Predict, then prevent
Dr Bow — Dr Sasipa Samakkeethum — is a preventive and longevity doctor in Thailand. When we filmed with her in 2023 she was at the Laguna Clinic (BDMS) in Phuket; she has since moved to the VitalLife Scientific Wellness Center, the longevity clinic of Bumrungrad Hospital, in Bangkok and Phuket. Her fascination with longevity goes back to school, and to one line from a businessman she met: it isn’t how wealthy you are or how much time you have — the most important thing in life is health. A billionaire at seventy who can’t enjoy life, living on a fistful of pills, is not the goal. The goal is healthspan.
Her method starts before prevention, with prediction. Only about a quarter of disease, she says, comes from genetic risk; the other three-quarters is lifestyle — diet and exercise. So the work is to find the risk factors while you’re still healthy and reduce them, catching sickness before it becomes disease.
From there it’s refreshingly plain. Screen for the anomalies and dangers; then change the lifestyle, and diet above all — we eat two or three meals a day for our whole life, so it matters more than anything. Modern supplements can help fill the gaps left by industrial food, cooking and a more toxic environment — but she is firm that a pill can never substitute the lifestyle.
At Laguna she sees the world’s medical-tourism patients — from the Middle East, Europe and Australia — and the pattern repeats: processed food, sugar and too much carbohydrate, driving weight gain, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Her answer is the same for all of them, and it is why her page also touches the Longevity Basics: get the basics right first.
