I am a prototype of a significant number of my patients: middle aged (*sigh*), professional with a consuming but awesome job, mother who had kids at an older age, and a health conscious woman.
My journey started with how can I age better? I find medicine is too reactionary- they wait until you have diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease to treat it. What can we do to prevent it? Optimize ourselves? My father died in his early 50s. My genetics aren’t setting me up for success. So what can?
This started my focus on healthspan and longevity. Many would call this biohacking, but when I hear biohacking it makes me think of people trying to sell me snake oil and supplements. I have taken a science driven approach to how to age better. This deep knowledge has led me to become an advisor for Biohackr Health.
It is an exciting time. There are real things you can do which will help you age better- heart health, diabetes, dementia, muscle mass, hormones, and more. There are tests and monitors available to give you true insights into how to age better. What we have found is 1. prevention is everything and you should start now, and 2. there is such an individual response to everything. When thinking about all of the areas of the body it could be overwhelming. You cannot throw the kitchen sink at everything- it is too much. You need to figure out what YOUR issues are and focus on those.
For WEIGHT and EPIGENETICS please see those pages.
General antiaging focuses on your body at a cellular level. This focus is on things like:
These are all TESTABLE. That means don’t blindly do things. Test. Where are you at? Treat. Retest. Did the treatments help?
I will break it down into some important areas below. This is general advice, and we will review it clinic with you. For more in depth, we can recommend a visit with a longevity doctor.
Heart disease continues to be the number one killer for everyone, men and women. In my deep dive research, there was a great study that looked at middle aged people with no risk factors, and they did in depth labwork on them and a cardiac calcium scan to look for early atherosclerosis. What did they find? 20% of people who were healthy, with no risk factors had evidence of disease. This was silent disease. They are at risk and did not know it.
So what do you do? TEST.
Blood sugar is potentially the root cause of all major issues– inflammation, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, weight gain, and cancer. You are at risk from genetics, weight, and aging.
How do you evaluate it?
Historically people check a fasting blood sugar (which you want to be below 100), but a more accurate level is to look at hemoglobin A1c, HbA1c, which shows your average blood sugar over the past 3 months. If this number is over 5.6, you are prediabetic, if above 6.4% you are diabetic.
Important facts:
You cannot talk about healthspan and longevity without addressing blood glucose. You hear many of the antiaging gurus talking about intermittent fasting – some only eating one meal a day- for this reason.
It is crazy, but as you get older you lose muscle mass. If you are on a GLP weight loss medication you lose muscle mass. If you are vegetarian and vegan, you likely need help building muscle. Doing aerobic exercise is not adquate- you have to focus on weight lifting and resistance training.
So, yes, I have become one of those people in the gym, with resistance bands and TRX and sit ups and kettle balls.
Creatine is a supplement which helps build muscle. I was a nay sayer at first. I thought, “it’s dangerous” or “its for the bro guys in the gym.” Turns out I was wrong. I did a deep dive into it and found it is incredibly safe and effective. I only recommend high quality product that is stable and studied, so I recommend the micronized German creatine powder. We carry it in our office, or you can buy at the Biohackr Store. SHOP
Why care?
The kicker for me was a great study showing that higher muscle mass PREVENTS DEMENTIA. Add that to the other benefits in strength, bone health, lower diabetes, lower fall risk, better metabolism and weight control, its pretty compelling:
This is such a big topic that I have a whole page already on it and dozens of blogs. Why? When I reached menopause- even though I have seen what it does to women over and over- I was still stunned to see the effects. It is like going off a cliff, and everything changes- skin tone, drooping, sagging, cholesterol levels, blood sugar, weight, breast size. You feel like your body is hijacked.
I won’t repeat all of it here. Basic facts:
For more in depth, go to my menopause page HERE, which has links to my blogs on estrogen and menopause. My blogs will cite the original scientific publications or books which I draw from.
Diet matters. We all know this. From the Mediterranean diet being associated with lower heart disease, to seeing high vegetable diets help keep your telomeres longer (antiaging), to studies which show lower infection rates and prettier scars in abdominoplasty patients who protein load before and after surgery, what you eat matters.
From a body health perspective, general diet recommendations: