When Professor Andrea Maier first started researching ageing 25 years ago, no one was interested. “I came into this field because I was a clinician interested in what was happening in the body. As part of my research, I occasionally ventured into geriatric fields, and decided that fixing older individuals would become my mission,” she says. “Now everyone is talking about longevity!”
Prof Maier is an Oon Chiew Seng professor in medicine, healthy ageing and dementia research at NUS, and co-director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity at NUHS (National University Health System). Her work at NUS involves the study of ageing individuals with a focus on understanding how we age by measuring biological age against actual or chronological age—so giving a different age to the body or function. At NUHS, she is a physician and internal medicine specialist.
As friends, colleagues, and contacts continually asked her for advice on how to slow down ageing processes and live healthier lives, Chi Longevity was born. A private clinic at Camden Medical Centre, it focuses on bringing clients evidence-based medicine.
“We are optimising the body, so it’s less likely to have an age-related disease 10 or 20 years down the road,” Prof Maier explains. She likens the body to a car that requires maintenance. “If your engine breaks down, it needs to be replaced. But you don’t want to get to that point. That’s why you have the dashboard. It tells you in advance if something is going wrong before it’s too late. This is the alarm system we want to create for the body.”
Initially, treatment programmes include diagnostic and biological tests, clinical testing of organs from your brain to your skin, and finally a digital data analysis, taking information from smartwatches or trackers to understand your health data over time. The patient is then presented with the results of the three components.
“It’s a pleasant discovery. If I know so much about myself, I can make different choices. For example, I know I can drink coffee in the evening because of my metabolism.”
Prof Andrea Maier expounds on the benefits of anti-ageing treatment programmes
It can also lead to an intervention plan to optimise health. “Maybe you need to think about intermittent fasting or taking supplements. So, there’s really a trajectory of change. Most of the time, this takes at least a couple months,” she says.
The clients of Chi Longevity range in age from those in their 30s and 40s to those in their 60s who are considering retirement and the quality of their lives in the future. Chronological versus biological aging comes into play here.
“We disentangle the chronological age and biological age and measure them,” Prof Maier explains. “We measure how fast somebody ages. If somebody is ageing fast internally, then the likelihood of them developing an age-related disease like diabetes, dementia or heart failure is much higher.”
With all her work on turning back time, Prof Maier stresses that ageing is not something we should be afraid of. “Ageing is nice!” she says. “It is not the enemy. Many fear ageing because they think they have to depend on somebody and cannot do whatever they want because they can’t.”
“Very often, people worry that they cannot function the way they want to. That’s why my work in longevity medicine looks at the future. It’s not about how you feel tomorrow or next week. It’s about how you want to feel in 10 to 20 years’ time.”
Producer: Adora Wong
Art director: Chia Wei Choong
Videographer: Alicia Chong
Photographer: Mun Kong
Photographer’s assistant: Alfred Phang
Hair: Jenny Ng
Makeup: Keith Bryant Lee using Shiseido
