Episode #225 Extending the Health Span with Tzipi Strauss, Head of Sheba Longevity Center

In the last decade of a person’s life, we spend 7x what we spend on taking care of them in all the years that came before. SEVEN TIMES! That’s not only unbelievable, it’s unsustainable, particularly as our aging population grows and life span increases. So, if it’s not just about increasing life span, or the number of years someone lives, what is it about? For Dr. Tzipi Strauss, Founder and Director of the Sheba Longevity Center, it’s about increasing health span, that is the number of years a person lives healthily, without the need for significant intervention.  The work Dr. Strauss and her team are doing focuses on longevity. It’s a step beyond lifestyle medicine in that they look across all body systems, and at the individual as a whole, to identify their biggest risk factors and what interventions they actually need, not just what the latest fad says. The emphasis on behavior change is significant, and that may be the holy grail, getting people to adopt these healthy changes permanently, but Dr. Strauss finds that when patients see their biological age and the impact of the decisions and choices they’ve been making, their motivation to change is different. It’s data driven. Professor Strauss is a physician-scientist, pediatrician, and neonatologist, and a leading voice in the emerging field of longevity medicine. She is the Founder and Director of the Sheba Longevity Center—one of the first academic longevity centers embedded within a public healthcare system. Her work combines clinical innovation, research, and policy, aiming to transform longevity from a privilege into a scalable, evidence-based public health model.