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Dr. Joel Rosen:
All right. Hello everyone and welcome to our inaugural edition of the age-reversing blueprint podcast where we help modern-day health-seeking men and women who are searching for their fountain of youth, with longevity tips for slowing their age, and also reversing their age, and I’m really excited to talk with our guest today, Hannah went, she has a lifelong passion for longevity and breakthrough disruptive technologies that drive radical improvements to the human condition. Hannah saw an opportunity for methylation-based diagnostics and started true diagnostics in 2020. This is a company focusing on methylation array based diagnostics, which we’ll be talking to you all about in this interview. For Life Extension and preventative health serving functional medicine providers, they have a commitment to research with over 30 approved clinical trials investigating epigenetic methylation changes have longevity, and health intervention. Since then, to diagnostics inception, they have created one of the largest private epigenetic health databases in the world with over 15,000 patients tested to date. Since then, Hannah has created everything epigenetics, epigenetics, where she shares her insights on how DNA regulation impacts your health. So Hannah, thank you so much for being here today. Appreciate ya.
Hannah Went: Thanks for the introduction. Dr. Rosen. Super excited to chat with you today.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, so I’m me too. I’m curious to know about like in 2020, you know, reading your, your bio there, you saw this opportunity for methylation-based diagnostics, and started this company. So maybe take us through what, what is methylation-based age diagnostics? And how on earth did you see an opportunity to start a company like this? I’m really curious to know,
Hannah Went: Yeah, right before COVID, as well, actually. So it was, you know, a pretty, pretty busy time, we’re actually three years old, you know, in July of 2023, which is just a huge milestone and crazy to think that it’s been three years since the inception of true diagnostics. So it’s been it’s been such a fun and great ride, and a lot of learning along the journey, as well. But I really became introduced to more of this functional health care provider space, actually, right when I graduated college, from the University of Kentucky. So I worked at a compounding pharmacy in Nicholasville, Kentucky, and we always needed a way to quantify how these peptide products work, right? Because we get a lot of backlash from the FDA or you know, other people in the regulation based space as to what these peptides really do for our health. So, in 2019 of August, there was a study that came out that proved you could actually reverse your biological age. And when we saw that study, we asked ourselves the question, why are we not doing this for every single product that we offer to our providers to prove that you can reverse your biological age, thus reduce your risk of almost every single chronic disease and death, and what they actually used in that study where they published, that’s going to be DHEA, growth hormone and metformin. So you know, pretty, I would say, familiar products, and thought that we could do the same thing with peptides. So we then started creating true diagnostic, as as a company and built the lab from the ground up in Lexington, Kentucky, and you know, have been growing really ever ever since in offering these tests to a lot of healthcare providers just like yourself.
Dr. Joel Rosen: That’s awesome. So what was it in the study had that were the markers that were predictive of age reversal? Whether you were using Metformin or growth hormone? What was what were the biomarkers?
Hannah Went: Yeah, so they were measuring, it’s actually called the trim trial, T R. I m by Dr. Greg fey, if anyone’s interested in wants to look up that trial, and they’re doing a part two, as we’re currently speaking, but they really weren’t looking at seeing a change in biological age, they were basically looking to regenerate the thymus, and do that, especially through, you know, all three of those products. And so they mentioned a couple Clinical Biomarkers on the site as well. But, you know, really the title of this paper, I think they even mentioned the age reversal, because they didn’t expect that to happen. It was just a biomarker they were measuring. So they actually saw the overarching, what we refer to as intrinsic biological age, be decreased by about two and a half years, I believe, over a year and a half period. So a net reversal of about a year, which again, was the first proof of concept study showing that we could could do such thing and the first proof of age reversal really.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right. So then take me through then you see that steady light bulbs go off and you’re like, hey, we can apply this to our to our peptides. But that doesn’t mean you all of a sudden three years later have this thriving business. I mean, how did how did you go through the process of setting UPS studies or aligning yourself with research and producing the basically the real ports that you have now that’s such more dynamic than that, you know, one dimensional study.
