The Medical Advisor

Singapore was named a Blue Zone 2.0, or “the next frontier of ageing”, in 2023 by Dan Buettner, the American author and explorer who coined the term “Blue Zones” for places with lower rates of chronic disease and a longer life expectancy. Unlike the five original places Buettner identified – Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California – where traditional ways of life have naturally led inhabitants to live longer and healthier lives, Singapore is an “engineered” Blue Zone. Its status is the product of infrastructure, programmes and legislation that encourage citizens to live healthier lives. Singapore features in the 2023 Netflix documentary Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones . Life expectancy in Singapore has grown by 20 years since 1960, and in 2023 the Southeast Asian island state had the seventh highest in the world, with an average lifespan of 82.13 years for men and 86.42 years for women. The Rise of Singapore's Life Exp...

Renew your mitochondria. Rejuvenate your cells. Bring back that youthful muscle strength. Improve your fertility. Over the past several years, a plethora of new supplements have emerged on the scene, promising to boost human longevity and preserve youthfulness. Now, longevity doctors are scrambling to get people to slow down. "In our clinic, we are de-prescribing," Dr. Andrea Maier, a leading longevity doctor who founded two new longevity clinics in Singapore, one  public  and one  private , told Business Insider. "We first have to diagnose what's wrong, what somebody needs, and that might differ." Maier, also a professor of medicine and functional aging at the National University of Singapore, is one of several longevity medicine doctors who told BI that they are recommending patients stop taking many of the supplements they have learned about online. "People think that more helps more, and it's not the case," Dr. Evelyne Bischof, who practices l...

In an effort to protect its farming industry, its economy, and the health of its citizens, Italy recently became the first country to officially ban cultivated meat. Cultivated meat, also known as lab-grown meat, is created in a lab through a five-step process in which stem cells from an animal are replicated and grown in a series of bioreactors before being blended with additives to create a more realistic texture. The meat cells are then drained in a centrifuge, formed, and packaged for distribution,  according  to consulting firm McKinsey & Company. In a Nov. 16 Facebook  post ,  Italian Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida said, “In defense of health, of the Italian production system, of thousands of jobs, of our culture and tradition, with the law approved today, Italy is the first nation in the world to be safe from the social and economic risks of synthetic food," according to an English translation. The bill passed the Italian Senate by a measur...