Tech-Bro Nerdery Trickles-Down To Significant Figs For Average Joe:
One of the most unfortunate parts of being alive on this planet is the set of dents our health can take over time.
Researchers like Dr. David Sinclair have even called Aging itself a disease.
And if you look around at different tech bros like Bryan Johnson and his “Blueprint” protocol, a lot of people are trying to solve the problem.
Using a variety of tests that may or may not be accurate, guys like Bryan and tech billionaires taking Metformin are finding out that age may not just be measured in years.
In the immortal words of Indiana Jones, “It’s not the years honey. It’s the mileage.”
And a team of Scandinavian researchers couldn’t agree more…
The Short Answer:
- Researchers and Silicon Valley tech-bros share an enemy with all of us. Aging.
- There are many crazy programs out there from blood-transfusion to supplements and meds.
- People with a youthful attitude do live better & healthier lives.
- But the healthiness of your diet, exercise & supplement/meds programs helps a lot.
- A KI research team looked at over 300,000 subjects between 40-70 for 9 years.
- They found a way to use 18 standard tests to create a “Biological Age” score that was different from the subjects’ chronological age.
- The older someone was on these metrics, the more health problems they would have.
- More specifically, if a person had a biological age 5+ years greater than their normal age, their risk of Dementia & Stroke went up by 40%.
- The good news is that you can change your diet & exercise to reduce your biological age.
- The way to do this is generally by following all the standard health recommendations.
- Dr. Kara Fitzgerald created a very specific program that doesn’t use any crazy supplements or meds.
- You can take her informal biological age test here.
- For the people who believe in the mindset stuff, meditation & stress-management are also tied to better outcomes, too.
Read on to find out the details…
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You Are Only As Old As You Feel; And Also Your Program:
Because !SCIENCE! now has so many smart people chasing the new-ish idea that aging is a disease; that can be treated,
There may be some new truth to the idea that age is just a number and that you are only as old as you feel.
The truth might be closer to something like: You’re only as old as your diet, exercise, stress-management and medication allow you to be.
And to that end, a team at The Karolinska Institute found a correlation between some surprisingly-standard tests and actual results.
Standard Test Data Can Become A Biological Age Score, Too!:
Sara Hägg’s team chose to examine whatever aging-related data they could get their hands on from The UK Biobank Study.
Out of that body, they looked at over 300,000 individuals who were between 40 and 70 years old at the start of the four year collection and nine year observation windows.
But, as you might have already guessed, chronological age really wasn’t the point.
The team tried to establish what could be closer to “Actual Age”.-Or at least in terms of body-chemistry.
They were able to whittle down the number of factors to about 18 while still having conclusive results.
If Your Biological Age Is 5+ Years Older, That Spells Trouble:
Those results showed clearly that the “older” someone was in terms of these measures,
The higher their probability of getting dementia or having a stroke in the future.
This risk was so much higher that the takeaway sound-bite from it was this:
If the biological age is at least 5 years higher than the chronological age, the risk of the two diseases goes up by 40 percent.
Some Of The Standard Tests That Can Be Used As Calcs:
The 18 factors taken into account included:
1) Respiration
2) Blood pressure
3) Waist circumference
4) Cholesterol
5) Blood sugar
6) Inflammation indicated by C-Reactive Protein
7) Other factors in the blood
The fact that a type of “Biological Age” could be calculated using pretty standard lab tests is impressive.
What’s more impressive is that if you dive into the study, it shows that age was actually calculated 3 different ways.
You Don’t Have To Be A Tech-Bro To Age Backwards:
Still better than that is the fact that if you put a good program together,
All of these factors can be influenced and improved by you, even if your biological age is too high.
Just like the aforementioned bio-hacking tech-bros who are trying to age themselves backwards.
Because they’re so nerdy, they’re using an even more advanced type of clock that’s named for the idea that DNA is not destiny, that your outcomes rely on your behavior as well as your genes.
This “clock” was invented by a researcher named Steven Horvath and is used by the mail-in-your-spit kits by Elysium, myDNAge and others.
It measures a specific part of your cell’s copy machine called Telomeres.
The longer they are, the younger you are biologically.
Most Of The Fixes Are What You’d Expect:
And the behaviors that affect them are what you might expect.
They’re all the healthy-living recommendations in-addition to getting oxidative damage out of your diet by avoiding things like sugar, Omega 6 oils, and saturated fat.
Getting as much sugar and high-glycemic carbs out of your diet can also avoid another type of aging called “Glycation“.
All of which is fine, but the KI team really put some teeth into the idea of biological clocks here.
Increased rates of debilitating illness is much more motivating than just trying to get a better score on a behavioral genetics test.
For Readers Who’d Like To Explore Further, There’s More:
But if you’d like to explore more about the subject, we have a post about Dr. Kara Fitzgerald’s program to reduce biological age without tons of vitamins and supplements.
If you are also curious about your own biological age but not ready to fork-over the $200-400 it costs for a Horvath-clock test, you can try the informal questionnaire by Dr. Kara at this link.
For those of you who still believe aging is also tied to mental attitude, that and stress are also supported by studies as well, so don’t lose faith in the face of giant DNA-machine either.
References & Links:
• Source: Karolinksa Institute
• More Coverage: KI’s Aging Studies
• Source Study: Neurodegeneration – Clinical biomarker-based biological ageing and future risk of neurological disorders in the UK Biobank
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