Episode 4
The Importance of Preventative Medicine
What we’re really hoping to do is to catch diseases at a much earlier stage.
Key Takeaways
- Health is a spectrum. Changes often occur long before symptoms are felt.
- Early detection saves lives. Identifying conditions like cancer or aneurysms early leads to significantly better outcomes.
- Aging requires proactive care. The body’s natural ability to repair itself declines with age, increasing the importance of regular health evaluations.
- Preventative medicine works. Advanced diagnostics and swift interventions can transform health outcomes, offering patients longer, healthier lives.
Preventative healthcare has revolutionized the way we think about aging and disease detection.
In a recent conversation, Dr. Julie Chen shared her experiences and insights from working at Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), a clinic that encourages individuals—regardless of symptoms—to proactively assess their health. Her compelling anecdotes underscore how early detection can save lives and improve outcomes.
Health as a Spectrum
Dr. Chen emphasizes a crucial shift in perspective: health and disease exist on a spectrum rather than as a binary state. “It’s not like you’re 100% healthy and then suddenly sick,” she explains. Changes in our bodies often begin long before symptoms appear, meaning that diseases like cancer or aneurysms can silently progress until they reach critical stages.
HLI’s goal is to detect these changes early—before symptoms emerge—through advanced diagnostics and proactive monitoring. This approach not only improves survival rates but also prevents more invasive treatments later on.
The Power of Early Detection
Dr. Chen shared powerful stories of patients whose lives were transformed by early intervention. One woman, for example, came to HLI thinking her headaches were linked to her menstrual cycle. In reality, she had a brain aneurysm. Thanks to HLI’s swift imaging and referrals, the patient underwent surgery within weeks, resolving her symptoms and potentially saving her life.
Another example involved patients with stage zero or stage one cancers. In these cases, early detection meant small tumors could be removed surgically with minimal impact. This is a stark contrast to the complex and often less successful treatments required for later-stage cancers.
Dr. Chen highlights a sobering statistic: cancers detected at stages three or four have significantly higher mortality rates compared to stage one cancers, where survival rates are dramatically better.
Why Aging Increases Risk
Aging, as Dr. Chen explains, is inherently inflammatory. Over time, the body’s natural processes for repairing damaged or mutated cells become less effective. This can lead to unchecked cell growth, such as cancer. She likens the body to a machine: regular maintenance and early repairs prevent small issues from becoming major problems.
Preventative Medicine: A Game-Changer
HLI’s approach is proactive, emphasizing the importance of comprehensive health evaluations even for those who feel healthy. Advanced imaging and diagnostics can uncover hidden conditions like aneurysms or cancers, enabling timely intervention.
As Dr. Chen notes, these early detections often lead to life-changing outcomes. Patients who once faced dire diagnoses can receive effective treatment quickly, turning potentially fatal conditions into manageable health concerns.
Transcript
00:01
Dafne Canales
Like part of that preventative medicine. At human longevity, you encourage people who have no symptoms at all, who feel healthy to come into the clinic. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
00:11
Dr. Julie Chen
Sure. You know, I think what’s interesting that a lot of people maybe don’t think about is I think the way it’s sometimes been portrayed is that health and disease is very much a. You’re healthy and then you’re sick, but it’s actually always like a spectrum. It’s not like you’re like 100% healthy and then all of a sudden you got sick. And there was no predecessor of like, changes that’s occurred. It’s usually always a timeline of slowly worsening. It’s just that we don’t feel it until it gets to a significant level. What we’re really hoping to do is to catch diseases at a much earlier stage, you know, even if they’re asymptomatic, because I’ll let you know, like, I’ve had multiple members and patients now where they’ve come into HLI for fun because their spouse really wanted to do it.
00:58
Dr. Julie Chen
And we’ve actually found significant findings like brain aneurysms and, or early stage cancers or cancers where even if it’s farther along, it’s not gone to the point where it’s irretrievable. So for us, it’s really important for people to really understand that to have cancer at stage three and four, the mortality rate is significantly higher. 70s, 80s, that kind of like mortality rate then compared to someone finding it at stage one, the mortality rate on that is incredibly low. So as we age, you know, our cells have this thing where it’s constantly, you know, dying off and growing and things like that. And so when there’s usually like errors in the cells, they. They have this thing called apoptosis where it kind of dies off to kind of save your overall body. And it gets rid of the bad ones or the broken ones. Right.
01:49
Dr. Julie Chen
If you will. But sometimes with cancers like that then doesn’t occur and the cells actually grow and they’re like mutated cells and they. These cells. And so there’s no checkpoints that normally can occur with healthy cells to kill off the bad cells. So the point is that as we age, that typically is a higher risk as aging is inflammatory. And aging, if you think of your body as machine, which it is as a machine ages, there’s going to be more, you know, issues that pop up. But if you like tune up your car or tune up your body earlier on those kind of little things that start to occur if you fix it and address it earlier on, they become non issues.
02:25
Dr. Julie Chen
I’ve had multiple clients where they had stage zero kind of stage one cancers where they went in and because the tumor is tiny, they just cut it out and the patient was done. Versus if you look at these, you know, patients and they actually waited until it grew and it was in the bones and it had metastasized to other organs. That’s a very different scenario than if it was like a tiny circumscribed, a tiny like isolated lesion that they can go in and cut out. So you know, in a lot of these cases they’ve been really positive stories.
02:55
Dr. Julie Chen
Like for example, the 40 some year old women or clients where we’ve had like whether it’s tumors or cancers or brain, like we actually have been able to help expedite their care and they had it addressed within a week or two or three and then they’re fine. Like one woman thought she had just menstrual period headaches, but she actually had a brain aneurysm. Her and her grandmother actually died in her 50s. And went in and found it and then within a day we had it confirmed on imaging again with contrast. And within another day got her in to see a neurosurgeon, head of neurosurgery at a hospital. And then within like a few weeks she had the surgery done and these headaches that she thought was her period actually were the aneurysm because she doesn’t get them anymore.
03:39
Dafne Canales
Wow. Incredible. Incredible.
03:42
Dr. Julie Chen
Very rewarding work.
03:43
Dafne Canales
Yes, totally. I can see why you love it so much.
