Newsletter #263

Hey y'all, hope everyone is gearing up for a great Memorial Day weekend!

We have an exciting announcement, as well as some new content, which we are anxious to roll out here. Given that, we're gonna go ahead and skip the research highlights this week for the sake of brevity (don’t worry, we've got some good science waiting for you in the next newsletter).

humanOS was created because finding scientifically validated ways to boost health and performance through lifestyle is our greatest passion. It is our life's work.

However, the benefits of lifestyle interventions generally accrue over a large timescale. You can’t just do it once or twice, and expect the results to stick. They demand a relatively high degree of commitment, and the future payoffs can be tough to see in the moment.

That is what makes health science so damn fascinating, from an academic standpoint, not to mention tragically under-appreciated by the medical community.

But it also makes it pretty daunting for most people. Sustained behavior change, on a daily basis, for years, is really really hard.

We know that, because we've been there. We've struggled with it ourselves.

Studying this research, as well as experimenting with this stuff on our own, has brought us to a stark realization: knowledge is just not enough.

To that end, we are at last opening up our coaching program to help folks like you transform your lives, and reach your goals, in an approach tailored specifically to you and your needs.

For more info, head to this page, and feel free to shoot us an email at [email protected] to let us know how we can help you. You can also schedule a discovery session with a coach, if you’d like to ask some questions before signing up.

👁️ humanOS Radio: EyeAge – A New Biological Clock. Podcast with Pankaj Kapahi, PhD

On this episode of humanOS Radio, we welcome Pankaj Kapahi back to the show. Dr. Kapahi is a professor at the Buck Institute, and he has become a bit of a perennial guest on the show, largely because he’s been involved in some pretty innovative projects.

In our previous interviews, we discussed his work examining how advanced glycation end products (also known as AGEs) drive the aging process. To address this problem, Pankaj has developed a novel formulation that combats the endogenous formation of AGEs in the body, known as GLYLO, which you can now purchase for yourself.

But how can we accurately gauge the effectiveness of these sorts of interventions in humans?

With that in mind, Dr Kapahi has recently turned his attention to techniques for measuring biological age (as opposed to chronological age). We all know that the ravages of age do not affect people equally. There are many 50-year-olds who seem more like 30-year-olds, in terms of their appearance and their physical and mental performance, as well as others who more closely resemble 70-year-olds. And while chronological age is not modifiable, biological age can be changed.

To capture this phenomenon objectively, there has been extensive work developing aging clocks, which are usually founded on calculations of epigenetic signatures from saliva or blood samples. Building upon research that examines the microvasculature of the eye to predict health status and systemic disease, Pankaj and his colleagues have developed an aging clock based on retinal imaging, which they have dubbed “eyeAge.”

It’s not hard to imagine a future in which annual retinal scans could be used to tell you your current biological age, as well as the rate at which your tissues are aging. With this information, you could figure out whether your current lifestyle approach or medical interventions are working, and make changes as needed. Think about it. A standard eye exam could tell you how long you have to live – in time for you to do something about it.

To hear more about this method and its possible implications, check out the interview!

Dan Pardi: How to Measure Health. Via IHMC.

Dan recently got the opportunity to visit the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), where he delivered a talk on health measurement and biological age. The first section of the presentation explores what health actually is. As you might imagine, the definition of health has been the subject of some debate among philosophers and physicians alike. Our ideas about health have also evolved somewhat over time, especially in the twentieth century and beyond, as we developed an appreciation for mental and social dimensions of health.

Next, Dan tackles some of the greatest dilemmas around health measurement. What do we measure, and why? And what are the ideal ranges for health? Is there a difference between what is “normal” within a population and what is “optimal?”

Finally, in the third part of this talk, Dan discusses emerging measures of biological age (the aforementioned interview with Pankaj Kapahi above is a good primer on this!). He reviews what a useful biological age clock would tell us, current methods of measuring biological aging and what they tell us, and some of the limitations of these techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZBo3ISvzOo

🏃‍♂️ The first athlete to die during a modern Olympic event perished due to a self-induced inability to sweat effectively.

Francisco Lázaro represented Portugal in their first-ever participation in the Olympic Games in the marathon. During the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, he collapsed at the 19-mile mark, with a body temperature of 41 °C (105.8° F).

It was later discovered that Lázaro had covered his body with animal fat, ostensibly because he thought it would make him faster by suppressing perspiration.

In what can only be described as a classic example of famous last words, the athlete is purported to have said prior to the race: "Either I win or I die."

It is starting to get hot here in the US. For that reason, proper hydration has leaped onto our radar. And during intense physical activity, water alone isn’t always enough.

We really like this product in particular because it's significantly higher in sodium than most sports drinks that you see at grocery stores, and sodium is generally the electrolyte that you need to be most acutely concerned about when you're sweating a ton.

Also, I personally find the taste of most electrolyte powders difficult to handle. LMT is nice because it comes in an array of interesting flavors that effectively balance out the saltiness of the supplement (I’m a big fan of the mango chili, reminds me of Mexican fruit cups with tajin sprinkled on top).

Finally, LMNT is sugar free, which is great if you're trying to limit carbs, but isn't necessarily ideal from a performance standpoint. However, it's very easy to add the supplement to some fruit juice or something like that, if you want to make sure you're also getting some glucose.

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This guide addresses five main categories for sleep optimization:

We dig deep into the literature to capture some unique research-based strategies for coaxing your body to fall asleep. For example, did you know that making your feet warm can boost both sleep onset and duration? Believe it or not, people who wore socks to bed fell asleep faster and slept 32 minutes longer, compared to controls who had bare feet.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway from this guide is that what you do during the day may be just as important for establishing healthy sleep patterns as your nighttime routine.

https://mailchi.mp/humanos.me/newsletter-263