Rejuvenation of the body, slowing aging - how to measure the effectiveness of methods and / or drugs

Today there are many theories, methods, supplements and drugs that promise (or suggest) to slow down old age, make the body physically younger, allow us to live longer and more actively, etc.

In order to understand whether any method or medicine has worked as intended, we need to have a method for estimating the biological age of our body. How should it work?

We have before using a technique or medicine:

our physical age is X years

To evaluate the effectiveness, we must measure before using:

our biological age is Y1 years

Then apply the method and / or medicine and measure:

our biological age is Y2 years

And immediately understand - aha, this is a super method, our biological age has decreased. Or vice versa, yeah, does not work, try another one.

How are things in modern medicine and what method we will use to assess the effectiveness of rejuvenation, we explore under the cut.

This is the sixth article of the cycle, in which we gradually explore how we slow down aging and maintain brain activity in the highly elderly 90+. All articles of the cycle:

So what do we have? We invented a meditative hack, which, presumably, should slow down our aging on the physical level. To use this hack, monitor the results and improve the methodology, we are writing a Lifext application, which is scheduled to launch on January 23, 2018 (the date is approximate, but we are very focused on it).

Since we are programmers, geeks and researchers, the main question that arises in the application of our methodology is how to measure how well it worked.

And here begin the nuances in which we now try to figure it out.

Formulation of the problem

Given:

1.1. a person with a chronological age of X - that is, we know the date of birth and the current age in years

It is necessary:

2.1. measure the biological age (a certain state of the body) on the date of the beginning of the experiment
2.2. measure biological age at the date of the end of the experiment

What is biological age and how to measure it?

For our purposes, we would like to determine the biological age of a person in%.

For example, take a certain conditional person and, let's say, he was born and will live his whole life and die a natural death. Suppose he can live life in 3 variants and take some arbitrary numbers of his life expectancy.

People 1.1. It eats in McDonalds, drinks a lot of alcohol daily, smokes, sits at the computer all day. Lived 60 years.
People 1.2. Healthy food, drinks, does not smoke, sports 3 times a week, sits at the computer. Lived 80 years.
People 1.3. Healthy food, does not drink, does not smoke, sports 5 times a week, sits at the computer, walks a lot, drinks supplements. Lived 100 years.

Now suppose this person in 40 years decided to find out his real age, how much did he already live? Then the biological age in% will be equal to:

People 1.1. Chronological age of 40 years, the biological age of 67%
People 1.2. Chronological age 40 years, biological age 50%
People 1.3. Chronological age 40 years, biological age 40%

Right now, there is a global increase in the population of the elderly, as life expectancy is increasing. An increase in chronological age is accompanied by a multitude of diseases and disorders. Everyone can observe this in life and this is understandable to everyone. For example, in the article about Brain Health there was a figure about the fact that after 85 years, Alzheimer's chance is very high.

However, chronological age is not a reliable indicator for measuring the risk of any violations. In article 10 ( cm.10 ), a large study was conducted and here is a short example from there: “For example, 48% of people with an age of 51-54 and 28% with an age of 85+ had, by their estimates, good health. 89% of the age of 51-54 and 56% of the age of 85+ reported that they have no restrictions during normal work or housework. ”
However, the remaining% of people of this age had various difficulties and disorders, including serious ones, which require constant help or observation. ”

The AFAR (American Association for the Study of Aging) meeting formulated such requirements for biomarkers ( see 11 ).

must predict% of aging, that is, must give exact figures on the scale of a person’s life expectancy
should control basic aging processes, not the effects of diseases
it should be possible to take such tests without harm - for example, blood tests or screenings
should work in humans and mice

But so far, there is no method for assessing aging in% and satisfying claims 1.-4. There are experimental analyzes (we will consider them below), which are still quite expensive + they are not quite easy to do, as they are done in individual laboratories around the world.

So, we now understand what we need - a method that will allow us to estimate our biological age in%. For example, the length of our life is 100%. We need to learn how to measure this% and then try to introduce methods that:

slow down the growth rate of lived% with the number of years lived
roll back lived% back.

Since there is no such method yet (potentially already, but not proven and not yet available), but I want to live a long time, we move on to the next item.

Analyzes that show probabilities of healthy aging.

A set of such analyzes is often referred to as Aging Panel, Aging Diagnostics, etc.
In fact, it is a set of analyzes that shows the probabilities of certain diseases (or types of diseases).

Often, most of them do not need to be done, since they can be cut off when examined by a normal doctor, and our first recommendation will always be the same — go to a good therapist ( see the article ). In our application, we plan to collect information about which therapists are good for Lifext goals, but this is closer to summer.

For example, in the article: “The proposed panel of biomarkers for healthy aging” ( see 8 ), written by 9 English scientists in 2015, they offer, in our opinion, the correct comprehensive assessment, which includes not only analyzes, but also physical and cognitive tests.

