Dr. Vicente Mera was recognized in 2021 with the European Award for the best doctor specializing in anti-aging medicine. The award rewarded his decades of dedication and deepening of a new paradigm that understands health not so much as the absence of disease, but as a comprehensive state of well-being. Author of the book Young at Any Age: The Definitive Method for a Long, Healthy, and Happy Life (Harper Collins), Mera is a member of the American Academy of Regenerative and Antiaging Medicine (A4M) and has visited all five continents. Among them, his time in Okinawa (the Japanese island of longevity) is the one that has had the greatest impact on his clinical knowledge of his specialty.
Currently, Dr. Mera is responsible for Internal Medicine and Anti-aging at SHA Wellness Clinic, a project in which he promotes a type of personalized, predictive and preventive medicine. And, according to the expert, the extraordinary increase in life expectancy that has taken place in the last century in countries like Spain "has radically changed aging." And, therefore, the approach to him.
Although, Mera states, the human being is designed to live 120 years, today we live on average about 83 years, but many times we do so for 20 years before in a body with too many breakdowns. Starting from that basis, for the doctor the objective of anti-aging medicine should not be so much to increase life expectancy ("We are already living many years!") but rather to try to ensure that the population reaches those 83 years free of disease. “That is quality of life,” she points out.
To achieve this challenge there are no magic pills (yet), but lifestyle is essential. Much more, even, than genetics, as Mera explains in this conversation full of automotive metaphors that she had by videoconference with La Vanguardia from her consultation at the SHA center in the Alicante town of Altea.
In the last 48 years, the average age of the Spanish population has gone from 33 to 44.18 years. With an increasingly aging population, it seems clear that the future belongs to anti-aging medicine.
I'll tell you more: at the end of the 19th century, in Spain, the average age at which people died was between 40 and 45 years. How old are you?
Very close to that average, 39 years.
Well, look, at the end of the 19th century, you, at 39 years old, would already be thinking about who you were going to inherit the horse and to whom the four things you had. You probably even have grandchildren by now. All that has changed for the better as life expectancy has increased. And aging has also changed radically, of course. Today, talking about a 60-year-old grandfather is almost the same paradox as talking about a 40-year-old young man. Today the concepts have completely changed. At 50 you are still young and you start to be a grandfather at 70 or 75 years old.
Life expectancy in 2022 stood at 83.08 years (80.36 for men and 85.74 for women).
We as a species are designed to live 120 years. That is the original design according to laboratory research. Logically, we do not live 120 years, but that is our horizon. It happens a bit like with electric cars: they tell you that such a car has a range of 500 kilometers. It is designed for that. But to achieve that autonomy you have to travel at 50 km/hour, do it alone and without loading the trunk. That is, we can live 120 years in optimal conditions, if everything were perfect, but that is impossible. So, given the current circumstances, in a country like Spain, for example, we can live 70% or 80% of that, which is the life expectancy we have today.
Life expectancy is 83 years, but according to the INE, life expectancy in good health was more than 20 years less in 2021 (62.8 years).
After doubling life expectancy in just 150 years, I always say that the challenge today is not to seek more longevity (we already live many years!), but to have a better quality of life in those years of more than we live. You know why? Because when you reach 83 years of age, which is the life expectancy we have now, there are already serious mobility problems. On average, a 65-year-old person has already undergone at least two or three operations, with what that entails. What I propose to people is that when they reach that age they have not had any surgery, which is what it is about. In the end, quality of life is given by the absence of disease. We have to improve our lifestyle to reach 65 years well. Probably in the future we will also reach 85 well, but at the moment we have a difficult time, so we are going to start by reaching 65 without any problem.
How much does genetics and how much do epigenetics have to do with our life expectancy?
