Aging better isn’t just about adding more years. Tech to reduce chronic disease is just as important

A researcher watches the CRISPR/Cas9 process through a stereomicroscope at the Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin. (Gregor Fischer/dpa/picture alliance/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

It’s exciting to think of bionic humans who have cracked the code to stop aging. But perhaps less glamorous and much more important to the longevity game is tackling chronic disease.

About six in 10 young adults in the United States report having one or more chronic conditions, but by older adulthood, that number grows to nine in 10, according to a 2025 study.

Even as people pursue methods to add more years to their lives, conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer are major drivers of both mortality and disability, particularly in later life.

While a wave of tech investors is pushing gadgets, supplements and programs designed to make people feel like they will live forever, journalist Kara Swisher has been investigating the methods that actually lead to healthy long lives in her series, “Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever.” Her latest episode, premiering Saturday, May 2, at 9 p.m. ET, investigates medical advancements that offer some promise against chronic disease for more of the population.

“What I’m interested in is increasing longevity for everybody,” Swisher said. “Healthy longevity, not just longevity for longevity’s sake. It’s longevity for good living and healthy living, and that you don’t die of stupid diseases… It’s so preventable.”

Think of it similarly to how improving sanitation meant later generations in the United States didn’t have to experience cholera, she said. Or medications that we now may take for granted changed life-threatening conditions into illnesses with reliable treatment, said Dr. Steven Austad, scientific director of the American Federation for Aging Research and distinguished professor and endowed chair of healthy aging research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

“Antibiotics changed everything, and these could potentially change everything,” Austad said, speaking of the latest medical developments against chronic disease.

The link between disease and aging

Many of the tech entrepreneurs investing in the longevity space misunderstand the science of aging, Austad said. Primarily, they don’t get that there is no simple code to crack, and the biology behind the aging process is complicated.

Aging is something that happens to everyone, even the healthiest people, and it makes them more vulnerable to developing chronic disease, he said. “Aging is not a disease, but it makes us more vulnerable to diseases.”

Not only does aging make people more vulnerable, it also makes it more difficult for people to recover from chronic diseases.

Aging can bring out conditions that a person may be predisposed to from birth, said Dr. Nir Barzilai, president of the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research and professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

A person may be born with a gene that makes it more likely they will develop dementia, but cognitive problems won’t emerge until their 60s, 70s or 80s, Barzilai said. “You need the aging process to bring it out,” he noted.

Although chronic diseases do not solely impact older populations, preventing these diseases could mean longer lives and more enjoyment of the years added.

Changing the body’s response to chronic disease

Some of the most promising technologies for longevity will need to be prescribed, not bought.

Alzheimer’s disease, for example, may one day be prevented through a technology called CRISPR, a gene-editing tool codeveloped by Nobel laureate in chemistry Dr. Jennifer Doudna, who is Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences, and a professor of biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

A protein acts like a pair of scissors, targeting DNA in a cell and making cuts, which triggers the cell to make repairs.

The process of those repairs can change the DNA, Doudna told Swisher.

“It opened the door. We can now study the function of genes, and we can change genes,” she said.

“You can imagine people living the same lifespan, but healthier,” she added.

Gene editing through CRISPR isn’t the only medical development that could dramatically impact chronic conditions.

In labs on the East Coast researchers are working on another tool for both prevention and treatment of conditions including HIV, diabetes and cancer. You might recognize it from the COVID-19 pandemic: mRNA vaccines.

How does a vaccine treat chronic disease? The main component, mRNA or messenger RNA, delivers messages to your body’s cells, which can include developing proteins that teach your immune system what to attack (like viruses or cancer cells), instruct your body to make a missing or malfunctioning protein, or even correct genetic errors, said Dr. Kathryn Whitehead, professor in the departments of chemical engineering and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Already, mRNA vaccines against HIV are getting ready to enter clinical trials this year, and vaccines against cancer have been undergoing clinical trials, said Dr. Jilian Melamed, research assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases and Institute for RNA Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania.

An early trial this year showed that seven of the eight people who showed an immune response to a pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine survived up to six years from their last treatment, as opposed to the otherwise 13 per cent survival rate of this kind of cancer, according to a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center news release.

“Both of those things have tremendous potential,” Austad said. “Both of them also are at a very, very early stage.”

Prevention can start now

While exciting new technologies get tested for safety and efficacy before hitting the market, there are things you can do now to prevent chronic disease. And preventing a disease is far easier and less expensive than treating an existing one, Melamed said.

“The saying is, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” she added.

Some of the most effective preventive measures you can take right now are lifestyle modifications around exercise, diet, sleep and social connectivity, Barzilai said.

• Eating a Mediterranean-style diet –– which focuses on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, healthy fish and extra-virgin olive oil, with smaller portions of eggs, dairy and poultry –– has been linked to significant increases in lifespan.
• Both aerobic activity and strength training have been found to be associated with lower risk of death.
• Getting seven to eight hours of uninterrupted, restful sleep has been associated with a longer life by several years.
• More socializing also comes with important benefits, since loneliness and social isolation have been linked to a higher risk of early death.

Investing in these areas can be difficult, and often the benefits don’t appear right away, but proactivity can be key to having more years and enjoying them in better health.

“This country is a sick care industry in terms of, ‘how can we wait till you’re sick before we intervene’ when we should be doing all manner of preventative stuff that you don’t see over the course of your life, around nutrition, around sleep, around exercise, and that we support people in removing stress,” Swisher said.

By Madeline Holcombe, CNN