71: Atomic Health #1: Women's Longevity. How we age and why we're different.

Hey, this is Sonya from Dear Menopause. You've likely already noticed something a little bit different about this episode. Welcome to some bonus content that we have called Atomic Health. You are going to meet my good friend Roma and we will be breaking down some content related to women's health and longevity. I hope that you enjoy this fresh new bonus content that we have created just for you.

Hi Roma. I am the founder of Vitelle, an app and platform dedicated to help women age better, have better lifestyle and health span as they get older, and I'm here with….

I'm Sonya and I am the host of Dear Menopause, the podcast, and I'm a menopause workplace trainer and menopause advocate, roma. What are we going to start off by?

talking about today. Today we wanted to start talking about longevity from the female perspective. I think we've seen a lot of things that are out there. Longevity has become this buzzword. Some people still think it's a bit cringey, but we actually think it has a lot of merit. We might even explain some of the terminology. There's words like health span. There are people talking about their chronological age versus their biological age. We'll talk a little bit about women versus men, just in what we have to expect, what that will happen to our bodies. But we also want to talk about how women are often slotted into the reproductive health and fertility area, and it's just a topic that men don't have to think about as much as they get older. So sometimes the experience of health and longevity over, let's say, the age of 40 is quite different.

Yeah, and I think there's some really juicy topics that we're going to be able to kind of delve into and unravel here today. Let's do some definitions, Like you said. I think that's a really good place to start. So I think, like you said, longevity is very much a buzzword, but so let's really literally in the simplest form. So when I hear the word longevity, to me that is the length of time that you are going to be on this earth for.

Yeah, and I would agree.

Whether you're healthy, whether you're not healthy, it's the length of time that you're here for.

Yeah, so I would agree with that. Longevity has a very positive connotation now, especially when it's used in social media, anywhere online. You know, we think of people who are incredibly fit as they age. But longevity could really look like this incredible woman that was just portrayed on the BBC, who's lived in the same house since she was born 105 years ago, and when we look at people now who talk about longevity, they're still half her age. So we look at these people and we think, wow, they look fit and they look 10 and they look healthy, and obviously somebody at 105 looks different. But she was so good in this interview, she's obviously still very sharp, she moves a lot. So that's longevity just the length of time. And who knows, this lady may live another 10, 15 years. Now there's another word that is a buzzword, which is called health span and that was coined by Dr David Sinclair and he really wanted to determine the difference between just longevity living long and then health span, which is really living long. Well, yeah, Do you have anything to add to that, to the health span?

No, no, I think you summed it up beautifully. Yeah, and the health span very much captures the period of time that you will live well, so your healthy years.

And then, if we want to go a little bit more fun, that same doctor or PhD has come up with a calculator, which then I think was copied by other people, and those calculators, based on your lifestyle, can supposedly tell you the difference between your chronological age, which is just. You know, chronos is time and it means that you know, from the day you were born and your birth certificate, x number of years have passed. So you know that's your chronological age. But now there are people out there who claim that if you look at the lifestyle and the age of your organs and your brain and other parts, that you could be as much as 15 years younger.

And this involve doing the full body scans that will actually take a little look inside and age your organs and your body parts to give you a biological age.

So I think because, as usual, people try to make this, you know, gamify it or gimmicky I think it's as simple as a calculator online that you can fit out and okay and look at the lifestyle factors.

And it's probably things like do you smoke, do you exercise?

Yeah, okay, yeah so a girlfriend of mine and this is, I guess, for some of the discrepancies lie already with men and women she did it and she's 47 and the calculator spat out that she was 48. She's 48 or 49. Even doesn't smoke is incredibly healthy. I met her through a running community. She's an ultra runner, you know, like if she doesn't win a major city, she does cross-country skiing all winter long and she, you know, the first reaction of course is is being offended. Yeah, you go, you know this is horrible. And and then, if we go to the other end of the spectrum, we have someone like Brian Johnson who spends two million dollars a year on checking every single part of his body and then determining the individual ages of his left ear hearing versus his right ear and his liver versus his kidneys, and in his 45, but he believes that his body is the age of his 18 year old son. And then the question is do we want that?

and my question to that is how much does that cost and how much time is invested in maintaining that biological 18 year old body, and what quality of life is that?