Genetics is important, but it is not everything. Let's go to the absurd: if genetics predicted our lives 100%, two identical twins would have to die on the same day, at the same time and from the same problem. And that doesn't happen. In large series of twins, the impact of genetics on health, disease and aging has been identified to be approximately one-third. That is, one third of your longevity responds to your genetics and two thirds to your lifestyle, epigenetics. Let's take the example of the Dakar Rally. Carlos Sainz has won it with four different cars, with four different brands. Genetics is the brand of the car. That is to say, your parents, on the day you are born and depending on their possibilities, give you a brand of car, but you have to drive that car through the rally of life. You will arrive first or last depending on the car, but above all on your skill as a driver.
But I understand that someone who is born with a Mercedes is more likely to live longer and better than someone who is born with a Dacia.
Logically, the car has to be minimally valid, but even those who do not have good genetics today know that with a good lifestyle they can turn genes on and off. You, for example, may have the lung cancer gene, but it is in your hands to make what is known as the switch on or the switch off. That is, with your lifestyle you can activate or inactivate certain genes. If you smoke, for example, you will activate the lung cancer gene, but if you don't smoke you will have less chance of activating it. That is the simple reason why non-smokers are significantly less likely to develop lung cancer.
What do we talk about when we talk about lifestyle?
Continuing with the car metaphor, we can say that there are seven factors that we should check daily: one is the gas tank, that is, the power supply. If you put fuel in the car that is not correct, it will never go to the end. The second would be physical exercise. The third, managing emotions and having an active social life. I have personally been in those areas of the world where people live for many years and when you are going to ask what they do there, one of the most curious things, apart from food and physical exercise, is that they cultivate a lot of social relationships. participatory. We are social beings and having a person who helps you, who asks you, who calls you and with whom you can do the same, gives us life. And finally, there would be rest. That would be the basic quadrilateral of health, which, if you look closely, is the quadrilateral of weight: if you eat well, exercise, sleep well, are not stressed and have an active social life, you have a perfect weight. And weight is one of the most important biomarkers for health. In fact, in cancer, one of the most important factors for its development is weight.
He has talked about seven factors that we should check daily. What are the other three?
This health quadrilateral is supported by three other factors that are also important. On the one hand, toxins. We put many toxins into our bodies consciously (tobacco, alcohol, legal and illegal drugs) and unconsciously (chemical contaminants in food, environmental pollution, radiation from electronic devices, etc.). On the other hand, the intestinal microbiota. The brain-gut axis is a fundamental factor to work on for healthy aging. And finally, hormonal balance, also very important for quality of life and longevity.
What physical exercise is best to increase our longevity?
You have to train both cardiovascular and strength exercises. We have to work on both facets, at all ages. There is absolutely no excuse not to do an exercise adapted to our body and our age, unless there is a mechanical or mobility problem. I, for example, always recommend dancing as the perfect exercise, because it solves many of the points we have mentioned: you exercise, which facilitates better sleep, you interact socially, you reduce stress, you sweat and eliminate toxins... Dance is a natural solution to many of our problems. Also think about memory: people who dance have a formidable memory because they have to learn steps and choreography.
We could say that we are increasingly socially aware of the need to eat well, exercise and live with less stress. Is sleep the great forgotten?
I would say yes. We sleep less and less and the reason is very simple: the day, unless we change planets, has 24 hours. Taking into account that it would be advisable to dedicate around 50 hours a week to sleeping (if we sleep less than 40 we will pay for it with health) and that we dedicate another 40 to working, we have 78 hours a week left to do whatever we want. he wins it. The problem is that in those 78 hours we want to do more things than we can and since we normally cannot take time away from work, we end up taking time away from sleep. And that is a serious mistake.
Is napping also anti-aging medicine?
I am a nap practitioner. I preach a religion and I practice it (laughs). But I'm not talking about Camilo José Cela's nap, in pajamas and a potty, but rather a Dalí nap, that is, short, one or two 20-minute naps throughout the day in which you take notice without falling into deep sleep, which is what can make it difficult to sleep at night. The nap adds up. Sometimes, for example, at the end of the day we look at our wristwatch and it turns out that we have taken 10,000 steps without realizing it, because we have been accumulating all the small walks that we have taken throughout the day. Well, the same thing happens with rest: you can accumulate hours of sleep at any time.
