LIFESTYLE MEDICINE AND HEALTHY AGING
Main Article Content
Abstract
Introduction
WHO defines healthy aging as “Being free of disease or infirmity is not a requirement for healthy aging, as many older adults have one or more health conditions that, when well controlled, have little influence on their wellbeing”. But there is a common misconception in society that all diseases can be treated with medicine. According to a study published in 2019 among U.S. adults aged 40–79, 22.4% used five or more prescription drugs. Using five or more drugs is defined as polypharmacy and it is causing a public health problem. Healthy aging is associated with a healthy lifestyle, as it is called lifestyle medicine. The lifestyle medicine addresses root causes of disease by targeting nutrition, physical activity, stress management, connectivity to environment, and sufficient sleep. As a result, adherence to a lifestyle medicine can optimize the trajectory of aging, and promote targets that have been recognized in geriatric medicine as essential to well-being, and quality of life, which will lead to a compression of morbidity. Furthermore, it can also reduce the mortality risk associated with polypharmacy in elderly.
Objective
We aim to correct the misconceptions between medicines and healthy aging, increase the number of healthy aged elderly and promote healthy lifestyles.
Article Details

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
© Journal of Asian Medical Students’ Association (JAMSA). Released under a Creative Commons license.
References
-