Yeah, I think a lot of the pushback that he gets is People are very obviously were always inspired by disciplined people. And when you look at his regimen online, so there's the part that is in all you go. You know the. He probably has a better skin regimen than you and I combined. Like he starts his nighttime routine at 6 pm. He's not winding down. He changes the color of his light bulbs so it doesn't interfere with his circadian rhythm. There are a lot of individual points that you could pick out and apply to your lifestyle and feel really good, but when you do it all together, people have often asked you know, what's the point of living longer if you're not actually living?

Yeah, that is what my question would be around all of that, yeah, yeah so yeah, hmm, interesting, they talked about someone else, remember we talked about one of the.

We talked about Chris channel. Oh, come on, let's name that.

That goes back to your, your question about you know, yeah, so then there's the next level of that, which is the the, the full body scans that you can. You can pay a sum of money To do, and these are very popular in places like LA right now. Right, do you know a little bit more about them, so do you want to describe those for our listeners?

Yeah, so the the first company that has come out with this comprehensive CT scan. Now, again, we can name them there pretty much you know everywhere and right now if you look more at influences and celebrities who can afford it. So this company is called Pranoovo and I think it takes us away from just the preservation and the Vanity of living longer, and this one is a real prevention tool. So whether some people may want that. So in this case you get put in the scanner and it scans you top to bottom, so it looks at your brain health, it looks at your tissue cells, organs, and it could detect Early cancer. So we talked about how, for example, for me, I had a family member were who was very healthy in lifestyle and on paper, and and it was back pain that then diagnosed a stage for pancreatic cancer and and that was, you know, from then until she passed away. There was no reversing that. So had she done a scan like this to the tune of $2,500 US dollars US dollars, you know she, if she had done that scan a year before, they may have gotten it before changes yeah yeah, so that's truly life-prolonging in that case. Hmm, but I guess we won't see that in like the and this is where my old socialist German comes through Like it shouldn't just be for the, for the few, right? Yeah, I mean, ideally, if people really want to practice prevention and generally lead a good life, it would be great if this could be offered, you know, even once every two years and at least be some somewhat covered. Because the other thing and I want you to talk a bit about your experience when you catch it at stage four the cost of that to the system and insurance and out of pocket For the next two years went way, way beyond the $2,500 it would have cost to. Yeah, Absolutely.

I mean, yeah, I mean I, from my personal experience with my diagnosis was a stage two when Mine was discovered and that was early stages. My Out of pockets I was. I went through a private Hospital system. My outer pockets were pretty high and I still have ongoing costs. I'm have just had my sixth annual checkup, post my diagnosis, from a management of ongoing Impacts of treatment and medically induced menopause. I still have significant out of pocket expenses and the implications to you know, not just my outer pockets Expenses but also on the health care system, because I, you know, leverage those as much as I can as well. They are exhaustive and they are significant. I agree with you the ability to be able to have some pre screening done and you know it's a little bit like. You know, okay, I'm over 50. I do my bowel scan Every every two years. A little kit arrives in the mail and I do my poo, my little poo test, and I Scan it and I send it away and I don't know how much that costs them to send it out to. Every adult in Australia over the age of 50 Gets it. But you know that must save Not only lives but a significant amount of money to the health system.

