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Longevity
No biohacking or 15-second trends here. Just time-tested methods that help you live longer, stronger, freer, happier.
![Longevity](https://meridianhealthnc.com/images/LongevityBanner_2600x1100.jpg)
Longevity
No biohacking or 15-second trends here. Just time-tested methods that help you live longer, stronger, freer, happier.
In the West, “Longevity Medicine” has become a popular term only in the last decade, but in Asian cultures, the concept is thousands of years old.
What does Longevity mean? It’s not merely living a long life, but a long life full of vitality, joy, and meaning. It’s experiencing the world more vibrantly when we have better physical, mental, and emotional health.
There’s no set template for how one achieves Longevity, but after working with thousands of patients, we at MHS believe these are the key areas that need attention:
- Nutrition
- Movement
- Rest
- Mental & Brain function
- Emotional & Social connection
What each person needs is different, and your needs will also change throughout life. We don’t have one ready solution for everyone. But we’re here to listen, think through challenges together, and walk with you on the long splendid journey.
Movement and Performance
One of the most crucial aspects that determines our quality of life is how comfortable we are in our bodies, which includes what range and type of movements we can perform. The bare minimum of movement comfort applies to daily activities like unloading groceries and playing with kids/grandkids. You’d like to do these things with ease, to not be in pain or have restrictions, so you can focus on enjoying life.
The high end of movement therapy applies to athletic performance. Here, having optimized, efficient movement is the name of the game. You want to have full range of motion and usage of your form, so that training and performance reach your full potential.
The sports medicine experts at MHS can help with all of the above! We use various methods to identify which body areas are hindering your movements (link to Muscle testing on modalities page). We provide targeted treatments, and send you home with directed exercises that quickly make a difference.
Our goal is to help you participate in life with comfort and excellence!
Brain Health
When we talk about Longevity, most of us can agree on a definition of good physical health. But what defines brain health is less clear. So here, we go more in-depth on brain health, and how we address it.
Brain function encompasses many areas, including memory, focus, space-time orientation, the ability to learn new skills, and mental-emotional states. Recent public health figures show alarming increases in brain function disorders for people of all ages:
The Alzheimer's Association data from 2022 show that 1 in 9 Americans over age 65 have Alzheimer's dementia. The CDC reports that 9.5% of American children ages 4-17 have been diagnosed with ADHD; over 10% adults suffer from depression and nearly 40 million adult Americans (or 18%) suffer from anxiety disorders.
Many neurological and brain disorders are not yet well-understood, but can be related to neurodegeneration (death of brain cells), viral infections, environmental toxins, and genetic predisposition. Depending on the condition, conventional Western medicine treatment may include medications, surgery, or behavioral therapy.
The practitioners at MHS understand brain health to be a direct extension of health in the rest of the body. Many factors, such as blood sugar dysregulation, poor oxygenation to the brain, food intolerances, poor digestive health leading to leaky gut/leaky blood-brain -barrier, systemic inflammation, and adrenal hyper/hypofunction could contribute to a decline in brain health. We are trained to recognize signs associated with imbalances in specific neurotransmitters, and address most cases with these treatment approaches:
Acupuncture protocols that specifically address brain injury, regulate feedback between the peripheral and central nervous systems, promote healthy circulation patterns, and modulate the stress response. Acupuncture has long been used as a treatment to help improve memory and cognitive function. A 2006 study in Neurology Research demonstrated that acupuncture significantly helped with test subjects’ memory and calculation1. Recent clinical studies are also showing that acupuncture helps with anxiety, depression, and control insomnia2, and even improve the immune response of people with anxiety3.
Dietary counseling to target your unique constitution, decrease inflammation, and provide optimal nutrition for brain health;
Herbal and nutritional supplementation that helps to balance oxygen and glucose levels in the body, and positively impact central nervous system function.
Lifestyle practices such as appropriate exercise, sleep regulation, stress and mental health management all play a role in brain health.
With a combination of the above approaches, we have successfully helped many people with the following:
- Improve spacial and verbal memory
- Enhance focus and work performance
- Manage anxiety associated with PTSD
- Regulate moods
- Decrease anxiety & depression
- Working in conjunction with the patient’s physician, manage a decrease and/or discontinuation of antidepressant medications
- Help children with impulse control, tics, and sensory disintegration disorder
- Improve ADHD behaviors in children and adults
Eye Health
Vision is a crucial way for us to interact with the world. It’s almost inevitable for everyone’s vision to undergo some degree of deterioration as we age. But if we take care of our whole-person health, we can also preserve our vision.
Beyond benefits in general vision, MHS also offers treatments that support specific vision conditions such as age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), glaucoma, or retinitis pigmentosa. Treatment results depend on severity of the condition, how long you’ve had it, and presence of other complicating health factors.
Less complex issues such as dry eyes or floaters can resolve completely. In more severe conditions such as macular degeneration where one already has some degree of vision loss, our treatments have helped to slow down further deterioration, stabilize vision, or in some cases, regain vision parameters.
In the more severe conditions, we typically begin treatments with a regular series of focused acupuncture sessions (2-4 times per week for 3-6 weeks), then space out treatments to 1-2 times per month as we achieve improved/stable vision. Treatments include a combination of Microacupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, dietary adjustments, and key nutritional supplements for eye health, based on analysis of your bloodwork.