This article is published in issue 14 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until April 3, 2024.
It’s nice to live up to 100 years of age, but how to get there while best preserving your psychophysical health? If on the one hand life expectancies are lengthening, on the other there is the risk of finding ourselves living with an illness or poor physical fitness. Medical research is increasingly focusing on the study of the mechanisms of cognitive decline, therapies to slow down aging, and drugs for cell renewal. All to be associated with a healthier lifestyle. Are we succeeding? It is too early for a definitive answer, considering that the most sophisticated studies have only recently begun. However, there is certainly time to start thinking about how to prolong our well-being. Here’s what tomorrow we’re already looking at.
«Bikini» medicine: it’s time for a change
Women live longer than men, but get sicker more in old age. «Osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, Alzheimer’s: starting from menopause, women are statistically more subject to chronic and debilitating pathologies that often attack the brain, the motor center of the body», he explains Antonella Santuccione Chadhaneuroscientist, co-founder and CEO of Women’s Brain Project of Zurich, a foundation that deals with the influence of sex and gender on mental and brain diseases. To the recent Longevity Summit of Milan, highlighted the reasons why women’s long lives are more critical: «Science has conducted very few studies on female health, limiting itself to the so-called “bikini medicine”, focused on the reproductive system: uterus, ovaries and breasts. It has always been thought that women were “a small man” and that everything else was the same, only smaller in size. In reality, women are an organism apart, and the difference is that men have been more included in clinical research and drug trials, which has not been the case for women, who have a greater risk of developing cognitive decline regardless of age.” Furthermore, «the highly developed female verbal ability allows the symptoms of neurodegeneration to be better masked. With the aggravating circumstance that, when diagnosed, women have a progression of the disease twice as fast as a man.” But why does this happen? «We still don’t know whether or not the cause is linked to the multitasking on which women’s lives are based. Certainly, sleep deprivation is a specific risk for dementia and women sleep very badly”, adds the neuroscientist.
Conceptual illustration showing a woman’s profile containing a nature scene with various plants, animals and objects.SAM FALCONER, DEBUT ART/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
«Since sleep cleans the brain of toxic proteins that are deposited there, it represents an important element of prevention. Furthermore, during menopause, the quality of sleep declines considerably, and here a question immediately arises: has this aspect been studied? No. Are we taking this into consideration? Let’s begin. Is this a problem? Yes. Women live longer but have a worse quality of life also because there is a lack of clinical research on menopause. It is true that it is something physiologically accepted, but it is also true that when we consider treatments, dosages and side effects there is no study that, in support of the therapeutic action of a drug, takes into account hormonal changes over the course of 5 or 6 menopausal years”, remarks the expert.
Furthermore, numerous studies have also highlighted a higher risk of depression for women. Among the causes, the fact that the female brain is more empathetic and therefore more subject to emotional overload, and the burden of care work, which still falls on women in 80% of cases. «Medicine is an evolving science, however in the world of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence it is no longer possible to ignore biological differences», underlines Santuccione Chadha, launching a proposal to fill the gap: «If up to now, in studies clinicians, we have mainly focused on the male body, in the next five years let’s focus on women.”
Conscious nutrition
Some studies confirm with ever greater incisiveness the damage that an excessively high-calorie diet causes in terms of cellular aging: in practice, we eat too much compared to what we consume. We also know that nutritional needs and health risks can vary significantly between men and women due to their biological, hormonal and metabolic differences. In the case of women, there are foods and nutrients whose deficiency at certain stages of life can negatively affect them.
“At a young age, a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D is essential for bone health,” he explains Hellas Dinnervice-rector and professor of Dietetics and Clinical Nutrition at the University of Pavia – Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics Unit, Ics Maugeri IRCCS, and member of the Scientific Committee of SoLongevity, who at Longevity Summit from Milan spoke about gender nutrition with a focus on women. «During pregnancy and breastfeeding, an integration of folic acid and iron is crucial for the correct development of the fetus and the prevention of anemia, while during menopause it is the intake of foods rich in isoflavones to become important: it can help reduce symptoms and maintain the bone mineral density».
One of the most common mistakes we often make during meals? «Not being aware of your portions and not listening to the body’s satiety signals. This happens because, also thanks to our lifestyle, we tend to eat too quickly, we don’t chew enough, we eat distractedly and this often leads to an excess of food consumed compared to the body’s real needs”, clarifies Cena .
Body weight is also an important parameter for evaluating health over time, although it is not the only indicator. «There are other factors to consider such as body composition, level of physical activity, diet, genetics and general health. A body weight considered “healthy” depends on the distribution of fat and the amount of muscle mass: one person may have a higher weight than another due to greater muscle mass, but be healthy and fit. Conversely, a high percentage of body fat to lean mass may be associated with an increased risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity.”
The night, the dreams, how many memories
The quality of sleep is also at the basis of psychophysical health. Just to give an example, in Italy there are over 4 million people who suffer from insomnia, and six out of ten are women. We know that good rest protects us from cognitive decline, that when we sleep the brain reprocesses memories, reorganizes them and preserves them better, and that dreams also have precise functions associated with well-being. The neuroscientist explains it Giulio Bernardiresearcher at the IMT School of Advanced Studies in Lucca and director of the project TweakDreams, which analyzes the profound mechanisms that regulate sleep and dreaming activity. «Our studies have found that sleep is deeper and more consolidated when you dream. Sleeping and dreaming therefore indicate a better night’s rest. But sleep with unregulated, limited or excessive dreams leads to alterations in well-being and this demonstrates their importance for health”, specifies the researcher.
Further analysis also links dreams to conditions that can predict the eventual development of dementia. «These are studies in patients suffering from the so-called “REM sleep behavioral disorder”, a condition in which people perform the movements of the dream they are having. In fact, it has been seen that this condition, within 10 years, has a 50 percent chance of resulting in Parkinson’s disease”, specifies the expert. The link with memory also appears very strong: «It seems that dreams have a function in creative processes. They would be useful not only for memorizing but also for stimulating new neuronal associations and encouraging problem solving.” And there’s more: the close relationship with mood. «When dreams reorganize memories, in particular those associated with an emotion, the memories are practically “separated” from their emotional component: if something negative happens to us during the day, after sleeping and dreaming, we will have the memory of what may have made us sad or angry but we will no longer have that same weight on our emotional state. Dreaming, in practice, “cleans” our emotions.”
Despite the benefits, there are however some risks associated with too intense dream activity. «In the cases of the so-called epic dreaming, people have the impression of dreaming all night. They have repetitive dreams in which they work, walk or run all the time and in the morning they feel tired as if they had actually carried out these activities”, explains Bernardi. Even some forms of insomnia can depend on an excess of dreams: «Inso-called paradoxical insomnia the person sleeps all night, but the impression is that of having remained awake thinking. In these dreams, in fact, the brain remains partly active, resulting in a sleep that is anything but restful.” The cause? “It is not certain, but it is possible that some forms of anxiety and stress contribute to this condition.”