Hannah Went: So, yeah, definitely I would say at first, we didn’t know how really, we took our audience from that pharmacy and said, We want to offer the best biological age tests to date. And we want to offer this to our health care provider. So that’s exactly what we did right before COVID happened. We sent out about 6000, I believe, tests to health care providers really all around the the US and all around the world, I should say, even two different countries. So that is what we started in, in kind of our main mission with true diagnostic was to be able to offer the best biological age predictor predictor testing to date, what we didn’t know would come with it was all of the academic partners, the universities, the relationships, we now have a state of the art CLIA certified lab, meaning we follow all the rules and regulations, right as it relates to our certification. So we also do in house genomic processing, we do proteomic, processing, and some other things as well. So those I would say, were part of the businesses that we definitely didn’t think would take off, but it did. And we’re very lucky to be able to do that. And we continue to grow our reports, as we find out new insights. So it really is a data play as we’re able to get more and more data from our health care providers. And we’re able to get other covariant information, and we’re able to keep up with all of the research that’s been published, we’re able to create different predictors from that epigenetic methylation data.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right? I mean, it’s super cool to hear the genesis of it and all these unexpected Tagalongs that came with it. And I know, we talked a little bit about Brian Johnson before we got on the call. And what I think so fascinating is the concept of what you’re saying is with AI, and the rate at which intellect and studies and research happen in real time. And then you just add on to the profile of what works. And then you have a database of doctors that are sharing their data. And it’s just amazing to see. So I guess I’m curious, before we get into some of the basic questions, well, let’s get into the basic questions. And what what is biological age? And as an adjunct to that question, what were the original markers that you were testing that proved the biological age or showed that reversal was possible?
Hannah Went: Yeah, definitely. So So biological age is essentially just a number, right? Compared to our chronological age. So chronological age is, of course going to be how old we are, chronologically how many candles we blow off from our birthday cake every single year, how long we’ve been on this earth, but biological age, it’s going to be what’s happening on the cellular level, how old is your actual body? How old are those cells, those those tissue types, those organs, and way back in the day, this is this is always kind of funny to say they used to measure your biological age by measuring how many cigarettes you smoked, which is a very, very crude measurement, right. So as time goes on, they found more technologies and ways to actually measure the biological aging process. A lot of listeners may be familiar with telomere length to measure biological age at one point, which at one point, it was the gold standard, I would say. Now, we’re not huge fans, because it’s not related to many outcomes. But like I was saying, when these epigenetic clocks were created in 2011, and around 2013, were the first two I would say most popular clocks to be created by Dr. Steve Horvath, the pioneer of this field, who will probably win a Nobel Prize for what he has created, rightfully so that really turned heads in this entire kind of aging space. So the epigenetic methylation was proven to be the best predictor of health outcomes. And that’s really, really important. Because if these predictors aren’t proven to be related to health outcomes than clinically, and you can relate to this, I’m sure as a health care provider, they don’t mean much. So we need to be able to know if you have an increase in biological age, how that’s related to diabetes, how it’s related to, you know, heart disease, how it’s related to your metabolomic function in different processes in the body.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Gotcha. So, so what you ultimately found that it was predictive in the sense that it increases all course, all cause mortality. I mean, maybe tell us a little bit about how that started to be predictive. Yeah, exactly.
Hannah Went: I think one of the most predictive algorithms and now the gold standard with measuring biological age would be the Dineen din pace or that pace of aging. What really, Brian Johnson is using as that gold standard to measure his age reversal. And that dinnington pace is my favorite to talk about instead of a biological age, it’s giving you how quickly you’re aging at this very moment in time, biologically for every one chronological year. And that algorithm Furthermore, is going to even be the most precise out of all of them. vailable it’s so precise, you can measure changes in in two to three months. So you can can repeat this test and see really what works for your underlying unique biology. But just as an example, and how it’s related to mortality and morbidity, it has a hazard ratio of 1.64 as it relates to mortality. So first off, what’s a hazard ratio? Well, a hazard ratio is basically, how can a variable predict an outcome? So in this case, we’re saying how can the Dineen din pace algorithm, a predictor of your pace of aging, predict your mortality, and for every one standard deviation increase in that Dineen din pace, you actually have a 64% increase of mortality? All right, so that that is a very, very strong connection. And for some of the older clocks, they only have a hazard rate to mortality of about 1.02, which just means a 2% increase in mortality. Right, so we’re getting better. And like you were, I’m just gonna, I’m just echoing what you’re saying there. As we’re able to drive these algorithms with more power, you know, knowledge is power, we’re able to make better connections between the biological age itself, whether it be the pace of aging, or some other outcome, to outcomes of disease, again, mortality and morbidity in this case that we’re discussing.
