New Event – Functional Medicine Summit 2026
The Functional Medicine Summit 2026 features scientific and clinical advances from leading experts relevant to optimizing women’s health and longevity.
There are important sex biases that influence longevity and health with age. Women live on average longer than men, but do not necessarily have a longer healthspan and are more susceptible to osteoporosis, chronic inflammatory disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies in women and women outnumber men among long-term cancer survivors.
Because males and females age differently it is important to understand the mechanistic basis of these differences. Historically, women have been underrepresented in scientific research, but this is changing and sex-specific effects relevant to ageing, such as sex-biased gene expression, biological hallmarks of aging, hormone signalling and metabolic function are becoming better appreciated.
Hormones, including adrenal, ovarian, and thyroid axes, play an important role in determining metabolic health, disease risk and healthspan. Lifestyle and environmental factors influence mechanisms that underlie age-related chronic diseases in women, including DNA methylation and gene expression, low-grade inflammation, oxidative stress and hormone metabolism. Hormone-related signalling is at the intersection between lifestyle medicine and biological ageing.
Recently, accelerated biological ageing, independent of chronological ageing, has been shown to reflect ageing in multiple biological systems and predict disease risk. Research indicates that personalised lifestyle changes, such as physical activity, diet, and sleep, slow the ageing process and mitigate disease.
Functional medicine is a patient-centred, systems-biology based clinical approach that integrates genetics, biology, lifestyle and environmental factors to inform personalised interventions with emphasis on nutrition and lifestyle medicine. The aims of functional medicine include optimising health, preventing and reversing chronic disease, making it an exemplary model of clinical care for healthy ageing.
The Functional Medicine Summit 2026 Women’s Health, Hormones, and Metabolism: Optimising Healthy Ageing brings together leading voices in functional medicine to empower you with recent advances relevant to women’s health and longevity.