We will not go deep here, but for now let's just note that simply handing over a heap of tests is probably not a good idea. As can be observed in many studies, we need a holistic approach, observation by a doctor + independent study of the subject matter + support by specialists.

Thus, today, the available tests of our aging show the degrees of probability of illness of any diseases, and not our biological age in%.

At the same time, if we add information about deciphered genes to these analyzes, then we get into our hands a fairly powerful tool for reducing the probabilities of diseases that are dangerous for us.

This is a separate function of our application and it will be studied in great detail in the research channel Telegram or Vkontakte + on Geektimes there will be generalizing articles. In the meantime, you can download a full panel developed in the UK in 2017.

To evaluate the effectiveness of our method, after a long study, we decided to use two analyzes. When installing the application, you will be able to make passed analyzes, use the meditative method of rejuvenation, then again pass the tests and see the progress.

Analyzes:

Interleukin 6 (IL-6, Interleukin 6, IL-6) ( https://goo.gl/wCUgZz )
C-reactive protein (CRP, CRP) ( https://goo.gl/j1B2Dc )

They show the status of our immune system, which responds not only to acute and chronic inflammation, but also to aging. According to the results of many studies, these two markers have a status of proven association with aging and mortality. For a full understanding of the connection with aging, we recommend reading the article about stress + posts in the Telegram with the tag # aging markers

Short essence

There is a direct link between aging and an increase in the incidence of chronic diseases. Also, with most age-related diseases, chronic inflammatory conditions appear. This is reflected in a higher level of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs relieves the symptoms of similar diseases, even the most powerful - Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

A number of aging-related processes deregulate the system, leading to increased levels of IL-6 and IL-8.

These cytokines play an important role as pro-inflammatory mediators and studies have documented increased levels of IL-1, IL-6, TNF-a and IL-8 in older people.

At the same time, an increase in their level is far from that which occurs in acute inflammation, which suggests that aging is associated with chronic weak inflammation.
In a large study of 1,727 elderly Americans, age was associated with an increase in IL-6 levels ( see 12 ).

Conclusion - measure the effect of the application

To evaluate the effectiveness of our first meditative method, we will use these two analyzes, which, with a high degree of probability, will show how effective our meditative method is.

Cost:

Interleukin 6 (IL-6, Interleukin 6, IL-6) - 1815rub.-Invitro, 1120rub.-Gemotest
C-reactive protein (CRP, CRP) - 500rub.-Invitro, Gemotest

Where to take:

We are working on a partnership agreement with laboratories that will give a discount to our users. Before launching the application, we hardly have time to conclude contracts, so for now we recommend 2 laboratories that exist in many places in Russia: https://www.invitro.ru and https://www.gemotest.ru/

The application will ask you to enter this data, if the level is not within the general norm, then we recommend immediately go to the therapist. If it is within the normal range, then we simply use the application and after 4 months we pass the tests again. We look and hopefully rejoice.

Future - potential markers

As stated in the article from 2017 ( see 9 ), scientists from Stockholm: “The search for reliable indicators of biological age has been going on for more than 30 years and so far without much success.”

However, in this article they consider the methods and analyzes that have become available and known in the last few years, when molecular biology began its explosive growth.

1. Epigenetic clock

Sets of epigenetic markers of our genome, for which the methylation level is calculated. Accordingly, there are different types of gene sets, of which the Horvat and Hannum sets look very promising.

It is alleged that the analysis of epigenetic hours predicted all possible causes of death - age, body mass index, education, smoking, physical activity, alcohol, etc.
This method is considered very promising and is likely to be available for practical use in the coming years. Readers of our channel https://lifext.ru/tg will find out about this one of the first :)

A good article on this topic from YuriDeigin https://geektimes.ru/post/290441/

2. Telomere length

Tolemers - repeating sequences at the ends of chromosomes, which, by virtue of the biochemical mechanism of DNA division, are shortened with each division.

The authors of this study conclude that this indicator is very promising, but so far there is not enough data and there are no links with mortality. However, this analysis in combination with others already now can greatly improve the accuracy of biological age estimates.

Conclusion

So, we have a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of working with our application + these two recommended analyzes are still useful to pass once a year. When they exceed the norm, they show that there is some kind of acute inflammation in the body and it is necessary to urgently consult a doctor.

Therefore, for those who plan to use our application, we recommend that you pass these two analyzes right now, and we will try to launch the application as soon as possible - January 23, 2018, which will be the article here at Geektimes.

The Lifext ship continues its infinite voyage through the universe, all discoveries and explorations are left in our VK + Telegram channels.

Life Extension App

In it, you can store all the analyzes, receive news about life extension techniques and personal recommendations of experts - Android

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/409637/