Yeah, yeah, I believe that 100%. And so, while we're talking about that, you know, we we, before we started this episode, we also talked a little bit about the differences between men and women and we talked about how there's more for us to worry about at an age when it's not yet time for men to worry about as many things, which I would say is roughly 35 plus. And we talked about, obviously, perimenopause and menopause, which is a topic that we can't really leave out when we're talking about longevity, because with it comes so many potentially chronic conditions that so many women who you know, our risk is elevated for cognitive diseases, like mentioned Alzheimer's, and all of that starts in late 30s, early 40s. Do you want to dive into a little bit of the topic that we discussed, which was the benefits of us being able to push menopause back as a stage in life? You know, 10 years, 15 years.

Yeah, and this is this is a topic that I will be completely upfront about. I have heard that there is research being done and conversations being had about delaying menopause basically, and I think you probably know a little bit more about it from that side of things than I do, but I'm very happy to talk about. You know what I believe the impacts for women from a health perspective, from a career perspective, you know, from a fertility perspective, would be if we were able to delay menopause in women by 10 to 15 years. And you know we talked about longevity and health span. You know, we know that women now have a longer lifespan. Longevity we live physically for longer. Our health span is now longer. We can live healthier for longer. We are going through our menopause, from what I calculated, about two thirds of the way through our life. Basically, that is a time where many women we know are absolutely hitting their peak in their career. We know that many statistics around how many women leave their careers as a result of how difficult it can be to manage menopause symptoms in the workplace, the impact that it has on confidence. Australia, unfortunately, is an incredibly ageist society, so there's a whole lot of implications there. So there is definitely an impact on women's, the longevity of women's careers, therefore their earning potential, their superannuation earning potential, you know that is a huge topic within itself. So I think if we can push menopause back 10 to 15 years for women, solely based on that, that would be huge. And you know. Then we talk about, you know we look at the fertility side of things. You know many, many women are choosing to have their families much later in life. Now, you know, you know we look at you and I as an example. You know, biologically we're not that just, you know, bar apart in years. I'm 53, you're 41. I have children that are in their 20s and you know pretty much could have left home. You know you have children that are preschool. Pushing menopause back for, you know. And you have friends and I have clients in the gym and friends as well, who are having children even later than you know. You chose to have your children. So if we're living longer, if we're healthier for longer, why not have children? You know, that bit later in life where we do get the ability to establish our careers, really establish who we are as women and adults in the world before we, you know, we often meet our partners much later in life as well. You know that's another thing that can be really different today versus what it was like in previous generations. That side of things as well, I think you know it must be and I know this has been your experience and I know from women I've spoken to that you know especially the women that go down the IVF path. You know juggling perimenopause and IVF, or even being a new mum, is really really, really hard. So if we can push menopause back 10 to 15 years, you know, in a way that is manageable and ethical and healthy, the quality of life that we're creating for women and the opportunities that we're creating for women and living healthier for longer, I think it's, I think it could be fantastic.

Yeah, yeah. I love that you brought up the new mum's aspect as well, because you know, we think again typical society. We think of pregnancy and that's when we worship the woman and the child is born and all of our focus shifts onto the baby. And if you think of and that includes myself if you've been in the workforce for 20 years and you've established certain parameters for yourself and how you live and, like you said, you maybe met your partner later in life throwing a child into that mix when you're not 25 or 27, where you're still like rolling with the punches, you're probably also more resilient. I remember my mother had me at 27 and my youngest sister at 42, she said by 42, her nerve endings were fried, like her patients was thinner and so and and she didn't work full time when I was growing up. But I imagine, like trying to say, you come out of a really high power job and then it's quick, quick, quick back to work anywhere between you know, 10 weeks in the US and 16 weeks in Australia, that's a very limited amount of time to adjust. This is complete new you, new body, let alone potentially having a second child. And then you know also sort of the expectations of society on you. Like we talked about the when a lot of the offerings right now in the longevity space that say, hey, we'll take your hand and we'll lead you through this stage in your life they only look at age will help you be stronger, fitter, faster. 80 percent of that is even marketed in a way that it probably appeals to men a bit more. The websites are often black. It talks about gains. It talks about performance. We see people in really fit outfits. There's no extra fat, there's no belly. That was, like you know, had the separation of the abs as you were pregnant and then, if you go through the things that they will help you with, quite often I find we also include women, because we'll help you with fertility, and I think that's the flip side of that. Yes, we should help women with fertility. Yes, we should help systematically and medically push menopause back, but in the meantime, I would really like to see longevity removed from us, only being valuable, as fertile, as fitter. I'm done, yeah, I'm done. I am one of the lucky ones that I'm going into perimenopause when I'm done with postpartum. You know pretty much, and so I don't want to be lumped into that. I want to be very high and fit and fast and strong, but somehow it doesn't.

