Never Too Old to Be Young
Dr Thomas Khor
My late father, Dato’ Dr Michael Khor was fortunate enough to excel in two areas as a doctor, one in Paediatrics and the other in Geroscience, the study of longevity.
Dr Michael spent his last years preaching to his close friends and his patients to “square the curve”—compress the years of illness that typically book‑end life and replace them with health, purpose, and dignity. Revisiting his final lecture deck in the months since his passing has reminded me how relevant his message remains, and how urgently medicine must move from piecemeal disease‑hunting to proactive age‑management. Below I distil his core ideas, add current clinical evidence, and offer a simple action framework for readers who refuse to let their birth year dictate their future.
Our passports record chronological age, yet our cells keep their own score. Lifestyle, environment and emerging therapeutics can widen or narrow the gap between these two numbers. When that gap widens in favour of youth, every chronic disease we fear—heart failure, stroke, cancer, dementia—retreats. This is why slowing the biological clock delivers a larger boost in healthy years than curing any single illness.
Geroscience now maps twelve “hallmarks” of aging, from genomic instability to impaired autophagy. Each represents a dial that can be turned. Trials of senolytic drugs such as dasatinib‑quercetin, NAD⁺ precursors, and low‑dose rapalogs show that aging is plastic even in humans; lifestyle levers like intermittent feeding windows and resistance training often move the same biochemical dials more safely and cheaply.
Father insisted that physiology and psychology are inseparable. Large cohort data confirm his observation: people who score high on a life‑purpose index live markedly longer and succumb far less to cardiovascular and metabolic disease. Prescribing an “ikigai” may out‑perform a fourth antihypertensive pill.
In daily practice I organise the longevity agenda into six interconnected pillars. First, nutrient timing and quality— sixteen hours of overnight fasting plus adequate protein maintains insulin sensitivity without sacrificing muscle. Second, progressive strength work and zone‑two cardio keep mitochondrial output high. Third, disciplined sleep builds glymphatic clearance and hormone balance. Fourth, stress autoregulation, whether through breathwork or prayer, reins in chronic inflammation. Fifth, doctor‑supervised pharmacological geroprotection extends what lifestyle cannot reach. Sixth, an explicit sense of purpose, expressed through service and mentorship, multiplies the biochemical gains of the other five. Seen together, these pillars form an operating system rather than a wellness checklist.
For the forty‑year‑old CEO juggling capital markets and family demands, I recommend: one, establish a baseline biological age using body‑composition scans, epigenetic clocks and VO₂ testing; two, treat the six pillars like quarterly KPIs reviewed with the same rigour as financial statements; three, allocate investment capital toward age‑tech ventures—senotherapeutics, continuous biomarker wearables, AI‑driven nutrition platforms—because reducing late‑life morbidity is a superior long‑run growth thesis; and four, model these behaviours visibly, turning personal health into a culture driver that lowers corporate medical costs while expanding cognitive runway.
My father loved Robert Frost’s reminder that we have “miles to go before I sleep.” Longevity is not vanity medicine; it is an ethical commitment to remain capable for those who count on us. The science is ready, the tools are affordable, and the returns—both personal and societal—are compounding. All that remains is decisive action.