We often reach for coffee to kickstart our mornings, but your daily cup might be doing more than just waking you up. Emerging research1
Tag: longevity
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This Gut-Friendly Bacteria Thrives On Coffee — Here’s Why
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Vitamin D Promotes Antioxidant Activity For Healthy Longevity*
mbg’s vitamin D3 potency+ provides 5,000 IU of organic vitamin D3 derived from sustainable, vegan algal oil, plus a trio of organic oils (avocado, flax, and olive, to be exact) to optimize bioavailability and absorption.* (All in one gelcap, mind you.)
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Want to Live Longer? Move Closer to the Ocean
If you want to increase your chances of living longer, there are all kinds of common-sense changes you can make to your life. As we all know, more exercise, vegetables, and socializing, and less booze, stress and cigarettes can hopefully buy you a few extra years.
But according to a new study there’s another change that might help you squeeze out another good year or two that you probably haven’t considered — living closer to the ocean.
It’s not exactly a secret that spending time near the ocean is pleasant and life-affirming for many people. Millions of us flock to the beach every summer for this very reason. But can the positive qualities of being near the sea actually add years to your life?
That’s what a team out of te Ohio State University recently aimed to determine with a huge number-crunching exercise. They gathered data on life expectancy and other demographic factors for more than 66,000 U.S. census tracts and also analyzed each area’s proximity to various bodies of water. Were there any links between the two, the team wanted to know.
Their results were recently published in Environmental Research, and the short answer is yes. The details were a bit more complicated.
You might expect living near a lake or river should have much the same effects on health and longevity as living near the ocean. People enjoy these kinds of places in much the same way, after all. But that’s not what the numbers showed. Seaside living has special benefits. Having a river pass through your town, not so much.
“Overall, the coastal residents were expected to live a year or more longer than the 79-year average, and those who lived in more urban areas near inland rivers and lakes were likely to die by about 78 or so,” commented lead researcher Jianyong Wu.
Why living near the ocean is so beneficial
Why does living within 30 miles of the sea appear uniquely beneficial? The researchers conducted a variety of statistical tests to try to untangle the reasons.
The most obvious answer is that many coastal areas are wildly expensive places to live. If you call Malibu or the Hamptons home ,you are probably rich, and being rich helps you live longer.
That’s definitely part of the explanation, according to the researchers, but it’s not all of it. Coastal areas also have fewer extremely hot and cold days, which stress the body, as well as better air quality. They also often have more facilities and opportunities for recreation. All of these factors likely contribute to keeping those who live near the ocean alive a little bit longer.
The ‘Blue Mind’ theory
Though it’s harder for number crunching to prove it, there may also be subtler psychological reasons being by the sea seems to help people live a bit longer too. As Wharton psychologist Adam Grant explained, “recent experiments show that after just two minutes of viewing water outdoors, blood pressure and heart rate drop. It’s more calming to look at a lake, pool, or stream than trees or grass. And wider bodies of water bring more tranquility.”
Grant is referencing something called the “Blue Mind” theory here. The idea, developed by marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols and others, is that the ocean was a particularly inviting environment for our distant ancestors. It provided plenty of easily gathered seafood to nourish us and the open landscape made it easier to move around and spot predators.
As a result, over millennia humans developed a deep affinity for coastal environments. Which is why being by any water seems to make us happy, but being by the ocean has the greatest calming — and therefore health-giving effect — of all.
Oceanside towns you can actually afford to live in
The authors of the Ohio State study don’t weigh in on whether humans have some deep psychic tie to the sea forged in our distant past. But they are clear in their conclusion that, whatever the mix of causes, living near the ocean is uniquely good for us in ways that living near a lake or river isn’t.
So good in fact that being near the ocean just might add a year or so to your life.
Taking advantage of this insight could, of course, be pretty pricey. Most coastal real estate is eye-wateringly expensive. But as Apartment Therapy points out, it doesn’t have to be. The real estate and design blog helpfully dug up 18 affordable beach towns where you might actually be able to make ends meet.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Jessica Stillman
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Unlocking the Secrets to Living to 100
Want to enjoy a long, healthy, and happy life? Just live like a centenarian.
That’s the advice of Stacy Andersen, a behavioral neuroscientist at Boston University and co-director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians and their families in the world.
The study, which has enrolled more than 3,000 centenarians over its 30-year history, has been exploring the genetic factors, lifestyle choices, and environmental influences that appear to play a role in the longevity of people who live to 100 and beyond. The hope is that by studying centenarians, researchers can find treatments, as well as identify habits and environmental factors, that could help everyone live healthier for longer.
“Our goal is not to get everyone to live to age 100. What we’re trying to understand is: How do you live to whatever age—your 70s, 80s, or 90s—in very good health?” Andersen says.
It turns out that centenarians, on average, don’t smoke, eat a varied diet, are social, and generally don’t sweat the small stuff. They typically spend more years of their life in good health, known as “healthspan.” They also tend to have a feeling of purpose and can find joy in the everyday, even in their twilight years, Andersen says.
As part of TIME’s series interviewing leaders in the longevity field, we spoke to Andersen about her work with centenarians and what all of us can learn from them about aging well.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You run the New England Centenarian Study. What is it?