That doesn't appeal to me, so and I think also we need to remember as well that not every woman wants to bear children.

Yes, exactly Is that? Or there's the advice of motherhood. Yeah, and so, and just to touch on the this research, I think if people are interested, there's a person who's been advising me for a while now. Her name is Dr Jennifer Garrison. She works out of the Buck Institute for reproductive longevity. So their whole premise this one and another institute she's at is all about finding different scientists all over the world and funding some of that science to like bring together these smart minds and create change on the on the ovarian level. Like they want to make sure that they find out what ages are ovaries, which overall contributes to then like our aging, perimenopause, menopause, and so to either push everything back or, in her ideal world, I think, she wants to eradicate menopause altogether, which would be amazing, yeah, I mean you know responsibly, if you don't end up, yeah, responsibly, having a child at 75.

True, yeah, there's what you want, I mean we just talked about Robert De Niro. We did. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. We did. Yeah, that's so different, though it doesn't, and that's you know. That was one of the things that was the theme of this conversation was the difference between men and women, and yeah, could you?

could you talk about what these three things mean to you? I feel like it's always nice to have a bit of a summary from both of us of what, like. What does longevity mean for you personally? Also, having had a scare with your diagnosis, what does in health spam mean to you with your lifestyle? And then, ultimately, you know, do you care about your biological versus chronological age? Okay, so what does?

longevity mean to me. Longivity means a lot to me and to me longevity and health span are very much interlinked. You know, I don't necessarily want longevity without health span. I, you know, and particularly given my health background, I, you know, I have experienced being diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. You know, I was very lucky that I was able to avoid that. You know, facing your own mortality is, you know, and for me it was a very small window between okay, you've got this versus okay, you've got this, but it looks like this and it can be treated like this. But facing your own mortality at the age of 47, incredibly confronting and traumatic. So longevity for me is very important because I want to be able to do that, because I want to live a very long life, because I have a lot to do in this, in this life. You know, I want to. I just watched the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary, which I actually found fascinating a lot more interesting than I thought I would. And one of the things that he talked about a common thread through all the episodes that he talked about was something that his father had talked about a lot with him was whatever you do with your life, just be useful. And I loved that so much. I watched it twice. I loved it so much. It made me reflect on like, am I being useful? I'm like, yeah, I am. I am still being useful at 53. I am still being useful and I know that I still have so much more use to be to women and to the community and to society in the future. So longevity to me is really important. But also on a personal level, you know I still have so much time I want to spend with my boys, with you know I want to with their families that I, you know, can visualize in the future, and you know that to me is super important. And to do all of those things that I've just talked about, I want to be my healthiest that I possibly can be so that I can be running around with grandchildren and I can be traveling the world, which is one of my great passions, and you know all the things that I want to be. To be as useful in the world as I want to be, I need to be as healthy as I possibly can be.

And how do you do that, if you don't mind me just butting in, how do you do that right now, like, how do you find the motivation to do that in the day to day.

