With 2021 now firmly behind us, the IHASA team hopes that 2022 may be your best and healthiest year yet.
If there is one thing that the pandemic taught us, it was that, although scientists have made huge strides in understanding viruses and developing vaccines, a healthy immune system is vital for our ongoing health and wellness.
For the past 15 years, we at the Institute of Healthy Aging have focused on optimizing people’s health, particularly as we get older. We have done this with hormone balancing, nutrition, vitamin drips, stem cell regeneration and skin aesthetic treatments.
However, what I have discovered in my own journey of wellness, is that a doctor might be able to help diagnose where I am going wrong with my health, but it is me and me alone that drives the changes. For example, when I open the fridge in the evening, it is only me who decides whether I pour some sparkling water, or pop open a bottle of wine. My doctor isn’t there when I decide to stay up till midnight to clear my emails instead of getting that well needed extra sleep. It is only me who can dictate how I respond to stress and bad news – with either a rising panic or with a calmness. As described in my book ‘Younger for Longer’, sugar, sleep, and stress are our three big pillars of health. However, when faced with these three imposters, we are generally alone, and we need to be in the right state of mind to be able to respond to them positively.
At our clinic, we generally do a big panel of blood tests to assess your health and then give you directives for the year. However, after that you are often on your own until next year’s meeting.
Lifestyle Medicine on the other hand has evolved to bridge that gap and is designed to give you the tools to improve on the daily decisions of sugar, sleep and stress. It offers two big factors that will help you optimize your health. Firstly, you get to biohack, or monitor your own test results throughout the year to observe how well you are progressing.
Secondly, you have access to health machines that you can use on a regular basis to optimize your health.
To this end, we are very excited to have partnered with a company called Expand Health. Over the next two months, they will be moving in to the entire downstairs area of the clinic to set up what we believe is South Africa’s first comprehensive Lifestyle Medicine center. Firstly, there will be a ‘biological age’ testing center. I might be 55 years of age chronologically, but with stress and bad lifestyle choices, my biological age could well be 65. After that, I need to do blood tests to see what factors are worsening my biological age. To this end, we are building a blood testing laboratory at the clinic so I can monitor my health improvements with multiple inexpensive blood tests. A biokineticist and a doctor will be on hand to advise me how these results are tracking.
The next part is the important bit. Instead of being sent home with a prescription, there are various lifestyle changes that I can make and Expand Health will have 10 different machines downstairs that help me to make those changes. I can use these on a weekly basis to drive the necessary health improvements. This is a powerful combination of machines that will drive us towards optimal health.
These machines are:
- Hyperbaric oxygen chamber – this stimulates the healing of injuries and reverses cell aging (improves telomere length).
- Somadone meditation pod – this enclosed pod offers a calm, relaxed space and gives you feedback to show that your brainwaves are vibrating at a healthy level while you meditate. Better meditation means reduced stress and less brain inflammation.
- Ice Bath – not only does this assist with healing, but a cold stress to the body switches on our cancer removal system.
- Infrared light panels – these panels offer powerful anti-inflammatory and healing wavelengths for the body. Particularly useful for healing muscular injuries that we all pick up as we age.
- PEMF – Pulsed Electro-magnetic Field therapy sends gentle electric currents through the body at healing frequencies. This is important for healing injuries, particularly when used with Infrared lights. PEMF also helps to improve telomere length and reverse cellular aging.
- Infrared sauna – a powerful detoxification process. The infrared wavelengths penetrate deep into the skin and assists in removing metals and other toxins from the body.
- Dry water bed with infrared – this has a lymphatic draining detoxification effect, plus a brain calming and a skin boosting effect.
- Ozone pod – this pod delivers ozone to the skin in a powerful and safe manner. Ozone kills viruses and bacteria, boosts stem cell healing and is a powerful stimulant of mitochondria to improve energy.
- CCIT exercise machine – this Compression, Cooling and Interval Training machine exercises the entire body, whether you are old, injured or super healthy. In addition, there are cold pads on your arms and legs which enhances the results. This exercising doesn’t just strengthen the body, but gives you a hormonal boost and destresses the brain.
- Vitamin Drips – various drips are used to remove toxins, boost energy and boost the immune system. The detox drip removes heavy metals and pesticides from the body. The NAD drip boosts mitochondrial energy. The PRP drip boosts your immune system. These are powerful treatments for improving our health.
The accumulative effect of these machines calms the brain which improves our ability to make good decisions when it comes to sugar, stress and sleep. However, these machines also have a powerful detoxing effect on the body, improve the immune system and switch on our anti-cancer system. They have the ability to stimulate stem cells, reverse cellular aging and accelerate injury healing. Used correctly, these machines can add a powerful new level to your health and wellness.
The concept of Expand Health is that we can now look at your biological age and from there we can make decisions about doing blood tests to see what is holding your health back. Our medical team then directs you with the correct combination of the above ten machines to give you a bespoke treatment package. This combination will accelerate you towards good health, way beyond what we can achieve on our own. At any stage you can repeat your tests to check your improvements. You can biohack and monitor your sleep and stress levels with health wearables like the Aura ring, the Whoop tracker and the Apple watch.
Lastly, these machines also help people who have reached their goal of good health and are now wanting to maximize their healthspan by stimulating stem cells and reversing cellular aging.
We are very excited about what Expand Health is bringing to Cape Town and will let everybody know as soon as it is ready for its opening launch.