The study was started in 1995 by Dr. Thomas Perls [a Boston University geriatrician]. When Dr. Perls was a fellow doing his training in geriatrics, he was assigned to two patients over the age of 100 who were living in a retirement community. He had always been taught that the older you get, the sicker you get, so he expected the patients to be confined to their rooms and to be his sickest patients—but that wasn’t the case. Much to his surprise, they were two of his healthiest and most active patients. They were giving piano concerts to the community. They were out there doing things. He wondered if the two patients were just two remarkable outliers or if there was something different about people who reach these extreme ages—100 and over. So, he started the New England Centenarian Study. It has that name because it originally started in the eight towns around Boston, but over the years we’ve enrolled people all over the U.S., Canada, and other countries as well.
Read More: Want to Live Longer? First Find Out How Old You Really Are
To date, we’ve enrolled over 3,000 centenarians, as well as many of their siblings and offspring. Our oldest participant died at the age of 119. Her daughter lived to 101.
What we’ve seen with our centenarians is that the older you get, the healthier you’ve been, because, on average, centenarians have significantly delayed or avoided many chronic age-related illnesses. So in addition to having many extra years of life, they also have very long healthspans. And I think that’s what most of us want.
What kinds of data do you collect from the study participants?
The first thing we do is get a blood sample. We’re looking at many different factors in the blood that could tell us about how people age in a healthy way. We look at genetics, but then we go beyond the genes and look at other -omics data [which refers to the study of biological molecules like DNA, RNA, proteins, and metabolites]. We also collect a stool sample so that we can understand how bacteria in the gut might contribute to healthy aging, and we send participants preconfigured touchscreen tablets through which we can administer an array of cognitive function tests. We also check their blood pressure and measure their grip strength.
Then we follow up with them every year. We want to see what medical conditions they develop after we meet them. Are they still able to walk a certain distance? Are they still able to manage their medications on their own over time? We are really trying to understand their aging trajectory.
For one of our studies, we focus on what we call “cognitive superagers” [those who maintain cognitive function similar to people who are 30 years younger]. For that study, we ask people to sign up for our brain donation program so we can look at their brain tissue after they pass away and identify whether there is the protein buildup that’s associated with Alzheimer’s disease or frontotemporal dementia. For some of our centenarians, we’ve seen a real disconnect. They functioned very well in their daily lives, but then we look at their brain tissue and they have significant buildup of amyloid and tau [proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease]. From those cases, we can learn a lot about resilience. We’re still trying to understand how that disconnect happens. How do they maintain such good cognitive function when they have evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains?
How big of a role does genetics play in centenarians’ longevity?
For the vast majority of us, genetics accounts for only about 25% [of longevity], and the rest is related to the health behaviors that we follow. Do you maintain a healthy weight? Are you eating a nutritious diet? Are you getting moderate activity every day? Those are things that can help everyone live 10 years longer.
For centenarians, there’s a much bigger genetic component. Genetics accounts for about 75% of what gets you to really extreme ages like 105 and older. We’ve learned over the years that it really isn’t one or two genes that are getting people to these extreme ages, but more like 200 genetic variants.
Read More: Scientists Say These Daily Routines Can Slow Cognitive Decline
We also always assumed that our centenarians wouldn’t have disease variants of genes and that they must be enriched for protective factors, but it turns out that, with a couple of exceptions, they do have most of the same disease genes. This suggests even more strongly that they are enriched with protective factors, and that’s what we’re trying to learn more about, because that could help everyone. If we can understand these biological mechanisms, we could in theory come up with therapeutics that would help the general population.
Like a longevity pill?
Well, we’ve seen that centenarians have a healthier immune profile. We’ve seen that they have better DNA repair, and their cells seem to react differently to stress. We’re trying to dig into those mechanisms and those could be translated into a pill that could replicate those same effects.
Are there environmental factors and lifestyle habits that seem to contribute to centenarians’ longevity?
Yes, genetics isn’t everything. Environmental factors are a big piece that we’re trying to dive into more now. We are looking at things like sleep and leisure activities, social networks, how long people worked for and why they retired, how long people drive for and why they stopped driving. We want to understand if continuing to do rich activities over your lifetime plays a role in reaching age 100.
There are many centenarian studies all over the world, and each one takes a different lens on longevity, but I would say that across studies it really seems like centenarians have very good psychological well-being. They tend to score low in neuroticism. They don’t worry too much about bad things that happen. They’re able to deal with them and move on. They also score high in extraversion. They’re willing to try new things. They tend to be very outgoing, which I think helps them make new social connections as their peers pass away. They’re out doing things and meeting new people, and that helps their social networks. It also helps keep their brains strong.
Read More: Your Brain Reveals a Lot About Your Age
Another big piece is that there seems to be a feeling of having purpose in life—so waking up in the morning with things that you want to do. I think that’s a little bit surprising to hear about people at age 100; you might think they are just sitting around doing nothing, but that’s really not the case. They still have things that they want to accomplish. Maybe they’re not planning 10 years out, but they’re still finding joy in life.
Generally, our centenarians say that they never followed any specific diet and they didn’t go to the gym but they stayed busy and they were careful not to overeat and they ate a wide range of foods.
How about smoking and alcohol?
Smoking is very rare among our centenarians. Once in a while you’ll see in the media a 105-year-old woman who’s smoking a pack a day, but that’s a needle in a haystack.
In terms of alcohol, it varies. They mostly aren’t drinking excessively, but some of our centenarians do have a glass of wine a day or a shot of whatever they like every day. There’s a lot of variability in the different health behaviors of our centenarians. They aren’t all doing one thing.
Does gender play a role?
About 85% of our centenarians are women. But the interesting thing is, the men who live to 100 tend to be healthier. The women are better at surviving a long time with chronic diseases. The men, although there are far fewer of them who reach age 100, generally have very good physical and cognitive function. The men tend to be what we call “escapers,” where they are avoiding disease until after the age of 100.
I don’t think we know yet why there’s this difference, but it’s an area that we keep looking at, and it’s a reason that looking at sex differences even among centenarians is really important.
Has working with centenarians changed the way you think about aging?
It has given me a very positive view of aging. Most people I know say they don’t want to age or they’re scared of aging, and what we hear from our centenarians is that they also were scared of aging, but then they reached age 100 and they found that they actually enjoyed it.
Read More: Here’s How Much Sleep You Need According to Your Age
I think seeing people at age 100 who are enjoying life and doing the things they want to do and who still love learning is really eye-opening. Centenarians also just have so much wisdom, and to actually speak with one is really a gift.
What’s next for the centenarian study?
Our study has shown that centenarians reach their extreme ages because they are, on average, very healthy agers. And now we’re trying to delve into the biological mechanisms underlying that, as well as health behaviors and environmental factors that might help them age so well.
I think the most interesting piece of our work right now is focused on people who are really bucking the trend of aging and are just superstars of aging—centenarians who are still biking three miles a day or are still working or who are cognitive superagers. We’re trying to learn everything we can about how they are managing to do that.
Also, we are always looking for new participants. If you know an amazing centenarian living anywhere in the U.S. who may be willing to help with the study—or are a centenarian yourself—call 888-333-6327, email agewell@bu.edu, or visit our study website.
This article is part of TIME Longevity, an editorial platform dedicated to exploring how and why people are living longer and what this means for individuals, institutions, and the future of society. For other articles on this topic, click here.
Dominique Mosbergen
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A Longer Life on Statins? | NutritionFacts.org
What are the pros and cons of relative risk, absolute risk, number needed to treat, and average postponement of death when taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs?
In response to the charge that describing the benefits of statin drugs only in terms of relative risk reduction is a “statistical deception” created to give the appearance that statins are more effective than they really are, it was pointed out that describing things in terms of absolute risk reduction or number needed to treat can depend on the duration of the study.
For example, let’s say a disease has a 2% chance of killing you every year, but some drug cuts that risk by 50%. That sounds amazing, until you realize that, at the end of a year, your risk will only have fallen from 2% to 1%, so the absolute reduction of risk is only 1%. If a hundred people were treated with the drug, instead of two people dying, one person would die, so a hundred people would have to be treated to save one life, as shown below and at 1:01 in my video How Much Longer Do You Live on Statins?.
But there’s about a 99% chance that taking the drug all year would have no effect either way. So, to say the drug cuts the risk of dying by 50% seems like an overstatement. But think about it: Benefits accrue over time. If there’s a 2% chance of dying every year, year after year, after a few decades, the majority of those who refused the drug would be dead, whereas the majority who took the drug would be alive. So, yes, perhaps during the first year on the drug, there was only about a 1% chance it would be life-saving, but, eventually, you could end up with a decent chance the drug would save your life after all.
“This is actually the very reason why the usage of relative risk makes sense…” Absolute risk changes depending on the time frame being discussed, but with relative risk, you know that whatever risk you have, you can cut it in half by taking the drug. On average, statins only cut the risk of a cardiovascular “event” by 25%, but since cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of men and women, if you’re unwilling to change your diet, that’s a powerful argument in favor of taking these kinds of drugs. You can see the same kind of dependency on trial duration, looking at the “postponement of death” by taking a statin. How much longer might you live if you take statins?
The average postponement of death has some advantages over other statistics because it may offer “a better intuitive understanding among lay persons,” whereas a stat like a number needed to treat has more of a win-or-lose “lottery-like” quality. So, when a statin drug prevents, say, one heart attack out of a hundred people treated over five years, it’s not as though the other 99 completely lost out. Their cholesterol also dropped, and their heart disease progression presumably slowed down, too, just not enough to catch a heart attack within that narrow time frame.
So, what’s the effect of statins on average survival? According to an early estimate, if you put all the randomized trials together, the average postponement of death was calculated at maybe three or four days. Three or four days? Who would take a drug every day for years just to live a few more days? Well, let’s try to put that into context. Three or four days is comparable to the gains in life expectancy from other medical interventions. For example, it’s nearly identical to what you’d get from “highly effective childhood vaccines.” Because vaccines have been so effective in wiping out infectious diseases, these days, they only add an average of three extra days to a child’s life. But, of course, “those whose deaths are averted gain virtually their whole lifetimes.” That’s why we vaccinate. It just seems like such a small average benefit because it gets distributed over the many millions of kids who get the vaccine. Is that the same with statins?