I think it's intrinsic for me. Yeah, I think it very much is. And look, you know, I work in the have worked in the fitness industry for a long time, so I have always known that to have good health for me always comes from a nutrition and a exercise first approach. I know that when I'm not following good nutrition principles and I'm not exercising in a way that is and moving and I say exercising, moving, because the two are quite different when I don't do both of those things regularly, that I'm not working towards being as healthy as I can be in the future. Yeah, that's an intrinsic thing that I just have played sports since I was knee high to a grasshopper. So all of those things are really important to me. Are you laughing at my knee high to a grasshopper analogy? Other things, like I've stopped drinking alcohol. Alcohol now is no longer a part of my world. Other people drink alcohol around me. It doesn't bother me, but I have chosen no longer to drink alcohol. I've never smoked. I value fresh air. I value spending time with quality people that give me good energy back. I protect my own energy. Things like that are always really important to me and I know when I'm not meeting those needs within myself. So yeah, health span, longevity to me, are very interlinked and very, very important. Biological age is much more important to me than chronological age, absolutely, and I have always felt that my biological age is younger than my chronological ages. And even having been through what I did with having to have chemo and radiotherapy, which you know, let's be honest, are very, very toxic drugs to have in your body, I still feel that if I was to have one of those tests done on, my biological age would be younger than and I'd be gutted if I wasn't absolutely gutted.

Well, that's what sort of I'm like. Do I want to find out? I would do the body scan like today if someone offered it. But more from the medical side of things, I don't know that I would care whether my right ear is. You know the age also.

Oh yeah, no, I don't need to know that.

Sounds like Sorry, say that again. I've done more harm to my body than you, it sounds. We're quite similar. Longer Jeopardy matters to me for the same reasons. I've had children later in life. You know I'll be, I'll be 60 by the time my children graduate high school. Yeah, oh, like almost. And so at that stage I just want to like I want to be like Chris Jenner who says she's really 40. And probably annoy the hell out of my children. But I found that I had a thyroid condition in my mid to late 30s that came on out of the blue and I feel like, with that and then sort of the stress of COVID as a just, as a communal societal shift and moving continents I've had, I had my first parts of fatigue and I think for the first time in my life it gave me a sense of what people were going through and there was such a shift in not having control over my health. So it wasn't fatal and it wasn't or that. You know, there was no mortality I had to grapple with, but I had to grapple with the fact that day to day I just was not in charge. The thyroid thing lasted for almost 18 months and it could one day could present. You know so that perimenopause one day could be hot flashes, hot flashes. The next day could be just crippling anxiety and not wanting to be in front of clients and train clients. The next day I could have rage bubbling up just because my husband said something. I was wrong, and then I would immediately start crying because I also realized that it wasn't. It wasn't a great way to be, and I would say the thing that stayed with me for the last six years has been that I now really have to manage my energy, so I'll work really hard, and I used to be able to do that for three or four months. Work, work, work, work, work. I remember when my son was really little. He would come to every training session with me. He would come with me on the subway for seven hours, six hours, like he would leave the house with me in the morning We'd have pumped milk and stored milk on the go. And sometimes he would drink a bottle on the subway and sometimes he would sit in my lap while I was instructing people and he would be outside, inside. He knew the gyms that were in people's buildings and I would be and I was. My schedule was tight because I also knew that he took naps on the run and then, by like one or two PM, I needed him to be in his crib and sleep like a good stretch of two to three hours, and the thought of that right now, without a car, terrifies me. It terrifies me because I have no idea how I did that for six months. Then I had impart time in care and I still did it for a little bit and I just, of course I could do it now, but it's just yeah. So energy is a topic that is probably the closest that has brought me to my knees, where I will go wow, I just I slept eight hours and I'm waking up and I just cannot function. So I think that's the scary one. You know, I was a professional athlete. I trained for 27 hours a week In my twenties. I burnt the candle at both ends. I worked three jobs and they would be seamlessly following one another. And then that's why I'm saying I sometimes wonder if I've done more harm at the time. I've certainly. I smoked for a little bit, you know like, because of course, what do you do when you were a professional athlete? You start smoking right after. And so now it's really about I don't know if I wanna know my and also, and then having children just still feels so fresh.