Dr. Joel Rosen:
Right. And you can tell I mean, if you’re a sophisticated listener, you might be hearing some of these these terms and understanding it, but not all of it. And it can get complicated very quickly. And what I really like about your reports are, you try to make it as simple as possible for the reader to understand what biological age is and how chronological age and intrinsic and extrinsic, I definitely would love to talk to you about the rate of aging, and that the study that you did, and that’s the one that you’re most excited to. But I will say from my point of view, what really resonated with me is, you do see a lot of people that feel that their their lifestyle and how tough they were on their health, and maybe they weren’t as cognizant about nutrients and, and being proactive. They think, well, I’m screwed now, because I haven’t done the things that I needed to do. But now with the rate of aging and the pace of aging, that’s not necessarily so so let’s let’s dive into that Hannah, and explain to the listener, what’s so phenomenal about the pace and rate of aging?
Hannah Went: Yeah, you’re exactly right. So maybe just to compare bile overarching biological agents, like you mentioned, the intrinsic and extrinsic, those can be frustrating to a lot of people because those, you know, maybe influx short or increased and everyone’s like, why is this happening? You know, I’m doing everything right. And really, those are an accumulation of how you’ve been aging across your entire lifetime. From your Inception up until now, I actually have have called them your Historical Based aging processes. So they’re limited in the fact that if you have a biological age that’s even older or younger than your chronological age, you don’t know when that happened. That’s just basically like compounded interest over time, you know that the net overall is decreased or increased, which is still great, and still very informative and important to know. However, with the demeaned in pace, it tells you at this very moment in time, are you doing the right things? Or are you not doing the right things? And do you need to edit that protocol. So, again, the dinnington pace is a metric, it’s more of like a speedometer. So that report will come out as a number between 0.6 and 1.4 1.4 would mean you’re aging 40% faster, because kind of the average is the one and then point six would mean your your aging 40% slower compared to the cohort. And the way that this study was created, or I should say this algorithm was created is very, very unique. They they took a cohort named the Dinantian cohort. And it is named that because it was a study done in dinnington New Zealand. That’s why it’s called that funky name. And they took about 1037 Babies newborns that were born in 1972 in 1973. So it’s just a birth cohort, and birth cohorts aren’t unique. However, this one is very unique in the fact that they measured this group until they’re 52 years old today, they’re still measuring them now. And they have a 96% retention rate. So 96% of the original study members are still in the study. And that is an excellent retention rate. I think you’re very lucky in the states if you get like a 60% retention rate, just because people aren’t participating as much or, you know, following up and really, really caring about their health to be quite honest. So back to the study, what they did at four different time points, is they took a lot of blood based values. They took a lot of, you know, your your CBC your complete blood count values and some other lab values as well. And they were able to look at all of these unique data points and how they change as the group aged. And with all of that data. We use some bioinformatics analyses. It’s called net regression elastic or elastic net regression modeling system to create that predictor that 0.6 to 1.4. And then we realized by running different analyses and validation studies that it is the most predictive out of any of those epigenetic age clocks that have been created. And it’s the most predictive of outcomes. I know you’ve, you’ve seen the grass, Dr. Rosen, but the faster dinnington pace that you have, the more cognitive decline, the weaker your grip strength, the worse your balances, even have a facial appearance of looking older as well. So they were able to kind of compare the 10 slowest, the 10, middle and the 10, fastest aging, Deneen pace cohort members, and they’re all the same age chronologically, remember, they were all born in the same year, but they look drastically different. So the people who have a faster pace of aging, they look almost 10 to 20 years younger compared to the people who have the slower pace of aging. So it is really related to all of these outcomes. And of course, I bet you would agree and everyone listening is everyone wants better quality of life based metrics? I don’t know anyone who would, you know, choose to have poor quality of life based metrics?
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, thank you for sharing with me that you know, and it was the first time that I used your lab was on myself. And I was quite honest, disappointed with my results, because I was one that had always taken good care of myself. And then when I turned 50, I really feel like I hit the wall, it was a big, it was a big deal, the seller and but my, my value was point eight, seven, and you sort of talked me off the ledge. And I felt a little bit better about it. But now I’m going to be showcasing with all the things that I’m going to be doing with following what’s out there with also following with what I know, my own pace. So I’m excited to see those follow up, which is a good segue into you offer two tests, you offer the complete and you also offer the pace, and maybe suggest why you wouldn’t want the complete and what’s in the complete first before you would do just a follow up pace afterwards.
