Rethinking How We Age: The Modern Age Approach
By Dr. Anant Vinjamoori, Modern Age Chief Medical Officer
At Modern Age, we are creating a new approach to how we age. We are inspired by research that shows that people who feel younger, live longer. Our bodies change throughout our lives, so it’s never too early to understand what’s happening and what we can do about it. For those of us who don’t want to fade quietly into the background, we are here to help you take control.
Here, our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Anant Vinjamoori, shares how his background in healthcare innovation drives his conviction that by proactively focusing on individuals and their goals, we can create better outcomes.
I began my medical training in the world of internal medicine and primary care, eager to help people with their most common and important health goals and problems. I trained at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where I had the privilege of learning from some of the best physicians in the world.
Despite this rigorous training, I was humbled by how frequently I found myself unable to help my own friends and family when they came to me with common health questions. When people asked me why it was that they had less energy recently or why their sleep was declining in quality, I felt largely ill-equipped to help. If I couldn’t map the problem into a defined medical category like anemia or hypothyroidism, I could only give vague guidance about improving lifestyle, or state that it was “normal.”
After completing my residency, I joined Virta Health, a healthcare tech company applying an innovative approach to an old problem: diabetes. The conventional approach to diabetes primarily involves escalating doses of medication. Virta takes a whole-person approach to diabetes, using a medically supervised low carbohydrate diet and lifestyle program to reverse the condition for many. This intervention sat outside the medical mainstream, but the results for patients were striking and undeniable. Most importantly, Virta emphasized patient empowerment over their condition, whereas the conventional wisdom was that diabetes was a lifetime condition. As I saw this positive impact, I began to wonder how much more we could do to help people by taking a holistic approach and a fresh look at ways to help them achieve their health goals.
As we get older, issues such as decreased energy, indigestion, aches and pains, or skin problems enter our lives. We should feel fortunate when these are not related to a medical diagnosis, but the fact remains that these problems exist and affect our quality of life. And sometimes, they manifest as bigger problems later on.
My desire to dig deeper into these age-related issues with a patient-centric approach to care, combined with some recent family health challenges, ultimately brought me to Modern Age.
At Modern Age, we are focused on one of the most common and most fundamental health goals: feeling good as we get older.
In essence, Modern Age is a digital and physical clinic that is relentlessly focused on our customer’s goals around aging well. We’ve created a platform that offers digital tools, products, and in-person treatments, all backed by evidence. Importantly, our medical team is committed to radical transparency to help guide our customers to the right decision for their own unique needs and goals.
Our mission is rooted in research that shows that people who feel younger ultimately live healthier and happier lives. So we start by understanding our customers’ subjective age — how old they feel relative to their current age, based on factors like health, lifestyle, and even appearance. We’ll continue to get to know our customers and their goals, then match them with personalized recommendations. To start, we will focus on areas where we feel the impact of aging first: skin, hair, bones, and hormones.
For most of us, our sense of getting older starts to show up in the texture and elasticity of our skin, or in how our hair doesn’t behave how it used to. By tackling skin and hair, we can immediately impact how people perceive themselves and their subjective age. Hormones, while less visible, are also closely tied to peoples’ sense of well-being; age-related hormonal changes can cause everything from poor sleep to energy loss, as well as the development of chronic diseases like diabetes. Finally, while bone health might not be top of mind for most 30- and 40-year-olds, our bones start to lose density as early as our mid-30s, and an early assessment of where you stand can help you take steps today that will pay off in the future.
Our team of specialists and health experts will create the ideal “recipe” of recommendations, products, and treatments to address one or more of these areas, and evolve this recipe over time to ensure our patients are aging as they would like. We will connect the dots across these areas as well. For example, we may deliver Botox and dermal fillers to address skin goals, along with a hormone support program that not only targets low energy and mood symptoms, but also helps sustain skin health.
And this is just the beginning. We know aging affects every aspect of each of us, inside and out. In the future, we’ll tackle areas like metabolic health, inflammation, and the microbiome — all ultimately in the service of helping people look and feel their best at any age.
While we are starting in the New York area, we have aspirations to broaden our reach over time and show that it’s possible to build a healthcare offering that places patient goals at the center — and that this approach to delivering care ultimately leads to happier patients and better health outcomes.
I am so excited to be part of this journey, and to know that I can soon go back to my family and friends, among many others, with a solution for their age-related concerns. I hope you will join us as well. We are hiring for many roles, including for clinicians at our NYC flagship. And if you’re interested in taking control of how you age, sign up for our list and we’ll let you know as soon as you can experience it for yourself!
