Precision Health and Longevity Summit Overview
Last Saturday, BioAro hosted the first Precision Health and Longevity Summit in Canada, and I was lucky enough to be both an attendee and volunteer! I got to hear some insights into many different things revolving around health and longevity at this summit, as well as get to meet some incredible people doing amazing things in these fields.
As both a volunteer and an attendee, not only did I get to experience the summit like everyone else, but I also got to meet more people and build deeper connections while in a volunteer role. My responsibility was to work at the media wall and take photos of both speakers and attendees, along with taking videos of those during an interview. I got to do this role with Sophia Dhami and Alina Semenenko, our head volunteer, and volunteer along with Arissai Filleul, Joel Almadas, and Donald Phan. Everyone was amazing and it was great to work with them!
At the media wall, I got to listen to speakers and attendees tell their story and what fuels them to work in the fields of health and longevity. It was so wonderful to see the diversity of people at the summit and how they contribute to the advancements of these fields.
Getting to listen to some of the talks at the summit was so eye-opening because it broadened my perspective on the idea of longevity. Longevity is more than health and medicine, but really a combination of the person’s entire lifestyle. It was mentioned that longevity is a combination of your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health, and that really stuck with me. The goal is to increase the human health span, which is the number of healthy years a person has, rather than the human lifespan, which is merely how long someone can live for, healthy or not. In order to have as many healthy years as we can, we need to target out entire lifestyle and all aspects of it as a whole, not just our physical wellness.
Some fields that connect with longevity that may not cross your mind, which really stood out to me from the summit, are housing and workplace environment. Here are my takeaways from those talks:
Speaker John Brown: When you get older, you are most likely going to live in a nursing home or have someone look after you. The point is, you may not feel independent in your own living space. Being treated differently from others in society because of your age can also make you feel detached from the rest of the community. Most importantly, you may feel like you have no actual purpose, no drive for living. These factors will influence your mental well-being in that stage of your life, and it can even become difficult to carry on and find the motivation to keep living through it all and make the most of what you have left. Housing, specifically designed for older people or people who have difficulties moving around on their own, will support the extra needs those people have and be more accessible to them. Whether that be railings all around the house, open floor plans, or slip-resistant flooring, the purpose of these accommodating houses are to make people who require support feel more independent and connected to society. That way, the space they are living in also contributes to their happiness and overall well-being.
Speaker Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett: We usually spend most of our waking hours at work, for the average person, and in order to increase the human health span, we need to pay attention to what your body and mind are going through during those work hours. Our workplaces can usually cause a lot of stress and anxiety, which can cause your body to take a physical toll or your mind to feel constantly overwhelmed, which can all contribute to the possibility of experiencing burnout. In order to ensure we reach our maximum human health span, we need to address those problems our workplace environments can produce. Looking at solutions like proper training, flexible scheduling, better skill evaluation for job requirements, and more can help to combat those issues.
Around the summit, there were different booths, each one highlighting the work BioAro has done around the field of micro biome testing. Micro biome testing is where you get a sample from your body, depending on what specifically you are testing, run it through a lab, and that sample can tell you the ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, and viruses in your body and how it contributes to your overall health. For example, you could be lacking one bacteria type, and that may cause you to have inflamed skin. Or you can have too much of one bacteria type, and that may cause constipation. Depending on what you’re testing for, like completing a skin micro biome test or a gut micro biome test, you can get tailored treatments to help balance out your micro biome and mitigate any problems you might be having. Each attendee got to take home one micro biome testing kit, and I chose the gut micro biome testing kit to use.
Some other content we got to learn about listen to at the summit revolving around the advancements in human longevity included genome sequencing and the benefits, precision medicine, and AI being used in fields for longevity. Another part of the summit that was really impactful was meeting people and hearing about what they do. Being an attendee and getting to interact with other attendees and speakers was so interesting because I got to learn more about the different types of people who attended, and how each one has their own passion and their own purpose that connects with health or longevity. It also exposed me to real-world work and jobs in these spaces, broadening my knowledge and expanding my awareness of the options I have.
The summit hosted by Dr. Anmol Kapoor and Raman Kapoor was so insightful, and I’m excited to see where the future of BioAro and the future of longevity and health go as more people work in these fields and become more aware! The advancements being made reflect a promising future for the next generation!