An updated estimate was published in 2019, which explained that the prior estimate of three or four days was plagued by “important weaknesses,” and the actual average postponement of death was actually ten days. Headline writers went giddy from these data, but what they didn’t understand was that this was only for the duration of the trial. So, if your life expectancy is only five years, then, yes, statins may increase your lifespan by only ten days, but statins are meant to be taken a lot longer than five years. What you want to know is how much longer you might get to live if you stick with the drugs your whole life.
In that case, it isn’t an extra ten days, but living up to ten extra years. Taking statins can enable you to live years longer. That’s because, for every millimole per liter you lower your bad LDL cholesterol, you may live three years longer and maybe even six more years, depending on which study you’re reading. A millimole in U.S. units is 39 points. Drop your LDL cholesterol by about 39 points, and you could live years longer. Exercise your whole life, and you may only increase your lifespan by six months, and stopping smoking may net you nine months. But if you drop your LDL cholesterol by about 39 points, you could live years longer. You can accomplish that by taking drugs, or you can achieve that within just two weeks of eating a diet packed with fruits, vegetables, and nuts, as seen here and at 5:30 in my video.
Want to know what’s better than drugs? “Something important and fundamental has been lost in the controversy around this broad expansion of statin therapy.…It is imperative that physicians (and drug labels) inform patients that not only their lipid [cholesterol] levels but also their cardiovascular risk can be reduced substantially by adoption of a plant-based dietary pattern, and without drugs. Dietary modifications for cardiovascular risk reduction, including plant-based diets, have been shown to improve not only lipid status, but also obesity, hypertension, systemic inflammation, insulin sensitivity, oxidative stress, endothelial function, thrombosis, and cardiovascular event risk…The importance of this [plant-based] approach is magnified when one considers that, in contrast to statins, the ‘side effects’ of plant-based diets—weight loss, more energy, and improved quality of life—are beneficial.”
Michael Greger M.D. FACLM
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4 Hormonal Dementia Risk Factors That Directly Impact Women
“In particular, they literally push our neurons to bring glucose to make energy. So if your hormones are high, your brain energy is high. But then what happens to testosterone is that it doesn’t quite decline that much over time, whereas for women, estrogens pretty much plummet when women go through menopause,” Mosconi shares.
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The Real Benefits of Statins and Their Side Effects | NutritionFacts.org
A Mayo Clinic visualization tool can help you decide if cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are right for you.
“Physicians have a duty to inform their patients about the risks and benefits of the interventions available to them. However, physicians rarely communicate with methods that convey absolute information, such as numbers needed to treat, numbers needed to harm, or prolongation of life, despite patients wanting this information.” That is, for example, how many people are actually helped by a particular drug, how many are actually hurt by it, or how much longer the drug will enable you to live, respectively.
If doctors inform patients only about the relative risk reduction—for example, telling them a pill will cut their risk of heart attacks by 34 percent—nine out of ten agree to take it. However, give them the same information framed as absolute risk reduction—“1.4% fewer patients had heart attacks”—then those agreeing to take the drug drops to only four out of ten. And, if they use the number needed to treat, only three in ten patients would agree to take the pill. So, if you’re a doctor and you really want your patient to take the drug, which statistic are you going to use?
The use of relative risk stats to inflate the benefits and absolute risk stats to downplay any side effects has been referred to as “statistical deception.” To see how one might spin a study to accomplish this, let’s look at an example. As you can see below and at 1:49 in my video, The True Benefits vs. Side Effects of Statins, there is a significantly lower risk of the incidence of heart attack over five years in study participants randomized to a placebo compared to those getting the drug. If you wanted statins to sound good, you’d use the relative risk reduction (24 percent lower risk). If you wanted statins to sound bad, you’d use the absolute risk reduction (3 percent fewer heart attacks).
Then you could flip it for side effects. For example, the researchers found that 0.3 percent (1 out of 290 women in the placebo group) got breast cancer over five years, compared to 4.1 percent (12 out of 286) in the statin group. So, a pro-statin spin might be a 24 percent drop in heart attack risk and only 3.8 percent more breast cancers, whereas an anti-statin spin might be only 3 percent fewer heart attacks compared to a 1,267 percent higher risk of breast cancer. Both portrayals are technically true, but you can see how easily you could manipulate people if you picked and chose how you were presenting the risks and benefits. So, ideally, you’d use both the relative risk reduction stat and the absolute risk reduction stat.
In terms of benefits, when you compile many statin trials, it looks like the relative risk reduction is 25 percent. So, if your ten-year risk of a heart attack or stroke is 5 percent, then taking a statin could lower that from 5 percent to 3.75 percent, for an absolute risk reduction of 1.25 percent, or a number needed to treat of 80, meaning there’s about a 1 in 80 chance that you’d avoid a heart attack or stroke by taking the drug for the next ten years. As you can see, as your baseline risk gets higher and higher, even though you have that same 25 percent risk reduction, your absolute risk reduction gets bigger and bigger. And, with a 20 percent baseline risk, that means you have a 1 in 20 chance of avoiding a heart attack or stroke over the subsequent decade if you take the drug, as seen below and at 3:31 in my video.
