Abstract
“Anti-aging medicine” is a form of medicine that seeks to understand the “processes” by which diseases (problems) emerge with age and to avoid or alleviate them with medical intervention. Seeing age as the “preparatory state” for the emergence of disease, anti-aging medicine attempts to minimize risks leading to death through ideal lifestyle habits. General preventive medicine in Japan is primarily focused on “secondary prevention”; in other words, the detection of problems that already exist in the body. However, anti-aging medicine has a stronger element of “primary prevention,” which puts the spotlight on health promotion.
In Japan, “anti-aging health check-ups” that focus on early detection and improvement of agerelated symptoms and disorders have been available primarily in urban areas since 1991. The examinations conducting during these check-ups are generally classified into those concentrating on “degree of aging” to learn the extent to which the person has aged, and those concentrating on “age risk factors” that influence aging. The main focal points of the former are arterial sclerosis (blood vessels), various hormones, function of the nervous system, bone mineral, and muscles (motor function). The latter check-ups are for metabolism and saccharification, lifestyle habits, oxidative stress, physical stress, and immunity. Anti-aging heath check-ups involve a number of tests that are not performed during ordinary health check-ups.
The purpose of an anti-aging health check-up is to extend healthy life expectancy. Thus, a checkup can only be called an “anti-aging” check-up if the person who underwent it receives proper guidance (such as coaching type of medical advices) based on examined results. Tokai University Tokyo Hospital has begun offering anti-aging health check-ups since June 2006, and the number of people who have received one has exceeded 1,000. For a number of items, we had confirmed improvements in which age-related changes clearly occurred following guidance.
Japan is on its way to becoming a super-aging society. Thus, in itself, the idea of “anti-aging health check-ups” that increase the number of “healthy senior citizens” is probably valid in view of the need to control national healthcare costs and to brake declines in domestic spending and labor power by promoting increase of healthier elderly. However, care must be taken to avoid giving excessive attention to items whose significance and effect are unproven in the name of innovation. No matter the circumstances, it will be important to conduct check-ups based on evidence with the goal of extending healthy life expectancy, to conduct logical evaluations that disclose contradicting evidence, and to present sufficient information and other options to users. It will further be important for check-up providers to constantly verify that they are on the right path.
