#24: ⚡️ Do You Know Your Rate Of Aging?
#24: ⚡️ Do You Know Your Rate Of Aging?
Digital biomarkers can calculate your biological age and how fast you are aging
💬 In this note:
⚡️ Do You Know Your Rate Of Aging?
🍄 Study Finds Serotonin Receptor Location is Key to Psychedelic Drug Mechanism
📚 Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
⚡️ Do you know your rate of aging?
Biological tests for aging are expensive and hard to get, typically over $200. To see the benefits of tests for biological aging, you need to do a test, make lifestyle changes, and test again. Not everyone can afford that.
Without the need for expensive testing, Humanity, founded by Michael Geer & Peter Ward, enables users to find out what actions they can take to slow and reverse their aging process by tracking key aging biomarkers in a sleek, consumer subscription app.
They take in digital biomarkers from your wearables, smartphone and daily prompts to calculate your biological age and rate of aging. Soon it will be possible to complement these digital biomarkers with blood biomarkers from a report from routine blood work with your doctor.
Just released in pre-print and first published by Longevity.Technology, Humanity reports on an analysis model they built to take almost any set of common blood markers from a user and improve the prediction of their future health and their biological age. It takes Humanity’s current Biological Age models and makes them much more usable by the mainstream.
This means that soon you can upload any routine blood test report from any country or doctor to the app. Humanity’s model will be able to use it to increase the predictive power of your Biological Age along with the digital markers they are already using. This feature will be part of their Premium app, which is $49 per year.
Humanity already has an existing user base of over 150,000 users who have added more than 40,000 years back to their lives.
Who else is tracking and testing biological age?
1️⃣Deep Longevity, based in Hong Kong, has developed a suite of tests to determine biological age, your optimal age and a pathway to reach it. Their tests include, “Blood Age,” “Mind Age,” “Epigenetic Age,” and “Microbiomic Age.”
2️⃣Gero.ai, develops data analysis methods to identify potential targets for therapeutic intervention against age-related diseases and aging. The company's GeroSense is a mobile app that measures health changes.
🍄 Study Finds Serotonin Receptor Location is Key to Psychedelic Drug Mechanism
Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have found that psychedelic drugs, such as LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin have the potential to treat mental illnesses like depression and PTSD by quickly rebuilding connections between neurons in the brain.
These drugs are known as “psychoplastogens” because of their ability to regrow and remodel connections in the brain, making them especially interesting for the treatment of mental illnesses.
Until now, most research has focused on the target of these drugs, the serotonin receptors, that are located on the exterior surface of the brain cell. However, Dr. David E. Olson’s research group found that the growth-promoting ability of psychedelic drugs is correlated with their ability to enter the cell and activate serotonin 2A (5HT-2A) receptors on the inside of the cell. The findings were published last month in the journal Science.
The 5HT-2A receptors inside neurons are found around a cellular structure called the Golgi body, and Olsen’s group discovered that activation of the 5HT-2A receptor when it is inside the cell produces a different effect from triggering it when it is on the outside of the cell. These findings help identify the mechanism of how psychedelics promote neuroplasticity and help scientists to design better drugs.
David Olson is also a co-founder of Delix Therapeutics, a therapeutics company focused on creating drugs to promote rapid and enduring neuroplasticity.
📚 Book of the Week
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life - William Finnegan
3 out of 5 stars
It is probably the best book about surfing that’s out there, however the first bit was hard for me to get through. Timeline skips around, and there is a lot of surf language that takes time to warm up to. Second half takes place in SF, which is compelling to me after having lived there for several years. By the end of the book, I’m used to the surf jargon and feel like I know how to read a wave.
We should all live a little more like surfers - in the moment, knowing each wave is different and temporary
⚡️ Check This Out
Comedian Chris Hall impersonates your cat and hilarious cat-isms on TikTok.
My favorites are “your cat leaving the house for an unknown amount of time” and “ your cat who wants to be let in through a closed door.”
He has upcoming standup comedy shows in London that promise to be “equal parts GAY and FUNNY” for only £10.