foundations such as DNA and lifestyle.

While you cannot see what is happening within your own body at a cellular level, what is happening within your cells affects every aspect of your health. All cells renew – and the environment the new cells forms in will affect its performance. So you have an opportunity to dramatically change cellular performance within a year. Yet cellular performance is typically missed by most health assessments.

Your individual cellular health needs to be understood well in order to maximise healthy longevity. Viavi’s uniquely deep level of analysis includes cellular:

• Toxicity – are there toxins affecting your cellular functioning and performance?
• Inflammation – are you suffering from cellular inflammation which speeds up the aging process?
• Mitochondrial dysfunction – which is widely implicated in ageing and in the diseases of ageing
• Methylation – a mechanism of cellular memory and gene expression which is important for DNA repair and cancer prevention

Other presenting problems and ill health can often be the result of underlying issues at a cellular level, so unless these are understood and addressed, Healthy Longevity cannot be assured.

The microbiome is the collection of all microbes, such as bacteria, fungi and viruses in and on our bodies.

There are about 6 times as many microbes in our systems as there are cells, and most of these are essential for good health.

Viavi’s clinical practice has proved managing the microbiome, particularly in the gut, to be a critical element in relieving problems in the health pillars, including mental health. For example:

• Changing the gut bacteria has proved to significantly reduce anxiety, even in cases where severe mental conditions had inhibited the capability to work or communicate.
• Managing the gut bacteria can reduce the risk of autoimmune diseases

Microbiome health is a critical layer in the development of Healthy Longevity, and is important to help improve/optimise your response to chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

In order to create a personalised health strategy that will maximise your Healthy Longevity, it is essential for it to be based on a full understanding of your health foundations:

• DNA – everyone’s DNA is different, so understanding how your genetics affect modifiable risk factors and your response to medications is fundamental
• Epigenetics — the way that individual genes are turned on and off
• Lifestyle — including work pressures and stresses, pursuing your purpose and living according to own values as well as what you do for enjoyment
• Medical History — the conditions you have experienced, and any clinical interventions that you have had to treat them

These Health Foundation are unique to you. They will determine the likelihood of you getting conditions and more importantly determine how to avoid and manage these risks, as well as how you will respond to different interventions. Only by understanding these in combination can Viavi create an effective health strategy that will meet your personal needs and inclinations and so deliver Healthy Longevity.