Are you trying to biohack your own longevity?
Are you trying to put together a longevity plan what will turn back YOUR clock?
Then you need as much information as you can gather about your own body,
about what’s going on inside, at the molecular level.
So. stay tuned and I’ll show you how to get that information.
Hi, I’m Lance Hitchings, and I’d like to welcome you to my channel.
As science and technology advances,
there seems to be a growing movement in personalized healthcare,
where individuals take a more proactive stance by monitoring their own health
using wearable devices and by taking advantage of home-testing kits to measure a wide variety of biomarkers.
When creating your own personalized longevity plan, you want to be doing that with precision,
and these test kits, combined with tracking data provided by wearable devices, will yield that type of precision.
So, in today’s video, we’re going to be talking about how to gather the type of information that you’ll need to put together your own plan.
A plan that will be different than anyone else’s plan.
Because everyone else is different, everyone is unique,
and that’s never been more true than where talking about the human body.
We’re different in countless ways, especially at the cellular level.
We each have our own particular genome,
with different genes telling each of us how to function a little bit differently than our fellow man.
That’s why we each react differently to different supplements or drugs,
why we each get sick more or less frequently,
why it’s harder or easier for each of use to lose weight, or put on muscle, or recover from an injury.
A little over a year ago, I put up a video on metformin,
and some of the comments for that video demonstrate what I’m taking about.
I’ve gotten comments that run the gamut from absolutely loving metformin to utterly despising it.
From claiming that it works great to stating that it’s a killer.
Same drug but wildly different effects on different people.
What works for one person, doesn’t work for the next…or doesn’t work as well.
My longevity plan should be customized to my particular set of needs, responses, and budget.
And my plan won’t work for anyone but myself.
And in order to create a personalized longevity plan,
I need to know as much as possible about what’s going on, internally.
I need a really good snapshot of where I stand,
what’s working for me, what needs work, are there any issues that are in dire need of fixing?
That’s why, in my opinion, it is critical to get tested, to track a variety of biomarkers across time.
To monitor your own health.
The more information you have about your own body, the better the plan, and the better the results.
So, what kind of information am I talking about? What kind of tests?
How can you monitor or track your progress?
That’s what we’re gonna talk about next.
But I want to make sure that you understand that I’m not necessarily recommending that you take any,
let alone all, of these measures to heart.
I’m simply giving you examples of the types of tests that you can run
or ways that your can monitor your health.
Which ones you decide to implement will depend on you and your particular needs.
For example, a determining factor for a lot of people will be budget.
Just how many of these tests or devices can you afford?
So let’s start there, with tests for people with no budget whatsoever,
and move up through expensive examples.
And by the way, I’m not going to read through a list of all the tests and devices along with links to their websites.
So, if you’ve got no budget, there are still ways to get an idea of what’s going on.
For example, if you’re overweight, that right there is pretty good feedback that you need to make some adjustments in your diet or activity level.
Your resting heart rate is another form of great feedback,
and anyone can determine their resting heart rate by simply taking their pulse before they get out of bed in the morning.
That’s a pretty good indicator for a number of things, from fitness level to heart health.
Then, there’s a number of free, online tests
that you can take that will provide feedback on everything from your biological age to your cognitive age.
If you’ve got a bit of a budget, then the first thing I would do is to get a blood panel done.
This is where you get your blood drawn and receive a laundry list of results from the lab.
You can get them through your health care provider, your insurance company or you can purchase them yourself,
no prescription needed.
There’s a wide range of blood panels available from fairly affordable to quite expensive,
and obviously, the more you can afford, the more informative the results.
There are also some free, online tests where you enter the results from your blood panel in order to predict your biological age.
Now, if you’ve got a fairly good budget to spend on tests,
there are a variety of tests that you can purchase that will examine a number of different biomarkers for aging.
First, you can get your DNA tested.
Again, this ranges from tests like 23 & Me, which provide some medical results that are broad,
to tests that are so detailed and so medically predictive that they require the results be sent to a healthcare provider, rather than to you personally.
There are a number of tests that measure or quantify how well you’re aging at the molecular level,
and if you can afford them, these are the tests that will really give you some data that you can work with.
Determining your biological age by testing your epigenome is a great way to get started.
This is one of the most accurate ways of estimating your biological age and it’s one of the most popular tests out there.
Not surprisingly, there’s a wide range of companies offering this type of testing.
I’ve recently taken 5 of these epigenetic tests for a spin and I’ll be posting a video soon on the wide range of results that I obtained.
There’s also test kits that can measure the level of cellular senescence that’s present in your body,
although I’ve had a tough time finding any of these.
To the best of my knowledge, there’s currently only one company offering this type of test, and that’s Jinfiniti.
I’m doing another experiment right now where I’ve tested for senescence,
and am currently undergoing a month-long course of treatment to clear senescent cells,
and then will test again…to see if the treatment actually worked.
You can also test the levels of NAD+ that you have.
