What is Two Years worth?

The answer to that question has many different answers. I know this for a fact because I asked it at a recent conference I spoke at and I got as many different answers as there were people willing to answer it!

The ranges varied from $10,000 through millions to “priceless”!  As long as it was 2 healthy years of course!

So the next question is: “When is Two Years not Two Years.

The answer to that question requires a little more science and a little more explanation.

First I have to tell you I read the press release that was “written for me” with a mixture of humor and horror. You see my past experiences with press releases have taught me that this is one type of writing I am not good at. I would say 70% of the press releases I have written in the past were rejected and never made it to publication. So this time I hired an expert because the message is too important: I really am showing objective if not universally accepted signs of getting younger from my telomeres to my bone marrow.

And like one of the heads of a large “CEO farm” I talked to recently wanted to know, I can give objective value to how someone is doing versus the rest of people in their age range.

So when is 2 years not really 2 years?

Answer” When it is actually more like 7 or 8 years.

Let me explain by telling you about to types of age: chronologic age- how many birthdays you’ve counted, and biologic age- how old your cells act versus the rest of the population in your age range.

For biologic age you can use either median telomere length or percentage of short telomeres but the later is far more indicative of your actual biologic age.* This is why I only use the Life Length Assay for individual telomere evaluations and why I also am using it for our stem cell studies. There are other companies promising similar evaluations at a lower cost but when you ask them to show you the science as to how, you get no response. Especially when they figure out you are not a newbie to the field.

So if you read our press releases you know that I am actually biologically 2 years younger now than I am chronologically. To be clear I have counted 54 birthdays but I am 52 biologically.

If you think about it that is kinda magical and there is not much on this planet that will do that for you other than what I have outlined in these recent blog posts.

But there actually is more. Before I started TA-65 in 2009 I had a baseline test done which showed my telomeres to be close to 60 years old. I was 50 years old then and had been on a lot of good things to help with the aging process for a long time. As a matter of fact I am Board Certified in Anti-Aging so I practiced everything I was taught on myself as well as my patients. But biologically I was still 10 years older than my stated age. In other words, in spite of all that good stuff I had gotten older faster than I should have.

Now a couple of things should be entertained here. First we don’t know how bad or good I would have been had I not done all those “standard anti-aging practices” including diet and exercise.  Next you have to account for the life of a busy Internist in my earlier years which had to have taken its toll. Years of life or death stress, minimal sleep, 80 to 100 hour work weeks for at least a decade superimposed on heavy weight lifting and ultra marathons in excess of 75 miles do not make a particularly healthy life style.

Rather than defend what some of my readers have called “extreme behavior” I will simply say that in those years I felt invincible.

But my telomeres knew and my telomeres didn’t lie.

I had aged a full decade beyond my time. Specifically for those of you skeptics out there my telomere length was recorded at 6.90Kbs.  A few months ago I had it measured again and along with a reduction in short telomeres from my last test of 3% (doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s significant!) my telomere length was 7.53Kbs putting me, for the first time, on the correct side of the aging curve.**

So let’s look at this for a minute. In the past few years my telomeres “grew” both healthier (fewer short telomeres) and longer. Neither of those things is supposed to happen as you get older, in my case 4 years older. If you look at biologic age I started at 60 and now I am 52. If you look at chronologic age I started at 50 and now I am 54.

So in the 4 years since I started TA-65 and practiced the things I wrote about in The Immortality Edge I was able to reverse my biologic age by 8 years! So even though I am only 2 years younger than my chronologic age when I started, biologically, I am actually a full 8 years younger.

Couple this with my young looking bone marrow, the strong healthy growth of my stem cells and my very healthy looking cellular peripheral blood sample I have every reason to be excited.

And so do you because from day one I have shared what I do and how I do it with my readership through the book, the newsletters and the blog.

You can know everything I know and you can do some or all of what I do if you value your future at the same level I do mine.

And it’s working!

Doc

*In the interest of disclosure you should know that not every telomere scientist believes in the biologic age concept. This is one reason I am studying what is happening to the stem cell population as a result of these interventions.  It may take a few years to come to the final conclusion but as you can see from the above-the preliminary indications are very exciting. Some of the crusty old scientists in the field will say this is all running around in circles and we should neither be excited by improvements in these things nor should we try to mess with them. My years as a clinician watching the suffering and loss of dignity that too often accompanies the aging process tells ME differently and I will not sit by and be passive.

The not so crusty younger bunch of scientists I hang out with are gobbling TA-65 and anything else they can that positively affects their telomere lengths (hint fish oil!)

I also believe that the leaps and bounds that we need to make will come from a small group of people who are willing to be guinea pigs like I am. Nothing I tell you to do has shown anything but positive health consequences and it will always be that way because I will be doing it to myself, followed by my loved ones, followed by a small group of trusting and dedicated volunteers LONG BEFORE it ever gets to you. That said as soon as I am sure it’s safe and effective YOU hear about it. But as in the case of our book which has been out for 3 years now, the initial reaction is often less than skeptical because we are on the cutting edge and doing things with information not generally available to the rest of the world including many scientists and doctors. Boy does this piss them off! But they never come back and say “Hey you were right all along!” Instead they say, “Everybody knows that!” as if they knew it all along too.

** There is a degree of variation with all tests, especially telomere tests. The Life Length assay has the lowest possible variation of 5% completely in line with the “biologic system” in this case the variability of telomere length one could normally expect to see. If you apply that in a negative fashion to the numbers above I am still at least 4 years younger biologically. Equally likely is a variation the other way actually undervaluing my telomere growth by 5% which would mean I am even younger biologically- closer to a full decade! Either way I win and so do you!

Finally I was paid the highest compliment I could ever ask for just a few minutes before I wrote this to you. The chief scientist of the stem cell company I am working with called me and said, “I need to get on that stuff you are taking!”

It’s on its way my friend, it’s on its way.

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