Hannah Went: Exactly. So that TREACH Complete Collection, that’s where we look at about a million different methylation markers. And if you’re someone who is wanting those overarching biological age markers, do the complete kit. It’s just all in it’s it’s comprehensive is what I’m trying to say I guess. And, you know, I want to see all of my markers, I do want to see my historical base biological aging, to maybe see how hard I have to push if I’m making up or to see if I have a little bit of leeway to. We also include other markers on that complete kit, things like your immune cell deconvolution methods. So we take a really good deep dive into the immune system, you may be a candidate for some immune modulation support therapy based on those outcomes, which again, is going to help decrease that Dineen pace over time as well. We also have some different trait and characteristic bait based reports to as such as are you able to lose weight or not with caloric restriction, things like how much you’ve been smoking or drinking across your entire lifetime. So we can kind of see a stamp on your methylome to see if we’re able to pick up a signature. And I think those reports really reinforce better habits, better lifestyle habits. So I think it’s all about the data. I love data, I want to know everything about myself. And I know not everyone is that same exact way. And a new report will actually be coming out with very, very soon, hopefully, within the next couple of months, it’s going to be our fitness report. So we’re able to actually quantify your fitness levels by based by basically looking at your epi genetics. And we’re going to be able to tell you things like your VO two Max, your FEV one, your grip strength and your gait speed, all of which are related to longevity and aging. So if you can make those markers better, your overarching aging should look better as well. So getting that complete kit is really all comprehensive. I think it’s nice to look at everything from more of a holistic standpoint and say, okay, maybe I need to work more on this or make these lifestyle factors, then as you were saying, I’d recommend doing that true age pace product, which is going to be cheaper, six months later, or so. Because again, you just need to know if the speedometer is going in the right way. That also includes the telomere length as well, where you can see how your telomere lengths are compared to the first time. You know, there’s no reason you can’t do that complete kit again, if you absolutely wanted to, but it may just not be necessary or the right one for you at that time.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right. So thank you for sharing. So, you know, I, I’ve told you that I do a lot of just neutral genomic testing, and we look at the genetic blueprint. So I might be wondering if I’m just a lay person, and I’m listening to this, and be thinking how on earth and this might get a little more scientific than we anticipated. But how on earth can they look at my genes and tell me how my veal to max or my exercise capacity is and that’s where you talk about epigenetics where the environment and methylation panels and or methylation status and the way that it impacts these certain Genes give us a baseline of comparison of how fast or slow that’s going but maybe elaborate on how we’re able to understand how the things we do environmentally impact are Genes and we can get a clinical picture on that. Yeah, that’s
Hannah Went: That’s a great question. So all of these things you hear right on on Instagram, social media, wherever, like, your DNA is not your destiny or food is medicine. Those are all true. Because epi genetics, by definition, Epi means above. So we’re looking at markers above your genome. And what we’re actually measuring is how much is that gene being expressed? How much is it turned on? How much is it turned off. So think of it almost, you know, like a light switch, but even like a light dimmer, because it’s not binary, it’s going to be somewhere in between. And there’s a really great story actually behind the physical fitness markers and how we’re able to collaborate in this space, which is just, again, a phenomenal thing when everyone can bring a piece of the puzzle together. And we can create something really beautiful from that. So we actually created these physical fitness predictors with Kristin McGreevy out of UCLA. She’s in her final year of pH, her PhD, and she really specializes in epigenetics and anything related to physical fitness. And she She’s amazing. And we worked with about five of our healthcare providers who were gathering clinical data on vo two Max FEV, one grip strength and gait speed. So they were actually doing those physical tests in their clinic. At the same time they were doing those physical tests, they were taking a blood sample for the DNA methylation, epigenetic testing. So we were doing their epigenetic testing as at the same time they got these clinical values. We did that for a very large amount of patients. And what we were able to do that, and this is where, like you mentioned, it gets more into the science more into the bioinformatics, we were able to look at how the epigenetic methylation markers are correlated with those outcomes. So again, using some of that net regression, elastic net modeling system, we were able to say, when your real to match changes, these methylation markers change, when your grip strength changes, these methylation markers change. And then we just use the epigenetic methylation testing as a proxy for that outcome. So that is why epigenetics is so exciting. If you have the data behind it, that you’re able to create different outcomes, you can predict almost anything. So we really truly believe that DNA methylation and epigenetics is a biomarker of the future, it’s going to overtake conventional blood testing, hormone panel testing, probably within the next decade, probably about 60 to 70% of what healthcare providers are doing in house right now. It is it is truly a a, I would say we’re truly undergoing an epigenetic revolution, in terms of it just being such a great biomarker. And that’s what I would think, you know, really makes me excited. Yeah,
Dr. Joel Rosen: it is cool. And so kind of going back to Brian Johnson, and what he’s doing. Are we finding now that based on his results, that that becomes the new normal as to compare like a lighthouse to improvements or not? Is that what we’re?
