Stronger for Longer
What if the goal isn't simply to live longer, but to stay healthier for longer?
In this episode of Road to Resilience, host Stephen Calabria sits down with Daniel Puleston, Assistant Professor of Immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, to explore the emerging science of healthspan: the number of years we remain healthy, active, and resilient throughout our lives.
Together, they examine the biological processes that shape aging, including immune function, chronic inflammation, metabolism, and cellular resilience. Dr. Puleston explains why the gap between lifespan and health span has become one of modern medicine's most important challenges, and why habits such as exercise, sleep, nutrition, and stress management remain some of the most powerful tools available for preserving long-term health.
Whether you're thinking about aging for the first time or looking for practical ways to invest in your future health, this episode offers an engaging look at what science is revealing about living not just longer, but better.
Stephen Calabria: From the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, this is Road to Resilience, a podcast about facing adversity. I'm your host, Stephen Calabria, Mount Sinai's director of podcasting.
Most of us spend very little time thinking about aging until it starts affecting our daily lives. Maybe it's taking longer to recover from an illness, maybe it's a chronic health condition that's become harder to manage, or maybe it's the realization that living longer and living well aren't necessarily the same thing.
Scientists are increasingly focused on what's known as health span, the number of years we remain healthy, active, and resilient. It's a shift from asking how long we can live to asking how well we can live.
And answering that question means understanding some of the most fundamental processes in human biology, including the immune system, metabolism, and the ways our bodies change over time.
Today we're joined by Dr. Daniel Puleston, an associate, an assistant profe- Jesus Christ. An assistant professor of immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and a member of both the Precision Immunology Institute and the Tisch Cancer Institute.
His research explores how metabolism fuels the immune system, how those processes influence aging and disease, and what they can teach us about cancer. Together we discuss health span, resilience at the cellular level, and what today's science may reveal about staying healthier for longer.
Dr. Daniel Puleston, welcome to Road to Resilience.
Daniel Puleston: Good to see you. Thanks for having me.
Stephen Calabria: So we're here to talk about healthspan. To kick us off, what is the difference between healthspan and lifespan?