Hello, my name is Steve and I'm a longevaholic

[Steve_Combi]

I was born at a very young age

As of Jan 2024 I’m 68 years young. Joan, my wife of 48 years is 67. We have 4 adult children and 7 grands! We have a lot to live for.

I’m going to detail out our longevity efforts in this thread. It will probably be too long for some, as I’ve been told I can get terribly long winded

Physical interventions
Dietary interventions
Supplements
Drugs and peptides

My philosophy has changed on this whole longevity thing, it is now…

“better living through biochemistry”

I don’t have time to waste so the fastest and most effective things I can afford are front and center in my thought process. How does that work?

I read, I see papers with huge hype, I read the papers, I ask, is this supported in other papers?

I ask myself, can I do this? can I do this now? can I afford to do this?

If I can’t do it now I move on.

[Steve_Combi]

Here are my wife and my Trudiagniostic tests results from 4 tests over 3 years. We had done a DNAm test in 2020 with BioViva but they stopped offering that test. That early test is what spurred me on with our senolytic program due to the positive results.

Note the bump up in Nov 22 test. That test was 4 months after we had Covid in August of 22. Covid is a pro-aging disease, causes senescence in the lungs, etc.

JOAN_Trudiagnostic_Summary_4-tests_21-to-24.pdf (671.1 KB)
STEVE_Trudiagnostic_Summary_4-tests_21-to-24.pdf (1.1 MB)

[Steve_Combi]

Pulse Wave Velocity - an indicator of arterial elasticity.

Three years of data.

We lose arterial elasticity as we age. This is a stronger indicator of CV health than blood pressure (which I check once a week) I check PWV daily as it’s part of my daily weighing schedule.

You can measure it at home
Steve_M_2024-01_PWV-pulse-wave-velocity_results.pdf (726.9 KB)

[Steve_Combi]

We live in Canada, which as many know, we have a universal health care system. Mostly good, occasionally not perfect.

One of the things I’d like to see change is the ability to get low cost testing of “other things” done. All standard testing is free but must be prescribed by a Dr. This does 2 things, 1) keeps the Dr’s in business (yes it is a business here in Canada) and 2) helps control the cost and stability of our universal health care system.

This is my most recent annual blood panel. This is the best one I’ve had in over 15 years. While not perfect, I’m pretty happy that it’s finally moving in the right direction.

Steve_annual_bloodwork_01-2024.pdf (139.9 KB)

[Steve_Combi]

tVNS = transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation.

This is one of those things that can be either hard or easy to do. I prefer to press the easy button and wallow in my laziness

An Introduction to your Vagus Nerve - Diabetes, Digestion, Depression, Pain, High Blood Pressure, Stress, Low Sex Drive, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Fatigue…. Anyone experience any of these?

Do you have issues with any of the above? Have you tried all the “conventional” therapies and treatments? If you have and you are not happy with your progress, you may consider looking into stimulating your vagus nerve.

tVNS_Combilytics_simplified.pdf (4.6 MB)

[Steve_Combi]

Like most of the members here, Joan and I have been working on our health span and life span. As part of that we have both had 4 Dunedin Pace tests done as part of the complete www.trudiagnostic.com DNA methylation comprehensive test.

If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Joan is on the Leaderboard with a best Pace of 0.74 at position 16 for best Pace. Hundreds of bio-hackers have entered these Olympics and of those, Joan is in the top 20.

I’m rooting for her to get in the top 10 at her next test in September 2024.

Here is the site so you can check out who is ahead of her and who is behind. Many have spent 10’s of thousands, 1 has spent over $2M a year trying to slow, stop and even reverse aging.

https://www.rejuvenationolympics.com/dunedin-pace

[Beth]

Thx for sharing. I also see our @John_Hemming is #19
(I’m assuming it’s the same John!)

[Steve_Combi]

Most of the people ahead of Joan (age 67) are much younger. I wish they put the chronological age in there as well.

I know of a few of them, Simm Land, the top one is 28. Bryan Johnson (who spends $2M a year on his personal experiments and testing) is 46, Ben Greenfield is 47, Michael Lustgarten is around 53, etc.

[Steve_Combi]

Wait until you see her new SymphonyAGE results, they are startlingly good.

[Alex]

For vagus nerve stimulation, what device do you use?

[Steve_Combi]

The details are in the PDF.

I use a basic TENS unit and an ear clip, you can get both on Amazon for less at $100

I’ve tried several commercial units but so far none have worked as well nor do they provide the flexibility in settings that this unit/method does. I’ve been sorely disappointed in the commercial units.

The key is understanding the 5 parameters;

• Mode – constant or modulated
• Power – ma (milli-amps) or level of power, i.e. current
• Pulse width – in μs (micro-seconds)
• Frequency – in Hz (hertz or cycles per second)
• Time – how long to run the device.

All explained in the PDF

[Davin8r]

Hey Steve, have you ever tried the Nurosym? It’s the one Brian Johnson uses. I paid a small fortune for it and had it shipped from England. It seems to work, in the sense that I can feel the tingling and pulse in my ear tragus, but it doesn’t seem to do anything for my HRV. Am I supposed to see immediate increase in HRV during and after a session, or is it something that one done every day over a certain period, one sees gradual rise in HRV?

Oopps never mind! I read the PDF file. Wish I’d actually read more about this before now because I clearly gave up on this too soon. I’ll start doing my 20 minutes every night and report back!

[Steve_Combi]

I’ve tried several of the commercial vagus nerve stims and none perform any better that the DIY version and some I tried had no effect on my HRV at all.

For me the key is having control. Having control over the 5 parameters that make it work as opposed to some “program” with a bunch of pre-sets.

Having contrl allows me to experiment with timing, pulse width, etc as new research comes out I can try to duplicate the findings. 100hz was found to reduce BP, so I tried that and it did for me. Not a lot but over a 6 week period it was a consistently measurable improvement.

[Steve_Combi]

One of the great things about being a Trudiagnostic customer is that as they add new algo’s to their platform, you learn something new about your epigenetics.

This new one is the Mitotic Clock.

A study by Andrew Teschendorff, PhD found that inflammatory conditions also increased mitotic rates in tissue (Teschendorff 2020). Increased mitotic rates measured with this algorithm could also indicate stem cell depletion.

Attached is my Mitotic Clock report and it’s most excellent

Steve-M_mitotic_clock.pdf (560.2 KB)

[Steve_Combi]

Here is another new report on… # Inflammation

Another new algo applied to my DNA data. CRP derived from DNAm may be a better measurement than hsCRP… This report explores the impacts of inflammation on biological age and accelerated biological aging by examining associated methylation patterns at various locations of your DNA.

My DNAm CRP is high and I have an idea why. It rose rapidly due to a covid infection Aug 2022 and one other thing I’ve been fighting.

My DNAm IL-6 is reasonably low.
Steve-M_Inflamation_.pdf (2.4 MB)

[John_Hemming]

A problem I have with TruD’s approach is that they replace biomarkers which have a real meaning with approximations from methylation data. As far as I personally am concerned this is a total waste of time.

In the end I am concerned about how my body functions. That can be measured accurately with biomarkers.

[amuser]

Trud should come out with a methylated height marker.

‘Well, my height is 5’ 9", but my DNAmHeight is 37 feet.’ And some people would have a negative height.

[amuser]

@Steve_Combi

My DNAm CRP is high and I have an idea why. It rose rapidly due to a covid infection Aug 2022 and one other thing I’ve been fighting.

But the following seems to imply that DNAmCRP isn’t affected by short term infections:

[Steve_Combi]

If only Covid was a short term infection… and my other issue has been 2 years. It’s not a “serious” thing but it is proving to be difficult to clear completely.

[adssx]

Thanks for this detailed document @Steve_Combi.

I have the NuroSym, but I haven’t used it much (shame on me: I’ve never measured my HRV… Just ordered the Polar H10). Do you have any thoughts on this device by any chance? (I had a regular TENS before, but it was recalled by the manufacturer due to a problem, so I chose to pay the high price for NuroSym…)

You’re doing 20 min/day in the evening. How long did it take to see improvements in HRV? About 2–3 months according to the chart page 16?

Did you see any positive or negative impacts of some drugs you tried? Semaglutide? Beta-blockers? etc.