Hannah Went: yeah, I think so. You know, and again, talking about opportunities that we never thought would arise is something like the epigenetic Olympics or the epigenetic, the name is now. Rejuvenation Olympics. Thank you. I had a brain fart there. So yeah, the rejuvenation Olympics, looking at your epigenetics that was created in conjunction with Brian Johnson. And he really said, Hey, I’m, I’m kind of setting the stage right, I want to hold myself accountable. I want everyone else to hold themselves accountable. And then we can go through and look at his his kind of interventional treatment plan. And then people can also follow that interventional treatment plan. And again, just because it works for Brian doesn’t mean it works for that same person. But it gives people at least a good idea of what to start with, and maybe how to edit those protocols or what to choose, right? We don’t want to start adding a lot of factors at the same time, because then you don’t know what’s actually given you that true signal. So it’s really nice to maybe implement one or two things or, you know, take a couple things away and do the repeat testing to see what’s actually having that true effect. But I truly believe that Dineen didn’t pace is the gold standard of measuring the change as it relates to aging, both in a clinical and a research setting. I think it absolutely needs to be included.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right. And to qualify for that, I believe panel, you have to have what two or three successive six month readings, how many is it?
Hannah Went: Yeah, so three, Dineen didn’t pace values. That’s it, whether it’s through the complete kit or the pace kit, so three values with your first and third test being at least six months apart. So we do it that way, because we don’t want to one we want to make sure it’s enough time. But we also don’t want people submitting samples on other’s behalf or, you know, trying to change too quickly. We want to give enough time to see that that change.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right. And I mean, I don’t even know I haven’t seen the site. How many people are in there at this moment, approximately.
Hannah Went: Oh, I think they I think we’ve tested around about 2000 people launch To normally, but not everyone has consented consented to have their data up there. So you need to consent. We try to update it monthly. I think we’ve paused it for a couple months because we’re trying to get a lot of data and like, readjust the standings. But there’s a lot of great people in there like Steve Aoki, the DJ Peter Diamandis, head of fountain life. And Ben Greenfield, who’s you know, a pretty popular biohacker, I should say, and what I really like about it, as well as it tells you kind of what clinic they come from, or what plan they’re following. And I think they’re also looking at opening a forum, on the website as well and kind of going through and, again, getting feedback, getting suggestions. Because even though this is the number one way to quantify your aging process, your epigenetic methylation markers are so specific to you. Again, I just want to echo just because it works for someone else, doesn’t mean it would work for you. So it’s really an f1 precision based medicine at its finest.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what I really liked go and give accolades to your company is that as the provider you share what providers are doing with this model, and how the different approaches are, and what I think’s really cool is with certain software’s like biomechanics, they can have a cohort on their own. So what that means in English is, I can say have 25 people that I put into my software, and I look at their their true age complete test, I see their rate of aging, I look at other markers, and then I can even pair that with their wearables and their, their different trackers. And then let’s get into me, because I really liked that you share this on your site. And that’s probably what makes you so successful is that you’re transparent. And I got to commend Brian Johnson for doing that too, right? I mean, there’s no agenda, but hey, this is what I’m doing. And it’s not the be all end all. And this is what we find works for me. And if you have something that works for you, great. Let’s learn as a society and rise all ships. So with that being said, you do have on there different rejuvenation techniques or immune modulating, so maybe we could talk a little bit about what is known for sure, are specific to really help reverse or at least slow down the rate of aging.
