Evidence-Based Strategies to Slow Human Aging: A Practical Guide

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• Longevity Clinics & Comprehensive Testing
• Personalized Supplement Approaches
• Vitamin Deficiency Correction
• Individual Response Variability
• Informed Decision Making in Aging
• Full Transcript

Longevity Clinics & Comprehensive Testing

Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, highlights the growing availability of longevity clinics for aging intervention. These facilities offer varying levels of service from moderate to extremely expensive. They perform extensive biological testing to assess aging biomarkers. Clinics analyze blood, saliva, and urine samples to evaluate numerous age-related factors. This comprehensive approach identifies over 100 different health indicators outside normal ranges.

Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, emphasizes that this detailed health assessment is a critical first step. Many longevity enthusiasts skip this fundamental evaluation process. Understanding your unique biological profile is essential before considering interventions. Dr. Anton Titov, MD, explores these concepts with Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, to provide practical guidance.

Personalized Supplement Approaches

Evidence-based anti-aging supplements require careful consideration according to Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD. He discusses several compounds with human data including metformin, rapamycin, and alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG). These interventions show varying levels of efficacy and acceptable toxicity profiles. Dr. Kennedy cautions against taking all available supplements simultaneously.

Instead, he recommends trying different interventions separately while monitoring effects. This methodical approach allows individuals to assess what works for their unique biology. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, supports informed experimentation with safe market supplements. The conversation with Dr. Anton Titov, MD, focuses on responsible supplement use in aging prevention.

Vitamin Deficiency Correction

Nutritional deficiencies significantly impact anti-aging intervention effectiveness. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, shares his personal experience discovering low vitamin B12 levels. This deficiency can reduce the effectiveness of alpha-ketoglutarate supplementation. Correcting such basic nutritional imbalances is foundational to any longevity strategy.

Many individuals may have undiagnosed vitamin or mineral deficiencies affecting their health. Addressing these issues often provides more benefit than advanced supplements. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, emphasizes that even experts can overlook their own nutritional status. This insight from Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, highlights the importance of comprehensive health assessment.

Individual Response Variability

Anti-aging interventions show significant individual variability in response rates. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, explains that no single treatment works for every person. This variability mirrors response patterns seen in pharmaceutical treatments for diseases. Rapamycin might be extremely effective for some individuals but ineffective for others.

Current research cannot predict who will respond to specific aging interventions. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, estimates potential response rates around 70-80% for some compounds. Understanding non-responders remains a critical research challenge. Even exercise recommendations must be tailored to individual capacity and health status.

Informed Decision Making in Aging

Public education about aging science is essential for making informed health decisions. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, identifies this as a major challenge in the longevity field. Most people lack basic understanding of aging biology and intervention options. Education empowers individuals to make the best choices for their personal health goals.

Dr. Kennedy advocates for personalized approaches to aging interventions. This requires understanding individual biology through comprehensive testing. The ultimate goal is predicting which interventions will work for specific individuals. Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD, and Dr. Anton Titov, MD, emphasize that informed consent and personal autonomy are paramount in longevity medicine.

Full Transcript

Dr. Anton Titov, MD: So perhaps it's a provocative question, but I don't think it is. If a person says, "I want to do something today that might slow my aging process. I'm already exercising, my diet seems to be good, but I want to go further." What kind of interventions already have some data in humans that show efficacy and acceptable toxicity? For example, Metformin, rapamycin, alpha-ketoglutarate—what else is out there?

Dr. Brian Kennedy, MD: Yeah, there are a variety of other things that are at different stages of development. I think one thing you might consider is there are an increasing number of longevity clinics that are popping up everywhere. Some are moderately expensive; some are extremely expensive. You have to decide based on your budget. Some of them do more radical things; others are more conservative.

But one thing a lot of them do is they measure a lot of stuff in your system. They take blood, saliva, urine, and they really look at all the different factors that have been linked to aging. So you get this readout of 100 different things—which indicators are outside the normal range in your body? They look at genetics.

Even just correcting some of those things that are outside of the normal range, I think, would be a really important step that a lot of people interested in longevity are not doing. I think if people want to try the AKG, that's great—I'm happy if they do. But knowing your own body, I think, is something that's still missing, even in a lot of these longevity hackers, and getting those kinds of measures.

I learned that I was low in vitamin B12 when I went to visit a clinic. We've also found that taking alpha-ketoglutarate may not be as effective if you don't have vitamin B12 levels high enough. So that's something that I learned, and I tend to think I know a lot about my body. So I think that arming yourself with that kind of knowledge is helpful.

Again, I think experimenting with some of these safe supplements that are on the market is fine. I wouldn't take everything—try different things. You can, if you're willing to do the biologic age testing, see what the outcome is on your body. I think it's okay to do that. I think informed people should be able to make their own decisions about what they want to do with their body.

The important thing for us is to make sure people get informed about aging. Generally speaking, the public still is not informed about aging. We must educate them so that they can make the best choices for themselves, and that's still a big challenge in the field.

Well, I don't think anything is going to work in every individual. That's true for any drug in any disease. So I think it's important to measure because rapamycin may be extremely effective in you and not effective in me—we don't know. So any of these interventions.

That's why what I mentioned earlier with this personalized approach—we need to understand and be able to predict who's going to respond to what interventions. But right now, it's such an early stage that we really don't know. If 70% or 80% of people respond to rapamycin to get biologically younger, that'd be great. But I'd like to know who those 30% are that are making them non-responsive.

So I don't think we can make the assumption. Even exercise—if I tell everybody to go out, and I think some form of exercise is probably good for everybody, but if I tell everybody to go out and run 20 kilometers in Singapore, I'm going to kill some people, right? So I think that we have to tailor the intervention to the individual, and that goes with the drugs and supplements as well.