Stop the Clock!

What man doesn't want to complete the Hawaiian Ironman at age 40, hike Nepal at 50, BASE jump at 60? And look great while doing it?

The good news is that while time might tug at all your body parts, its passage is producing medical advances capable of making your longer life a healthier one, too. Sure, they can't rebuild you just yet, but men such as Sydney ophthalmologist Dr Vivek Chowdhury - one half of the team trying to create the world's first bionic eye - are confident that "things could be very interesting in 20-30 years". Perfect timing for most of the readers of this magazine (or this website.)

To find out whether science will save us after all, we crystal-balled a raft of common health complaints and got experts in each field to give us their prognosis. Thanks to all those white-coated scientists putting your tax dollars to good use, it appears the future looks rosy indeed . . .

Heart

The bad news is that cardiovascular disease remains Australia's biggest killer; the good news is that scientists are making great inroads into that thumping muscle in the middle of your chest.

Late last year, researchers at the University of Minnesota in the US actually made a beating heart in a laboratory. Although it's a long way from being approved for use in humans, the research suggests that the future in treating the heart may lie in the ability to grow new tissue, blood vessels and even replacement organs from a patient's stem cells, whereby the very building blocks of our body's cells are modified to work in way they wouldn't normally.

Dr Gary Jennings, from Melbourne's Baker Heart Research Institute, agrees we can be "pretty confident" that we'll be regrowing our own damaged heart muscles through stem cells or gene therapy inside a decade.

Other advancements will include non-obtrusive robot surgery, a fully implantable mechanical heart and drugs that boost "good" cholesterol. Jennings also believes we'll have far better methods and medications to combat obesity and diabetes.

Until then, says Jennings, men, "particularly those in their thirties, need to remain active".

"That's when we see tummies go from flat to round and it's the time in which we see all the risk factors start to go up - blood pressure, cholesterol and those sorts of things," he warns.

"At that age, men also start to give up the more physical sports like football. But rather than give up sport altogether, men should think about moving to, say, tennis or swimming, or sports they can still do when they're 80."

HEART TIP
OTHER THAN OILY FISH AND (THE ODD) RED WINE, THERE'S NO PROOF THAT ANY OTHER FOODS ARE BENEFICIAL TO THE OLD TICKER. IT'S MORE ABOUT WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T EAT. FOODS HIGH IN SATURATED FATS, SALTS AND SUGARS ARE OBVIOUSLY NO FRIEND TO THE HEART. KEEPING YOUR WEIGHT DOWN, REGULAR EXERCISE AND NOT SMOKING ARE ALL GIVENS. AS WELL, IF YOU'RE OVER 40 WITH A HISTORY OF HEART DISEASE, YOU MUST KNOW YOUR CHOLESTEROL LEVEL, YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE AND WHETHER YOU HAVE DIABETES OR PREDIABETES.

Skin

Gold Coast doctor and cosmetic surgeon Ces Colagrande sees a lot of men wanting to swap their weathered visage for David Beckham's handsome mug. The problem, he explains, lies in the fact that as we hit our late thirties, we go through antropause, meaning our hormones become irritable and our testosterone and libido wane - and that all starts to show up in the skin on our face.

In terms of skin treatments "coming soon", lasers are being hailed as the next step in ridding men of eye-bags, wrinkles and scarring. Known as IPL, or "intense pulse light", the process uses a laser to regenerate the collagen without damaging or burning the outer layer of skin.

The Holy Grail, however, will come in the form of gene therapy. Explains Colagrande: "It's all very developmental at this stage, but what you do is play with a person's stem cells, turning them into a superhuman gene if you like. They're then injected back into the patient and (rather than deteriorate and die like normal cells) they'll keep on regenerating the skin tissue and the muscles. But that's still very many years away yet."

SKIN TIP

TO PROTECT YOUR BIGGEST ORGAN, AVOID DIRECT SUNLIGHT, USE A SUNSCREEN, DRINK PLENTY OF WATER AND KEEP OFF THE BOOZE AND FAGS. FOODS HIGH IN VITAMINS A, C AND E ARE GREAT FOR THE OLD EPIDERMIS. THINK BRIGHT-RED (TOMATOES AND CAPSICUMS) OR DARK-ORANGE (CARROTS AND PUMPKIN). IF YOUR KIDNEY OR LIVER AREN'T FUNCTIONING AS WELL AS THEY SHOULD THAT WILL ALSO SHOW UP IN YOUR FACE. A LOT OF BODY-BUILDING SUPPLEMENTS CAN ALSO BE QUITE TOXIC AND DAMAGING TO THE SKIN.

Knees and joints

As we age, the biggest issue with our joints is our propensity to osteoarthritis. That's why you see some 75-year-olds running marathons, while others hobble with a cane. So the future, according to Dr John Batten, from the Australian Orthopaedic Association, will be the way we use genetics to detect, contain and prevent the real debilitations like arthritis.

When it comes to the real pie-in-the-sky stuff, the stuff in 30 years' time, Batten says he sees a time when stem-cell research will allow a patient to regrow their own bones, tendons or cartilage for transplant.

Even today there's a nascent process called "autologous cartilage grafting" that surgeons have been dabbling in during the past decade. Simply put, it involves removing healthy cartilage from a damaged knee via an arthroscope, regrowing it in a laboratory for 4-6 weeks, and then regrafting the healthy tissue in the knee.

But the question remains: will we all be running 100 metres in eight seconds when we're 80 years old?

"I doubt that," smiles Batten, "but I do think there'll be a time when we look back at knee replacement operations and say, 'Oh, that was pretty gruesome, why didn't we just play around with genetics?'"

JOINTS TIP

ANY ACTIVITY IS YOUR JOINTS' BEST FRIEND. HAVING SAID THAT, EXTREME ACTIVITY - THAT IS, THE PRESSURES SOME FOOTBALLERS PLACE ON THEIR KNEES - CAN BE DELETERIOUS. DIET-WISE, THERE'S NO EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST ANYTHING YOU EAT WILL IMPROVE JOINT HEALTH, BUT BEING OVERWEIGHT WILL PLACE ADDED PRESSURE ON HIPS AND KNEES. OVERWEIGHT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN PROVEN TO HAVE A HIGHER INCIDENCE OF ARTHROSIS, THE MAIN CAUSE OF MOST JOINT PAIN.