Hannah Went:
Yeah, definitely. And I love what you’re doing. Dr. Rosen, I mean, kudos to you, right, you’re taking all of this, maybe more more complicated data, and you’re looking at it from a functional approach. And I just think that’s, that’s the best way you can be doing this and kind of adding all of those factors and really understanding what’s happening at a cellular level. So I love what you’re doing. I’m really excited to see it continue to grow. But I think from you know, an interventional standpoint, you can’t dismiss the lifestyle factors. So we can, we can start there and kind of the most basic sense, but I would say, in terms of what we see actually slowing down that demand and pace, the number one recommended intervention is going to be caloric restriction, just period helpline caloric restriction. And that’s going to be cited from that calorie randomized control trial, which is a 10% overall caloric restriction in healthy non obese adults. So they’re taking healthy people. They’re restricting their calories by 10%. You’re measuring the Dineen din pace at baseline at 12 months and at 24 months, and we see the Dineen din pace is the only clock able to track that change. And that’s extremely important. Again, pushing the fact that the dinnington pace is the best for tracking those interventional changes, because we know caloric restriction works, it works in animal models to improve lifespan and actually healthspan as well, they’ve done some pretty cool, cool studies with that to improve quality of life of different animal models. So caloric restriction, I would say, would be my number one recommendation in what I would consider to be the most validated within the literature as well.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and I think he’s even doing 25% You know, he’s taking it up to another level there, and not everyone is definitely going to want to do that. And as he says, he’s got to get every nutrient out of the amount that he’s getting to make sure that he’s getting the nutrients he needs. But I would agree with you on the lifestyle, I think that, you know, eliminating, in his words, the self destructive behaviors, and firing the the nine o’clock, Joel that has to have that, you know, the popcorn and all the other stuff at night, you know, and making the wrong decision. So I think that goes a long way for sure. But as far as the other recommendations, nutrient wise, I mean, there’s a lot of great things coming down the pike with an MN and senolytics stuff. And I mean, can you speak to are you able to talk a little bit about that at all, and what you’re seeing with some of your providers that have accounts with you that are seeing success with their cohorts of patients?
Hannah Went: Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, Dr. Rosen, we will always be fully transparent on on what we see. So we don’t try and sell you anything, right. We don’t want to sell you any supplements, medications or procedural based therapies. We just want to tell you all what we see, according to our health care providers, and according to what the literature It states as well. So I would say probably some of the top recommendations up there would be DHEA. So we love DHEA. It’s going to differ, you know, in dosing when you’re comparing men versus women or some other factors, blood based factors, etc. But we like DHEA for mitigating the glucocorticoid levels are those cortisol levels. So reducing stress, we know stress really accelerates the biological aging process and there’s a lot of psychosocial factors that go into that as well. So we really like DHA for for helping out in that area. I would say one of the most studied supplements which probably doesn’t come as a surprise either is going to be vitamin D, about 4000 6000 iu vitamin D per day, is what’s been noted in the literature and you know, I think a lot of people are now taking a lot of vitamin D It’s again, pretty a buzzword and social media and really finding the importance there. We also like rapamycin. So rapamycin is an mTOR inhibitor, basically inhibiting growth. So as we inhibit growth, we realize that that may be better to that may show a lot of better age outcomes as well. Again, the rapamycin does not having an improved interventional clinical trial, but we see that subjectively from a lot of our health care providers who are taking that I will say I have a Bernese Mountain Dog Her name is Evie. She’s you know, big dog short lifespan. She’s been taking it ever since she’s been a puppy. It’s has been studied pretty thoroughly, I would say in dogs where it increases their lifespan by about 30%. So after report back on, on that one, one CV gets a little bit older as well. So DHEA vitamin D, rapa myosin, we are big fans of N MN and NRS. Well, supplementation, I would say we haven’t done enough of a thorough analysis on NAD interest. IV therapy, at least but definitely nm, n and n are supplementation. I’m not sure which one beats what I believe. And a min is a little cheaper. I think so. Don’t quote me on that. I’m not not completely sure. But I think you know, if, again, you’re looking at your budget and want to watch out for that, you know, no matter and ours kind of a tiebreaker at the moment.