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A new study out of Stanford shows that our bodies fall apart at different rates for different organ systems of the body. This means within a given person, not all body systems age the same. Your heart, lungs, and muscles may be fine, but your brain may not. This research started with findings in mice, where they found identical lab mice, bred with the same DNA and brought up in the same environment, aged differently. Some had brain issues, some muscle issues as they aged. The researchers asked, why?
So they did a study to evaluate.
- They identified 11 organ systems: brain, heart, liver, kidney, muscle, intestines, blood vessels, lung, fat, immune system, and pancreas.
- They looked at 5678 people
- They compared the organ’s aging relative to others in their same age group
- They found when an organ’s age is advanced relative to other people of their same age, they were at heightened risk for disease of that organ in the next 15 years and for increased mortality.
- They estimate 18.4% of people “have at least one organ aging at a strongly accelerated rate.”
- Having issues in two organ systems was not as common, only seen in 1 of every 60 patients, but these two organ issue people had 6.5x mortality risk
- They noted disease by blood testing of proteins in the blood.
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- They flagged proteins that were 4x more activated in one organ relative to other organs
- They used machine learning to predict people’s age based on these protein levels.
- They then compared this algorithm for accuracy with 4,000 representative population subjects.
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- The higher mortality risk over the next 15 years varied by what organ was affected. This mortality risk varied 15-50%.
- For example, heart abnormal biomarkers but no active disease gave 2.5X risk of heart failure. Those with older brains had 1.8x risk of cognitive decline over the next 5 years.
- Extreme agers (2 standard deviations above the norm) for kidney–>high blood pressure and diabetes. Extreme agers in heart scores–>Afib and heart attack.
Wyss-Coray’s team created an “age gap” for each organ system. This age gap is the difference between an organ’s actual age and its estimated age based on the algorithm, which worked for all systems except the intestine. When there was an age gap, this was significantly associated with future risk of death from all causes over 15 years of follow-up.
Our thoughts at Biohackr Health?
We are big believers in figuring out YOUR issues. Every person is different, and this study reinforces our beliefs that you should test to figure out what your issues are – brain, heart, diabetes, cancer, muscle, liver- and focus your attention on that. You cannot go full force at every different aspect of health- that would be overwhelming.
The testing for these proteins and findings are not commercially available. Yet. The researchers and Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing have filed patents and are creating a company to bring this research to the masses.
But what it does really reinforce is that of the 11 organ systems, the majority of people tend to have “accelerated aging” and risk of disease issues in ONE of those areas. We don’t have access to their testing yet, but we do have ways of evaluating some of these systems now.
- Heart: Comprehensive cholesterol panel, Comprehensive insulin panel, CGM (continuous glucose monitor), Cardiac Calcium Scan
- Liver: Blood testing for liver function tests, Prenuvo to see if you have signs of fatty liver
- Lung: VO2 max is coming in 2025 to Biohackr
- Muscle: Inbody scan to see muscle percentage. Build muscle with sermorelin, hormone replacement, and creatine
- Do our Biohackr Benchmark. This comprehensive program is to evaluate you on a whole body level to try to help identify what your issues will be.
Please read our blogs on all of these subjects. BLOGS. This gets at the heart of biohacking. Figure out YOUR issues by testing. Change habits to improve that area. Retest. We will continue to update you as new findings come forth. This is an exciting time, where medicine is evolving with the new testing and analytics. The future is likely more individualized and preventative healthcare.