Thanks to medical advances that have cut the death toll from infectious diseases, babies born in Canada today can expect to live better than 80 years—nearly 30 years longer than those born a century ago. But that medical victory has given us another battlefield: chronic disease. One-third of Canadians live with chronic health conditions, and the proportion goes up as we age, with nearly half of those 65 to 79, and 59 per cent of those 80 and older living with high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. So years have been added to our lives, but can we add life to our extra years?