So, those are the benefits. In terms of risk, that breast cancer finding appears to be a fluke. Put together all the studies, and “there was no association between use of statins and the risk of cancer.” In terms of muscle problems, estimates of risk range from approximately 1 in 1,000 to closer to 1 in 50.
If all those numbers just blur together, the Mayo Clinic developed a great visualization tool, seen below and at 4:39 in my video.
For those at average risk, 10 people out of 100 who do not take a statin may have a heart attack over the next ten years. If, however, all 100 people took a statin every day for those ten years, 8 would still have a heart attack, but 2 would be spared, so there’s about a 1 in 50 chance that taking the drug would help avert a heart attack over the next decade. What are the downsides? The cost and inconvenience of taking a pill every day, which can cause some gastrointestinal side effects, muscle aching, and stiffness in about 5 percent, reversible liver inflammation in 2 percent, and more serious damage in perhaps 1 in 20,000 patients.
Note that the two happy faces in the bottom left row of the YES STATIN chart represent heart attacks averted, not lives saved. The chance that a few years of statins will actually save your life if you have no known heart disease is about 1 in 250.
If you want a more personalized approach, the Mayo Clinic has an interactive tool that lets you calculate your ten-year risk. You can get there directly by going to bit.ly/statindecision.
Michael Greger M.D. FACLM
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Study Suggests This Is The Ultimate Duo To Combat Inflammaging
Aging doesn’t just come with wisdom—it often brings inflammation too. This chronic, low-grade inflammatory state, cleverly dubbed “inflammaging,” is a major driver of age-related diseases, including heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, neurodegeneration, and even cancer.
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Women Should Worry More About Muscle Than Fat For Heart Health
The study analyzed 146 women between the ages of 16 and 58. Participants’ cardiorespiratory fitness was measured using an exercise test, and researchers also collected their body fat percentage, fat-free mass index (a measure of fat-free tissue—like bone, muscle, and fluid), and mean arterial pressure (i.e., blood pressure in the arteries).
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Skipping Breakfast? Here’s What It’s Really Doing To Your Stress Levels
Skipping breakfast might sound like a harmless time-saver, but science is here to serve a wake-up call. Research found that skipping your morning meal could do more than make you a little hangry—it may actually disrupt your cortisol rhythm and elevate blood pressure.
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Study Shows Curcumin May Help Inflammation, Memory & Muscles
It’s no secret that spices are not only potent flavoring agents, but they also offer some pretty impressive health benefits (even in small amounts). Turmeric, in particular, has long been lauded for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant capabilities—primarily thanks to its main active ingredient, curcumin.
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Cut Your Heart Disease Risk In Half With This Nutrient (And It's Not Omega-3)
This healthy carb is seriously good for your heart.
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Expert Reveals How Flawed Science Shaped Alzheimer’s Research
Looking ahead, Piller remains cautiously optimistic. Despite the setbacks and missteps, he sees a field ready for change, driven by scientists determined to explore new avenues. Whether it’s research into infections, tau proteins, or GLP-1 inhibitors, fresh perspectives offer renewed hope.
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Want to Live Longer? First Find Out How Old You Really Are
You get older every day. But how old are your cells and organs, really?
Understanding that could help us live longer, healthier lives, many longevity experts believe. Dr. Douglas Vaughan is among them. He is the director of Northwestern University’s Potocsnak Longevity Institute and its Human Longevity Laboratory, where people can go to get their so-called biological age calculated. By gleaning whether a 50-year-old person’s cells and organs look more like a 65-year-old’s—or a 30-year-old’s—scientists like Vaughan hope to pinpoint treatments and lifestyle changes to help people live healthier for longer, a notion known among longevity enthusiasts as “healthspan.”
Vaughan believes that researchers are getting close to being able to find treatments to slow or even reverse aging in people. He says he wants to ensure that everyone benefits from these advancements and not just the ultra-rich.
“We want to find ways to slow down aging for the 99% of people in the world, not the 0.01%,” says Vaughan, former chief of cardiology at Vanderbilt University. He joined Northwestern in 2008 and formerly chaired its department of medicine.
The Institute intends to help establish a network of longevity labs in almost every continent by next year, Vaughan says. Plans are already underway for labs in Japan, the U.K., and South Africa.
As part of TIME’s series interviewing leaders in the longevity field, we caught up with Vaughan to talk about this effort and all things aging.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What drew you to longevity research?
As a cardiologist, I spent years studying a protein called plasminogen activator inhibitor, or PAI-1 [which plays a role in blood-clot regulation]. About a decade ago, we discovered that a rare genetic mutation in the gene that codes for PAI-1 protects against aging in humans. This genetic variant is present in 10% of the members of an Old Order Amish community that lives in and around Adams County, Indiana. Similar genetic variants are very rare in people outside of this community.
We discovered that carriers of the variant are protected from aging in a variety of different ways. They live about 10 years longer than other members of the community. They don’t get diabetes. Their cardiovascular system is younger than their unaffected kindred. They have longer telomeres. That was my entreé into the world of the role of PAI-1 and aging, and was the springboard that eventually pushed us to develop the Human Longevity Laboratory.
Before we move on, we should probably define what aging even is.