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, it’s pretty cool. I mean, we do a lot of nutrigenomics on those pathways. And you can see where someone may have a weakness and being able to produce an MN from nr and or NAD from nr, and you suggest and a man or vice versa. But really the what we’ve seen Hana is when we have stress, and it’s not just emotional or psychological, it’s environmental, it’s oxidative. What that does is it uses up your NADPH, which is made from NAD. And so obviously, I always explain it as if you can pay the bills and get rid of the overhead, you’ve already earned a lot more income than having to get a new sale, so to speak. Meaning if you can take care of the stressors that deplete you, then you don’t necessarily have to look at getting more in ingesting extrinsically. But it works on both areas. Just curious on the rapamycin I know it’s being suggested, especially in Peter A to his book about pulsing it and doing it in a sequence and assert Have you found not that you’re an expert on research on this, but what have you What have you found for your dog that you’re doing there? Yeah, yeah,
Hannah Went: You know, I’ll shoot it’s been with her I would say pretty consistently, there are some weeks when when I forget right, I think we’ll start to see it being used worldwide for dogs. There are a couple companies I think that offer it directly as a prescription for dogs. But you know, people care more about the their dogs and their animals than they do themselves. So I think that space will really take off. And even some biological age clocks for dogs being created as we speak to, I would say, for humans, and again, there’s kind of a certain ratio, depending on how much the dog dog weighs and how much you actually give them for human intake, I would say it’s about six milligrams once weekly. That was, you know, I would say completely kind of created by I believe Dr. Green is his name that certain protocol. So the goal with rapamycin is not to take too much and put yourself into kind of a immunosuppression, overdrive, but to take maybe just enough where you’re inhibiting that growth a tiny bit. But I think I’m you know, it’s hard to say without that that actual data, but I can I can tell you that a lot of our health care providers and their patients are taking it.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I mean, that gives credence to why caloric restriction, so important to be able to turn that avatar off and tap into a NPK. Is it another strategy, how can I have my patients go less than 15 grams of protein if they want to do the same thing and they can’t quite make it into the 25 or 10% off off and see if they can just have a protein sabbatical for a couple of days to slow that down, which is pretty interesting as well. I’m not recommending that format. I know Metformin sort of has been shown to be helpful in this area as well.
Hannah Went: Yeah, I think we like Metformin to I think rapamycin a little bit more than the Metformin itself. If you remember that study I mentioned right? When we started talking about the beginning, they use the Metformin and then they use the DHEA, as well. And we believe we probably saw most of that reversal that they they reported out on due to the DHEA. And its pathway for mitigating those glucocorticoid receptor elements. But we think Metformin might be pretty neutral as it relates to aging, I think we need a little bit more data to really make a stronger statement there. But we still we still are big fans from of metformin, I would say people like the extended release over the, you know, non extended release for some GI side effects as well. But probably leaning I would say a little bit more toward rapamycin at the moment.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Gotcha. You know, one of the things as I dissect down, like, you know, over the 100 supplements that Brian Johnson takes clusters of categories that I’ve been seeing trends with, and you see like the broccoli sprouts, and you see the taurine and the glucosamine and the garlic, and where they have a lot of relationships, Hannah is in that transsulfuration pathway, which helps to make our antioxidant recycling elements and really helps to deal with stress and helps to recycle your, your your glutathione. And to be able to really keep your body obviously out of out of that inflammatory response. So I think that’s a big part of of what’s working for him. As far as what I always like to ask my guests, when we’re when we’re getting to a rap here is now that this is a new podcast, I’m going to come up with a question that’s going to be consistent is what would you wish you would have known back then that you know, now that would have helped with your sort of your intrinsic extrinsic age? Not notwithstanding the things we’ve already talked about? Maybe what you had a specific challenge with yourself that you wish you would have known that could have maybe helped you further down the road?
