The scientific director of Unifarco Gianni Baratto and the president Luigi Corvi explain the innovative strategies of pharmacies to prolong healthy lives
Live longer while maintaining energy, autonomy and quality of life. This is the change of perspective that is redesigning the scientific debate around an increasingly complex interweaving: research, prevention, nutrition, mental health, new models of treatment.
In this context, the GenAge® project was born, presented by Unifarco at the Milan Longevity Summit. At the center is a very ambitious idea: transforming the pharmacy into a real “Longevity hub”, a space where the pharmacist does not limit himself to dispensing medicines, but becomes a multidisciplinary guide in a path built on scientific evidence, lifestyle analysis and personalized prevention.
We talk about it with Dr. Gianni Baratto, scientific director and vice president for research and development of Unifarco, and with Luigi Corvi, president of the company: two voices to understand how pharmacies can become protagonists in the diffusion of a culture of healthy and conscious longevity.
From a longevity perspective, what are the most advanced scientific frontiers on which Unifarco’s research and development division is working today to slow down the mechanisms of aging?
The “antagonistic” biological mechanisms of aging counteract cellular activity and lead the cells into senescence, in a condition in which they are defined as zombie cells, which also slow down all the other cells. In those cases, there are ingredients that reduce the harmful activity of these senescent cells, which slow down cellular activity (for example quercetin, which red fruits are rich in). Quercetin, in fact, carries out a cleaning activity at the mitochondrial level, and is a substance considered safe from a food point of view: if integrated together with your diet, it is a way to take care of your health.
With the GenAge® project, the pharmacy is defined as a real longevity hub of proximity: how could the role of the pharmacist change in this sense?
The pharmacist has a profound knowledge of drugs and their composition, but also of biological and cellular mechanisms. He therefore has a knowledge of the ingredients that must be valorised. We can therefore hypothesize that there are some pharmacies that are more focused on the drug, but these are pharmacies that are essentially stuck in the past. There will be pharmacies that are more drugstorebecause they prefer product exposure. In any case, I am convinced that the types of pharmacies that dispense medicines, but which place the spearhead of their activity in advice, consultation and user guidance, will also remain and become stronger.
We have always worked on creating a network of pharmacists, a community that we were already thinking about twenty years ago, but which did not exist. There were no pharmacy chains, there was no issue of capital: all those objectives that led to the development of networking between public and private pharmacies. We therefore created this network, the Specialized Pharmacies of Preparatory Pharmacists, which today represents around seven hundred pharmacies in Italy from Alto Adige to Sicily, and which have in common a profound knowledge of the products. And also a preparation of pharmacists on what we call “behavioral training”. It means understanding people’s hidden needs and satisfying them through paths. The advice of these products therefore becomes a completion, an integration.
Your system also includes tools like the genetic plan. But how important is genetics and how much is lifestyle in a longevity project?
There was a period in which we arrived on the wave of enthusiasm, in which it was said that 25-30% genetics counted and 70% epigenetics (our choices and habits). In reality, this gap has been rebalanced in recent years. Genetics, clearly, pushes us towards a certain type of behavior: if we have lean parents, we cannot think that by doing nothing we can be super athletes. However, we can work a lot on the epigenetic part, improving certain characteristics.
Your approach is based on four pillars: nutrition, training, inner work and integration. Which of these is most overlooked?
It is certainly appropriate to start from eating habits, which lead to obesity and metabolic syndrome. In reality, in Italy there is a fairly active population. Probably, the other aspect that must be taken into consideration, in addition to food, is psychology. We intend to develop the theme of mindfulness: stress and lifestyle sometimes lead us to exaggerate in our behaviors.
Instead, we must focus on breathing, for example: not venting our nervousness by eating a brioche or an ice cream, but learning to use our breathing, our diaphragm, and even a little bit of meditation. Just let off steam through a walk, or even moderate physical activity. This is a healthy way, of course much more than ice cream. Warning: no food should be criminalized, just have moderation. We need to move from more carbohydrates to more proteins, make sure that proteins are important components, and above all limit added sugars.
