Interview with Prof. Henzler: Why He Is Passionate About Longevity

In this interview, Prof. Dr. Thomas Henzler discusses his perspective on healthy ageing, the role of preventive radiology and the potential of epigenetic testing for longevity research.

Please briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your work.

“My name is Professor Thomas Henzler, and I am the managing director of a large radiology practice in Stuttgart. I am also deputy chairman of the medical advisory board of the Radiology Holding Diagnostik und Therapie.

My medical focus is on cardiothoracic and oncological imaging. What makes these two fields of radiology particularly exciting is the opportunity to detect diseases and specific disease risk factors at an early stage, while patients are still asymptomatic. This allows preventive measures to be taken in good time, so that diseases can be treated before symptoms arise or, ideally, prevented altogether. Perhaps this approach can best be summarised under the umbrella term ‘preventive radiology’.”

What does healthy ageing mean to you?

“In my day-to-day work, I see many patients who, from their mid-40s onwards, already suffer from preventable lifestyle-related diseases that could actually be avoided through education, training and, in some cases, only minor changes to their daily routines. In most patients, this initially affects the musculoskeletal system, causes early limitations in sexual health and leads to changes in laboratory values that are ignored for too long within our healthcare system.

For patients in their 50s, this chain then continues with the onset of impaired organ function, followed by manifest cardiovascular, oncological and mental illnesses. When we contrast this with the increase in life expectancy brought about by medical progress, it quickly becomes clear that many of us spend a large proportion of our lives as ‘patients’.

Key message: “For me, the neotes mission therefore means helping people to spend the majority of their lives not as patients, but as healthy individuals who take responsibility for their own health.”

Which findings from longevity research do you find particularly interesting, and why?

“In recent years, I have been particularly fascinated by the connection between controlled calorie restriction through fasting, the resulting activation of autophagy and the positive effects this has on our health. When I think back to my school days and the food pyramid posters hanging in every classroom, I find this enormous paradigm shift fascinating. At the same time, we also have to recognise how much educational work lies ahead of us as a result of years of misinformation. In addition to fasting and autophagy, I am especially interested in the subject of exercise and in promising substances within longevity research.”

One of the new developments attracting a great deal of interest is epigenetics. As a radiologist and as a private individual, where do you see the short-, medium- and long-term potential of epigenetic testing?

“From my perspective, epigenetic tests will become the method of choice for health-conscious people who want to assess their current individual health status and identify their personal risks at an early stage. I also find it fascinating that these tests reveal, without embellishment, periods of life characterised by less healthy lifestyle choices.

Quantitative individual parameters from epigenetic tests are, in turn, an excellent tool for demonstrating individual progress and the effects of lifestyle changes initiated by us at neotes over time – in other words, longitudinally. This has an extraordinarily motivating effect on many of our customers.”

The bioAge Test from neotes demonstrates how an individual’s health status can be measured epigenetically. You can read more about the relationship between lifestyle, biological age and prevention in our articles What biological age reveals and Improving biological age: the epigenetic clock. We also explore the role of fasting and autophagy in cellular health in greater depth in the article Spermidine: insights into one of the most important polyamines.