There are at least two versions of aging. One is your chronological age, and that’s something everybody’s familiar with. Every time you complete an orbit of the sun, you add a year to your chronological age. There’s also a version of your age that we call your biological age, and that’s a cumulative expression of the aging of your organs and your system as a whole.
Read More: Scientists Say These Daily Routines Can Slow Cognitive Decline
Biological age and chronological age don’t always match up. We all know people who appear to be protected from aging: People who live well into their 80s or 90s and who don’t experience many of the frailties and other problems that commonly occur in people after a certain age. We also all know people who seem to age more rapidly. This can be due to chronic conditions or circumstances such as a chronic HIV infection, chronic kidney disease or diabetes; also, adult survivors of childhood cancer or people who just live in the wrong place and have the wrong diet and climate.
Differences between biological age and chronological age speaks to the possibility that aging is malleable.
What do you do at the Human Longevity Laboratory?
We measure peoples’ biological age by performing a series of tests. We do a DEXA scan to find body composition; we measure cardiac and vascular aging; we test gait speed and grip strength and pulmonary function. We also use molecular-based tools and AI-based biological age clocks.
One of the AI-based tools we use involves taking a picture of a person’s retina. We work with a group in New Zealand that has analyzed hundreds of thousands of human retinal photographs. We put the images up in the cloud and we get your biological age back in a few seconds. So those are the kinds of fun things that we do that you wouldn’t get done when you visit your primary care provider.
What are you hoping to achieve by testing peoples’ biological age?
We try to understand if you have a gap between your chronological age and your biological one. You want your biological age to be less than your chronological age if you can, but certainly we see people that have a biological age that’s greater than their chronological age, and those are really the people that we’re focused on. We’re trying to see if we can slow down aging in people that are disadvantaged with regard to aging because of a chronic condition or a circumstance. The big hypothesis is related to the idea that age is the most important risk factor for almost every disease we deal with in adult human beings. So if we can slow down aging just a little bit, we might be able to extend peoples’ healthspan.
How accurate are these biological age measurements?
Since we opened the first version of our lab more than a year and a half ago, we’ve had more than 300 people go through our protocol. That’s given us a chance to actually compare the different measurements to see which ones are most reliable. That’s given us confidence that we can do these measures relatively quickly, accurately, and precisely.
Read More: Your Brain Reveals a Lot About Your Age
Of course, when we sit down with people, the conversations we have are kind of complicated. We go through the different results and explain that there are caveats and they may not be perfect. Based on the findings, we provide some guidance on areas of their health or lifestyle. We’ve had people, even celebrities, come through that have found that they’re not as “young” as they thought they were, and it’s provided kind of an epiphany to rethink the way they live and how they take care of themselves.
What are some recommendations you’ve made to participants?
We encourage people to have a healthy weight and have a BMI under 25. We encourage people to exercise regularly. Both those things, not surprisingly, are beneficial, and they can even lower your biological age.
Also, you might be a person where everything’s fine except you have evidence that your kidneys are aging or your cardiovascular system is aging, then you might be directed to specialists in those areas to optimize your medical plan to do what they can do to protect you from aging in those organs.
Now, it gets harder when you start talking about other interventions like drugs and supplements that people want to take.That’s kind of a mess right now. I don’t think we’ve got clear evidence with respect to creatine or NAD or stem-cell infusions or plasma-cell infusions. I don’t think there’s any good scientific data around any of those kinds of interventions.
I think we will be able to find interventions that work. We [at Northwestern] are going to be testing different interventions. We are committed to the idea of measuring age in multiple dimensions and then testing the impact of interventions on these various dimensions, whether that’s a stress-reduction program or rapamycin or metformin or Ozempic.
There are biological age clocks that anyone can order online and try for themselves at home. What do you think of those?
I wouldn’t endorse any of them right now. There’s more to it than one single test, so I think we still have a lot of work to do to figure out what combination of tests are actually the best and which are the most informative for the average person.
How much does it cost to get your biological age measured at the Human Longevity Lab?
Our clinic charges $4,200. I think it’s the most comprehensive testing you can get almost anywhere in the world with regard to biological age. So in terms of value for what you get, it’s probably at the top of the chart, but that’s not an insignificant amount of money. We also have people who we bring in through our research side who have enrolled in clinical trials and we underwrite those costs.
The research you mentioned is being conducted under the umbrella of the Longevity Institute, of which the clinic is a part. What other work is the Institute doing?
We have several different centers in the Institute, including HIV & Aging and Population Science & Aging. We have a [researcher] developing new wearable devices that register aging-related changes in a variety of different systems and others doing amazing work looking at environmental factors that drive biological aging.
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For example, we already know that one of the worst things you can do to accelerate your age is smoke, but it turns out that using cannabinoids also accelerates aging. Also our group here is one of many that have shown that Long COVID seems to age people more rapidly. On the other hand, living near a green space slows your aging.
The Institute is also planning on collaborating with international partners to open more longevity labs in the near future, right?
Yes, Tohoku University in Japan is partnering with us. We also have a collaborator at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami and a partnership with the London Clinic. We also have a longstanding collaborative relationship with Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and we will have a lab down there within the next 12 months.