And right now.

I wouldn't want someone to tell me my biological age, because I'm really frightened that it would be like five years older, just because of how my body feels some days yeah yeah, but maybe you know being further removed from that. That early stage is gonna change that. I just recently read that the sleep deprivation accumulated over the course of the first six years of your child's life can shave up to seven years of your entire life.

Sleep deprivation is not talked about enough.

So obviously that would take us down an entire rabbit hole, but I think we need to remember, in this stage in life when women now choose to have children which is probably 10 years more than, for example, my mother did there's so much that happens during that time that we'd have to just take in stride, quote unquote. And then we're also supposed to be healthy and glowy and strong and motivated and enthusiastic. And I think, if and this is a different episode to talk about the messaging of menopause but for me, if I take one thing away from longevity, it's that women who are in that stage between 35 and 45, if all they do every day is survive in the best way that they can, that is enough. That's like my word of the day. Do you wanna add to that?

No, I think that's really fair and I think we need to say that more.

There's a lot of people trying to motivate us for what happens in 10, 20, 50 years and, quite honestly, a lot of what I'm hearing from women in their early to mid 40s right now is you're telling me I'm gonna live another 50, 60 years. I'm so tired. I'm tired right now, like it's hard to imagine. But then it's really nice to hear that you can get to 50, 50 plus, and you're not the only one who falls in that category. I go oh, you know, there is something nice when your children become more self-sufficient. There's something nice when you rediscover that relationship with your own body and mind and there is and your partner and you start drawing energy from that again and not just feeling like you have to exercise because it's good for you, but you're also doing a million other things.

Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a shift that comes there, definitely is, and that shift is gonna come at a different time for every woman. For some women it'll come earlier, for others it might even be later, and then again that's gonna depend on at what decade you have your children in, as well as to where those goalposts are, because I truly believe a lot of it does depend on when your children gain that independence and kind of start you start becoming a little less responsible for their choices and their financial dependence and all of those sorts of things. But the other thing that is also a huge part of that is and it's something that I'm aware of but I'm not personally impacted by right now is the aging parents that many women in particular also then become responsible for. I know plenty of women that are in their 50s that, yes, their children have left home and some of them have married and have children of their own now, but they have replaced those children with the aging parents and they are now carers for them.

Yeah, 100%, and I feel like we can do a separate episode on that. Absolutely yeah, and the sandwich generation. But other than that. I think we summed up longevity quite nicely for women.

Yeah, I think so. It's like everything when we're talking about the differences between men and women. It's complicated and I think it's so important that that's why you and I having these conversations is that so often we are left to listen to men speaking to other men about these topics, that those differences and those complexities are overlooked and they're not spoken about and things become simplified. And then there's the frustration for women because they aren't as simple as they make them sound, and then that becomes a whole beating yourself up scenario of well, they make it sound so easily. Why is it not easy for me and I think that's why we need to be having these conversations, and that's the collective we, that's, women speaking with other women to say it's not as simple as the men or men can make it sound or make it look, because we are completely different beings and we need to talk about that more often.

Yeah, I mean, hopefully we'll get some comments from people. Or I mean, you've received some really beautiful reviews on the Dear Menopause podcast and I think it's so beautiful and part of, like you said, of this conversation is also to validate people's feelings Like they're not alone in it. We're all going through it, even if it sometimes doesn't look on. You know, and you're on my social media when we show up, we try to show up energized and motivating and upbeat, but we have many, many days that look very different.

So yeah, and that is the. You know that's something we're going to go into in another episode, but that is one of the downsides to social media, isn't it? All right, I think we can wrap this one up. Good to chat to you.

Thank you. Thank you, sonia.

You've been listening to Atomic Health, a sub-series of Dear Menopause with Sonia Lovell and Roma Vandervolt. If you'd like to know more, check the show notes for links and further details. Thanks for listening.