Around The World, Dean Fried | The Future You | Men's Health - video Dailymotion

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Around The World, Dean Fried | The Future You | Men's Health

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00:00So I want to turn the page a little bit to public health, which you and I are speaking

00:05in the summer of 2024. And we're on the cusp of a very important election where there are

00:12going to be lots of conversations, maybe not enough, about issues related to public health,

00:17public investment. One thing that I want to quote a colleague of yours, Dr. Niels Barzilai,

00:22who wrote not too long ago, the great jump in longevity around the world over the past

00:27hundred years or so, is mostly attributable to advances in sanitation, nutrition, immunization,

00:32and prevention of chronic disease and worker safety. Advances over the next hundred will come

00:37from our increasing ability to hack the biology of aging itself. I agree with the first part of that,

00:43which is that I think primarily these expansions in longevity and lifespan have come from choices

00:50we have made as a society. The political will to create healthier and more sustaining environments

00:56for everybody. I do think there's quite a bit of work left to do with public health that can make

01:02a massive impact. Tell me a little bit, as we are having these conversations around public health,

01:08public investment, and health investments, what is the great work still to be done as far as

01:14investing in public health and leading to not only longer health spans, but longer lifespans?

01:20Welcome to The Future You, a new series by Men's Health, where we talk to the leading experts in

01:24health and longevity to help you live longer and stronger. I'm your host, Rich Dormant. In this

01:30episode, we're talking with longevity expert, Dr. Linda Freed about optimizing global longevity.

01:35So this is a critically important question for our whole country right now. And I appreciate you raising

01:43time. I think it's probably the best way to start in my head is where we just were, which is that we've

01:54created long lives. And what we see in this country, excuse me, as well as other countries, particularly

02:02Western countries, is that people are living more years, but they're spending more time out.

02:09It's not good for the individual. And it's not good for us as a society. It lowers our productivity.

02:17It raises individual and societal costs. It makes us less competitive as a nation. The list goes on and

02:25on. And people are sick. So what can we do about that? This is dangerous for our country to be having the

02:34different duo of long lives with more ill health. And we then have to turn to where the evidence is

02:43about where you can affect change. The best estimates we have are that about 20% of our health as a

02:51population can be attributed to medical care, if it's the right medical care. And about 70% can be

03:00attributed to public health, about 10% to our genes. The US invests in the opposite way. The US is

03:12investing 97% of its health dollars into medical care, and 3% of its dollars into public health. And I

03:21would slightly glibly say we are getting what we're not paying for it, which is the one investment that

03:28has the highest return, which is public health. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about public

03:37health's responsibility to prevent ill health in the first place. And I'm a school that produces the

03:44science and the knowledge as to how we do that for the future. But public health responsibility is to

03:52use that knowledge, whether it needs to be delivered in the clinician's office for a patient. For example,

04:01how do I lower my own risk for chronic disease? There are things that need to happen in the doctors

04:09to the nurse's office to figure that out. Sometimes it's medicine, sometimes it's counseling to, for

04:15better health behaviors, lots of other things. But most, much of that work has to be accomplished together.

04:26No, it's like the history of loneliness. Why do human beings travel together? Because we get more done.

04:31And the things that happened in the last century turned the tide and created the ability for young

04:40people to live to adulthood and adults to live longer. Now we have to invest in prevention to keep

04:46people healthy in these long lives. And that is primarily, it will not happen unless we invest in

04:54public health leadership on that. Now, what would that look like? You're probably going to ask.

05:01Go on. There are many things that create ill health. Some of them are whether we live in

05:10a neighborhood in which it's possible to be physically active and exercise, either because

05:15the sidewalks are smooth, or there's a place to go for a long walk safely, or you can breathe the air

05:23and don't choke. Those are community and societal responsibilities to accomplish that for all of us.

05:32Sometimes it's the conditions of whether you know you need to eat healthier food, you need to eat more

05:38protein, you need to eat more fruits and vegetables, but you cannot afford what's in the grocery store,

05:44or there is no store in your neighborhood that sells fresh fruits and vegetables. That's a community and

05:52a societal responsibility to create those conditions so that people can do what they know they need to do.

06:00And it goes well beyond that. But those two small examples are big in terms of affecting every single

06:07health outcome that we have. They're important in preventing chronic diseases, preventing obesity,

06:13which creates chronic diseases, building muscle, preventing frailty. The list can go on and on.

06:20And it also, not coincidentally, has a direct relationship with things like low income and with

06:27marginalized communities and communities where historically the United States has not invested.

06:31So communities of low income have many extra hits. What we've seen, we never knew this 20 years ago.

06:41We now know that it's possible to live a long life with health.

06:44We didn't know that 20 years ago. And if you look at the reasons, we see that not every American is

06:53experiencing that. There's a subset are experiencing that. And lo and behold, the characteristics of the

06:59subset of Americans who are demonstrating this is possible is that they've had the benefits of living

07:05in health-producing environments their whole lives, having more education, which is critical to health,

07:12actually. They have been able to eat healthier foods, they have been had access to physical activity,

07:24and they've had better medical care. You put those conditions together, including living in environments

07:31that don't have toxins in them, where they're not inhaling bad air that cause disease, where they're not

07:40drinking polluted water that cause ill health and disease. Those combination of factors that are

07:47environmental are critical, and we can't solve them alone. We can solve them, but we have to

07:55solve them together for each other. And issues like toxins in the air, pollutants in the water,

08:00that is a choice that we as a society are making and allowing to happen.

08:04Well, it is if we're not investing in it. And it's going to get even more complicated. You know,

08:12I think there's a tendency to think it's not affecting me. So I'm not worried. But the scientific

08:20evidence, for example, is that the water pipes in this country, which were built 100 years ago,

08:26were designed for a pH and acidity in our drinking water that is changing because of climate change.

08:34There's a lot of concerns that it's going to start leaching the metals in those pipes out. That will

08:41affect all of us. We have to think about these things together. And if we don't protect each other's

08:48children and us, you know, our future is harmed, as well as protecting our own.

08:55If you could ask one question at the next presidential debate regarding public health investment,

09:02public health choices, what would the one question be as far as an issue or a challenge that you feel

09:09so strongly has to be topic A? How will they make it so that every person in this country has an

09:16opportunity to live a long life with health? I'd love to hear their answer. Me too. What would you do?

09:22I would invest in public education and the lifetime of education for longer lives. I would invest in

09:34public health. Those have the highest return on investment and they will change the game.

09:40Are there countries in that are doing this well? I would say that Japan, Singapore and Korea are all

09:51over this because they already are super agent societies, meaning that they're approaching 40% of

09:57their population being over 60. And they know that their futures hang on whether those people over 60 are

10:05healthy, have the education to keep working and stay engaged and contribute to their communities and society

10:13long after they're 60. And they are intensively focused on how they build the conditions for continued engagement

10:22by people as they get older so that society can benefit from what we accrue as capabilities as we age.

10:30Well, they have a head start. So hopefully we'll catch up. I hope so. Dr. Freed, thank you so much for

10:35coming by. I know you're busy saving the world and it means the world of us that you stop by Hearst Tower to

10:40talk to us about your groundbreaking work. My honor. Thank you for the opportunity.

Around The World, Dean Fried | The Future You | Men's Health

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