We don’t just want to measure people’s biological ages at these clinics. We’re going to enroll people in pragmatic short-term clinical trials to see if we can find interventions that can slow the pace of aging in human beings around the world—no matter where you live, what your ethnic background is, what you eat or what air you breathe—and that will provide some truth for this science. The first study that we’re planning and that will start enrolling participants relatively soon is a study on how stress reduction could affect biological age.
How big of a role does genetics play in aging vs. environmental factors?
I think the common perception is that genetics are the key driver of your expected lifespan. But I think that algorithm is changing quite a bit. If you really crunch the numbers and look at the data seriously, the genetic influence of aging is certainly less than 20%. Other factors are more important, such as where you live and how you live and what you’re exposed to.
So although I’m sure everybody knows people that seem to have longevity in their family—they can recount ancestors that lived well into their 90s or over 100—that’s pretty uncommon, and finding those specific genetic variants is extremely challenging.
Do you think that within the next half-century or so we’ll be able to get people to live to 150?
I think we might have an outlier or two that could get up there. But if somebody who is 50 right now has the illusion or the fantasy to be 150, they’ve got to live for another century, and, well, most of us are not going to be around to see.
Our goal is to actually try to extend the healthspan of people to give people two, three, or four more healthy years. If we could accomplish just that, that would do so much for society.
This article is part of TIME Longevity, an editorial platform dedicated to exploring how and why people are living longer and what this means for individuals, institutions, and the future of society. For other articles on this topic, click here.
Dominique Mosbergen
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Is 10,000 Steps A Myth? Researchers Reveal The True Sweet Spot
For years, the number “10,000 steps” has carried almost mythical status. You see it on your fitness tracker, hear it in health advice, and maybe even use it as a personal benchmark. But the idea wasn’t born from hard science. It actually originated from a Japanese marketing campaign in the 1960s to sell pedometers.
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How To Build Strength Without Injury In Midlife, From MDs
We’ve spent too long talking about fitness as a way to shrink ourselves. But if you’re in midlife—or anywhere close—it’s time to flip the narrative. Strength is the goal. Vitality is the reward. And your workout? It should be built to support both, not break you down.
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A Case Study Shows Alzheimer’s Disease Is Now Affecting Teens
By far, the most interesting (and terrifying) element of this case study is that no known gene mutations were identified through whole-genome sequencing. While they don’t understand the cause, researchers have concluded this young patient has probable Alzheimer’s disease.
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Do You Need A DEXA BD/BC Scan?
For most people, though, “if results are strong, maybe you don’t need another scan for five years,” says Wagner. “If they’re lower, lifestyle interventions can help, and you may want to recheck in a year.”
Radiation exposure is negligible, less than a chest x-ray. But the psychological impact can be more complicated. For some, the numbers motivate: “When I did a body composition test at 36, I had way more body fat than I expected,” Cheema says. “That pushed me to change my workouts and eating patterns in ways that improved my health—something BMI alone wouldn’t have prompted.”
For others, especially those with histories of disordered eating or body image issues, it can be destabilizing and overwhelming. Numbers can become another metric to obsess over rather than a tool for health. “It can be overwhelming if you don’t have a clinician to interpret the results,” Gidwani says. “That’s why I review all of my patients’ scans with them.”
Cheema agrees: “Too much detail without guidance risks overwhelming people with information that isn’t clinically actionable.”
“I don’t think DEXA gives too much information compared to, say, a whole-body MRI, which can reveal incidental findings that can cause anxiety and lead to unnecessary interventions,” says Gidwani. “Its data points are actionable: decrease body fat, reduce visceral fat, increase muscle.”
Experts emphasize that actionability is key. “The most important metrics are visceral adipose tissue and total body fat percentage, especially when tracked over time,” Cheema says. “But DEXA also breaks things down by arms, legs, trunk, etc. That can veer into aesthetics rather than health.
Should You Get One?
If you’re 65 or older, or at risk for osteoporosis, your doctor may already recommend a DEXA scan for bone health. For women in perimenopause, when bone density can drop by as much as 20 percent, an early baseline scan could flag risks years before they become urgent.
DEXA also detects sarcopenic obesity, where muscle loss occurs alongside high body fat. “Someone may look normal weight on a scale, but a DEXA can reveal poor muscle-to-fat balance,” Gidwani says.
Beyond those groups, the use case narrows. Athletes, bodybuilders, and people on GLP-1 medications may find the data genuinely useful. For generally healthy adults who exercise, eat decently, and check in with a doctor, many clinicians are indifferent.
“For a healthy individual, I wouldn’t universally recommend it,” Cheema says. “Lifestyle changes and basic care may matter more than getting a DEXA.” There are alternatives—bioimpedance scales, Bod Pods, and AI-enabled wearables—but none are as accurate as DEXA. For now, it remains the most precise, if expensive, tool available.
Final Takeaways
My DEXA results were somewhat humbling. Despite near-daily workouts and a decent diet, the scan flagged more body fat than I expected and the beginnings of osteopenia in my spine. The bright side was an “excellent” visceral fat score, something I’ll be bragging about indefinitely.
Catching early bone loss feels actionable; I can tweak my workouts to prioritize strength and mobility. But the body fat percentages have lived in my brain rent-free ever since, without offering much in return. I don’t plan to shell out a few hundred dollars for another scan anytime soon, so I may never know if my adjustments are actually working.