Hannah Went: Yeah, I think, Oh, that’s a you know, there’s, there’s a lot of things I would I think, want to know a little bit earlier. But if I had to pick one, and then I’ll I can add something secondary here, because we’ve already touched on it a little bit, but just stress regulation, through lifestyle factors, I am just a naturally stressed out person. And I think that’s, you know, the culture a lot of us deal with, right, we work really intense jobs, you know, we’re always moving, we’re always going around the clock. So making time for yourself, and really, you know, I love doing hot yoga, I need to make more time to do hot yoga and help regulate those, those stress levels. But I think something to add on there, as well as our thoughts. Our thoughts even are responsible for how our genes are being expressed. Right? So all of that negative, you know, talking that that internal monologue that we have, I actually don’t think some people have it, I definitely have an internal monologue, right? It can, it can form how your genes are being expressed. So just being kinder to yourself as well, right. Any internal or external stimuli that you’re getting are going to affect your genes for the better or for the worse. So being able to I think control for what you can control for in terms of your lifestyle factors is, yeah, I think definitely something that would want to learn learn earlier, right? Like maybe that dessert isn’t worth it, or maybe you know, that snack isn’t worth it as well. So I think just knowing what you’re willing to give up making it your lifestyle, making it your habitual routine is, is something that I would want to know a little bit earlier, just because it has a massive effect.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, that’s a great answer in the sense that I echo that as well as that you pay the physiological consequence with your thoughts. Right. And it’s like a domino effect. When you push that first domino down, then you’re gonna have the impact of the dominoes down the line. And I always use the analogies of, of different ways to explain things my brain thinks of it is it’s kind of like debt, in the sense that if you’re only making interest payments, you never pay down the debt. But if you can kind of cut into the principal, you’re eventually going to get that momentum and make a difference. And same thing with our thoughts. I think you’re either it’s an all or none. You’re either having good thoughts that are helping your physiology favorably or you’re not and you want to make sure you’re on the other side of it. So yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Hannah Went: No, I was just to kind of lead off of that, too. It’s just consistency, right? Being in that routine and showing up for yourself and keeping the promises that you’re making to yourself or maybe not making the promises if you don’t think you can live up to those promises and Just kind of accepting that and understanding that is something I think I’m still learning to do.
Dr. Joel Rosen:
Yeah, it’s a life. It’s a verb, that’s for sure. So we talked before and you mentioned that if our listeners listen to this, we can create a link for them to get a discount. And I’ll have that in my show notes and in the description, wherever they’re watching this, and they can try the the true age complete test or the or the pace test and really get a handle on their, on their on their aging. Just curious in parting, what’s new and exciting. I know you mentioned you have the these physical exercise markers, any other forecasting for true diagnostics, what’s coming in the works here?
Hannah Went: Yeah, definitely. We’re creating the report right now. And we’ve been working on this since we’ve been open really three years ago, as we just completed our study with Harvard, our multi omics study. So we took about 5000 biobank samples from Harvard’s biobank and look at epigenetics, for genome sequencing, untargeted proteomic analysis metabolomics, a little bit of transcriptomics, and fino, fino mixes, they’re phenotypic outcomes as well. And we will be creating a multi omic clock called ohmic M age that will be even better than your intrinsic and extrinsic epigenetic aging. And be I would say the the new gold standard for overarching biological age. So really excited for that report to come out, it’s going to have about 36, I believe, different clinical values that we’re able to report out through epigenetic methylation too. So I think that’ll be a huge break. And something we’ve worked on for a very long time that I’m excited about. That’s really cool.
Dr. Joel Rosen: So do you just curious as being curious about it, do you do your, your complete tests along with the database or you just do a study of the of the analysis of the data?
Hannah Went: Yeah. So it would be in terms of what I’m sorry.
Dr. Joel Rosen: So when you’re doing this, when you’re producing this entire algorithm, yes, based on not only the database that that Harvard has, but you’ve also put them through your kit? And you’ve looked at these markers, or is that Correct?
Hannah Went: Yeah. Yeah, we did the epigenetic testing for those those samples that were banked in the biobank. So yeah, we were taking their epigenetics alongside of that, to create these new predictors. So yeah, you’re absolutely right. Oh, interesting.
Dr. Joel Rosen: So but you had to get their blood or you that the samples are in the in the biobanks? For their blood, correct?
Hannah Went: Yeah. So so people who, you know, have already passed away who have had different disease outcomes. And that’s the key you need those outcomes, to be to be able to relate it back to things that we want to predict. So you need that biobank data, essentially, to be able to create those types of things. And we’re really excited.
Dr. Joel Rosen: That’s so cool. Well, listen, I want to keep it open for part two, because I have so many other things that my brain wants to ask you. But I think the listeners gonna get a lot out of this today. So thank you for your time, and I and thank you for what you’re doing. And I gotta say, I’m a little jealous that I wasn’t there with you at the start, but um, it’s awesome that you’re doing that and I’m joining along here and hoping to make a difference just like you are. So thank you so much.
Hannah Went: Awesome. Thanks, Dr. Rosen.