NAD+ is affected by a number of things, and levels constantly go up and down, but tend to decline as you age.
I’m in the middle of another test, similar to the test I’m doing on cellular senescence, to see if I can raise my NAD+ levels,
and using NAD+ testing kits is integral to that test.
I’m be sharing the results of all these tests in future videos, as soon as I get them.
You can get the length of your telomeres tested,
and there are several companies offering telomere testing.
A test called GlycanAge can determine your biological age based on how well your immune system is functioning.
Another company called Viome offers tests that examine your gut microbiome,
which recent studies have determined plays a major role in how well you age.
AgeMeter offers a test that measures what your functional age is, across a wide range of functions.
But you can do a lot more than just simply take tests.
You can also monitor, not only your health, but a wide variety of biomarkers
through a series of devices, both wearable and non-wearable.
And the amount of data that these devices can collect is truly mind-boggling.
In the wearable device category, you’ve got smart watches, like Apple Watch or Fitbit Versa,
And then there's Oura rings and Whoop Straps.
Some, like Apple Watch or Fitbit Versa, can track workouts, as well as sleep, heart rates and blood oxygenation.
Oura rings and Whoop Straps track your sleep.
Constant glucose monitors keeps track of your blood sugar levels on a minute-by-minute basis.
These were created to monitor the blood sugar levels of diabetics,
but I know a number of longevity enthusiasts who don’t have diabetes that wear them.
In the non-wearable category, there are also sleep trackers, like Emfit, Beautyrest and Withings Sleep.
There are also non-wearable devices that can measure, not only your blood sugar levels, but also the levels of ketones in your blood, like Keto-Mojo.
Anther non-wearable device is the Lumen, which measures your metabolic rate by exhaling into it.
Then there's the iHeart, which works like an oximeter by gently clipping to the end of your finger to measure pulse rate velocity,
which is a good indicator of vascular stiffening...which can cause high blood pressure.
While we’re on the subject, everyone should have a blood pressure cuff and be monitoring their blood pressure.
Now, most of these devices can sync with apps that you can load onto your phone,
and these apps can provide a wealth of information about what’s going on, right now, inside your own body.
As well as provide advice and tips on how to improve certain biomarkers.
Finally, there’s body scans.
Body scans can range from a DEXA scan that measures the density of various tissues in your body, like bone tissue or fat tissue; to full body MRIs.
A full body MRI that’s been evaluated by an AI can reveal an enormous amount of data about your body.
It can also detect early indications of disease, allowing for early diagnosis, treatment and a much better chance of recovery.
OK, so that’s kind of an overview of the different types of tests and devices that are now available to, well, anyone who can afford them.
Next, I’m gonna talk about several really good reasons to get the tests, to buy the devices, to monitor your own health.
First off, it’s probably the only way to track any progress that you’re making with your longevity plan.
You don’t want to wait until you’re about to die, to decide if it worked or not.
That’s a long time to wait and too way too late to make any adjustments.
Taking constant tests and monitoring with devices is the only way that I know of to track progress.
If you’re seeing improvements over time in your biomarkers for aging, you know you’re on the right track.
If those biomarkers go down, you know that you need to make adjustments.
Watching which biomarkers improve and which ones get worse
is the type of feedback that will allow you to adjust, to modify, to change your plan as you work on it.
And if you monitor your own health over the years, as you get older,
you’ll probably observe changes in your biomarkers before they become apparent in the mirror.
Changes that will probably inspire adjuctments to your longevity plan.
But even more important than tracking your progress is that having all of this data will enable you to craft your own, personalized longevity plan.
If you’re working with your doctor, but especially if you’re doing most of the planning on your own,
knowing what’s going on inside your own body at the molecular level
will prove invaluable in deciding which strategies or interventions to utilize and which ones to avoid.
Finally, and this might be the best reason at all to monitor your health at the level that I’m talking about, is the factor of an early warning system.
Look, the goal of all of us who are living a longevity lifestyle
is to still be among the living when science finally develops a working rejuvenation technology.
To be above the ground, instead of in it.
Heaven forbid any of us should develop a life-threatening, age-related chronic disease.
But being able to see the warning signs before the disease develops gives us a much, much better chance of defeating it.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Catching a developing chronic disease in the bud will give us a much better chance of recovery,
will cost a lot less, will make it much easier to cure, and will provide a much better chance of success.
Look, I don’t want to tell you what to do or to suggest that you should purchase something that you can’t afford.
But seriously, give some thought to the idea of getting tested
and monitoring your own health to whatever level you think you need and can afford.
The more information you have about your own body,
the better your longevity plan will be and the better your results in turning back the clock.
Well, that’s it for another video.
If you know of any tests or monitoring devices that I haven’t mentioned, be sure to let me know in the comments.
In the meantime, check out this playlist on the 9 Hallmarks of Aging.
And don’t forget, sign up here to receive updates on my upcoming online course on an introduction into longevity.
That’s it for me, I’m outta here. See ya next time.