That’s the paradox of DEXA. For those with medical risks, it can be invaluable. For athletes chasing marginal gains, it’s another knob to turn. But for the rest of us, it’s a reminder that data is only as useful as what you’re willing or able to do with it. In the end, DEXA doesn’t promise longevity so much as it promises numbers, and numbers alone don’t add years to your life.
Meet the Experts
- Jennifer Wagner, MD, MS, chief health and performance officer, Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona.
- Josh Cheema, MD, medical director of Northwestern Medicine Human Longevity Clinic in Chicago, Illinois.
- Pooja Gidwani, MD, MBA, board-certified physician in internal medicine and obesity medicine in Los Angeles, California.
Boutayna Chokrane
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Plastic Particles Are Acting Like Sponges For Heavy Metals
In this study,1
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Fitness expert reveals 6 pillars of strength training that older adults should master
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Exercise is widely regarded as an essential component of health for older adults — particularly strength training.
Health agencies recommend that adults get at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and at least two days of strength training exercises, which includes lifting weights or performing muscle-building activities.
Marfred Suazo, known online as Fonz the Trainer, was a lifelong athletic competitor before he became a fitness trainer in New York City nearly 10 years ago.
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In training thousands of people of all ages, Suazo said he coaches older adults with an eye toward “decades of strength.”
“We have our fourth decade, which is crucial. As we turn 40, as we turn 50, 60, 70 and even 80, there are different requirements,” he told Fox News Digital in an on-camera interview. (See the video at the top of the article.)
Marfred Suazo, also known as Fonz the Trainer, is pictured working out. Suazo said he coaches older adults with an eye toward “decades of strength.” (Fonz the Trainer)
“We’re preventing ourselves from declining in our fitness journey and in our ability to do day-to-day things, like carrying groceries and walking up steps.”
Strength training should be the “main priority” for older adults, Suazo said, because skeletal muscle — which he calls the “organ of longevity” — begins to decline over time.
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“Skeletal muscle is like our body armor,” he said. “It prevents falls, it prevents hip breakage, it helps with all of these things.”
Preserving muscle is particularly important for aging women, Suazo noted, as it helps to prevent osteopenia and osteoporosis.
Suazo was a lifelong athletic competitor before he became a fitness trainer in New York City nearly 10 years ago. (Fonzthetrainer)
6 pillars of strength training
When strength training, Suazo recommends that older adults focus on the following six core pillars of movement for functional fitness.
“You want to have all those pillars in order, and you want to structure your training in that fashion so you can target all of these areas,” he said.
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Push
This includes movements where the person pushes weight away from the body, typically working the chest, shoulder and triceps.
Some common examples include push-ups, bench presses, chest presses and dips.
Push movements are those where the person pushes weight away from the body, typically working the chest, shoulder and triceps. (iStock)
Pull
With this type of movement, the weight is pulled toward the body. These exercises target the back muscles and biceps.
Some examples include pull-ups, chin-ups, dumbbell rows, bent-over rows, lat pulldowns and inverted rows.
Pull exercises target the back muscles and biceps. (iStock)
Carry
This entails holding weight while walking, which helps to improve posture and stability, strengthens grip, and works the shoulders, upper back, core and hips.
“You want to be able to carry at least 70% of your body weight,” Suazo advised.
The carry movement entails holding weight while walking, which helps to improve posture and stability, strengthens grip, and works the shoulders, upper back, core and hips. (iStock)
Hinge
“Hinging at the hip is crucial,” Suazo said. “It allows you to bend over and extend the hips.”
These hip-dominant movements — including deadlifts, hip thrusts, kettlebell swings and good mornings — work the muscles along the back of the body, such as the glutes, hamstrings and posterior chain.
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Overhead press
Vertical press movements focus on strengthening the shoulders, triceps and core.
Some examples include the overhead press, shoulder press and push press.
Vertical press movements focus on strengthening the shoulders, triceps and core. (iStock)
Squat
The squat is an essential movement that targets the quads, glutes and core, according to Suazo.
There are several variations, including the front squat, goblet squat (holding a weight or kettle bell), back squat (holding a bar on the shoulders) and the split squat (stationary lunge).
The squat is an essential movement that targets the quads, glutes and core, according to Suazo. (iStock)
Getting started
For true beginners, Suazo said it’s best to “stick to the fundamentals,” like calisthenics, push-ups, pull-ups and squats.
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“If you can’t do pull ups, I’d do inverted rows — I think that’s primal,” he said. “If you can’t do those, resistance band training is a tremendous way to start.”
“And you can do it at home. You don’t have to be in a gym.”
For true beginners, Suazo (pictured) said it’s best to “stick to the fundamentals,” like calisthenics, push-ups, pull-ups and squats. (Fonzthetrainer)
The trainer emphasized the importance of starting slowly and progressively increasing the weight to challenge the body.
Strength training should also be combined with cardiovascular activity and mobility to create what Suazo calls the “tripod effect.”
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“Those three things, when they come together, they’re able to hold you up a lot better,” he said. “So I think putting focus on all three is super beneficial, especially as we age.”
Those who are considering starting a new exercise program should consult with a doctor for guidance to prevent injury.