Bryan Johnson has a high SHBG and seems quite happy with it.
Alex - see also chain above.
Anyone else have thoughts?
https://twitter.com/bryan_johnson/status/1732484916619997503?s=46&t=zJMJ1xVdRJYEDYz-DHipTw
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What has this got to do with iron?
I think it started with the above, but then there were something like 35 entries above about SHBG on this thread (in a rich way):
(After skimming above entries, if you can/hadn’t before), do you have any thoughts on optimal SHBG levels?
I have quite a high SHBG level and I think that is probably a good thing. Ferritin is interesting and I have had a gradual reduction in ferritin. I am also not that sure about this, but I think a gradual reduction in ferritin is a good thing.
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According to that plot from that recent paper you want more iron especially after 60 but ferritin seems somewhat neutral.
Thanks for you answer John. Can you speak to this a bit more? Mine is similarly high to Bryan Johnson’s (almost identical, and I’m almost his age), which both are above the “normal range”, but he seems happy with his level and I wonder if it might be a phenotype of fasting / CR…
Sorry but i dont know enough about this to say more.
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For reduction, the data seems most solid for tea and coffee to block absorption (probably via tannins). Curcumin is another option, but the data seems less solid and there are other hassles with that.
Blood donation is another option, but there may be theoretical side effects to chronically increasing the rate of hematopoiesis re: CHIP, blood cancers… there’s some weak/conflicting signal there.
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What’s a good source for testosterone percentiles by age?
Don’t know, but bet you can find if you search relatively easily
Yes, well, many can be found. That’s the problem. 
I’d be a little cautious about chasing percentiles in terms of testosterone. Levels are highly variable between individuals and if you are in the normal range it is probably the right level for your body. Losing weight (fat mass) can increase testosterone but assuming you are a healthy body weight and eating a good diet your testosterone level is probably right (if in normal range).
As you can see there is a remarkable stability in testosterone levels after age 40 (on average). If you have a large decrease after that I would take it as a sign that some issue needs to be addressed.
Yeah, I think that’s the right approach. Would want to see pretty significant symptoms to justify tinkering with the endocrine system.
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Around 30 years ago, I read a book called Iron And Your Heart. It was about the harmful effects of excess iron. Even now, decades later, the evidence is largely ignored. I was friendly with the late Bill Sardi. He was bit of an eccentric genius who was a proponent of using IP6 to chelate iron. Bill wrote a book called The Iron Time Bomb. I even had to explain to my cardiologist why I wanted to track my iron level. Btw, Medicare wont cover routine iron testing which I find incredible.
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The role of iron in aging is really exciting and you’re absolutely right barely talked about. Interestingly many of the anti aging drugs which have shown success in lab animals have been iron chelators which raises the interesting question (heavy speculation): how much of the longevity benefits have just been due to lowering iron and does the ITP use a less iron fortified food source and that’s partly why a lot of the initial findings weren’t corroborated? Certainly generic mouse food you buy in the pet store has substantially more iron (and in a more absorbable form) than a wild mouse would get in its diet.
eg. metformin, berberine, quercetin etc, all iron chelators
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I tested my iron levels:
Ferritin 66 ug/L
Iron 19 µmol/L
This is good right?
Desired levels according to Bryan Johnson is 30-60 ug/L.
I am happy that I didn’t take any iron supplements then.
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Looking at my ferritin going back a little over 10 years, lowest was 224, highest was 382 same units as yours. I hope the chelation takes enough of that out to make a difference.
My Iron is usually between 13 and 16.
I wish I had a good concise guide on the U shaped curve for this one.
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Hi Everyone,
I’m interested in this discussion about iron here, as I have read quite a bit about it. Morley Robbins, who wrote “Cure Your Fatigue”, has been looking into iron, copper, magnesium, boron, and the problem with non-whole food vitamins for years and has compiled his own theories about it. I have gone back and read much of the research he references, so it makes sense to me that our ferritin levels are too high and that stored iron is the major cause of cancer and other chronic disease conditions - including aging. I won’t go into details here, because it is well laid out in his book - or on his website, The Root Cause Protocol, but below is the main idea (This is greatly simplified and solely from memory, so I may get some of the specifics wrong. But I am sure that I am correctly presenting the conclusions. I highly recommend reading up on this yourselves):
Ascorbic acid, that we know as vitamin C, has an empty receptor that attracts copper, which causes much of our copper to be bound up in these ascorbic acid molecules. Whole food vitamin C has copper molecules attached to it, so not only contributes copper molecules to the body, but also doesn’t deplete the existing ones. Copper is responsible for the making of the substances that facilitate the exchange of iron in and out of our tissues and blood. Because there isn’t enough of this exchange facilitating substance in our system, we have too much iron in our tissues - this iron doesn’t show up in our blood tests because the iron is trapped in our tissues. The excess, trapped iron in our tissues oxidizes, creating that most feared of substances, the free radical - basically rust - that is considered a toxin by our bodies, causes inflammation, and starts the whole cycle of chronic disease and aging.
If you look into iron and cancer, you will find that cancer cells are loaded with iron and are attracted to it. There are some treatments that even use iron as an attractant to deliver cancer cell destroying substances to cancer cells (the iron is like a trojan horse) - and other treatments that use cancer cells’ attraction to iron to so increase the iron concentration in the cancer cell that even it, as an iron loving cell, is destroyed by the rust toxicity (See artemisinin).
Again, this is not my work or recommendation - just offering information about what info I have found. The book and the website have a lot more info about whole food vitamins along with the imbalances caused by taking synthetic ones (especially, and this one is hard to wrap your head around if you’ve been following along with the common knowledge - not ever taking synthetic vitamin D), about mineral imbalances, especially magnesium and our depleted boron, and more. It is quite a novel set of ideas compared to the status quo and very thought provoking. I, too, gave blood until I got my ferritin levels down, am highly conscious of magnesium levels, and am a stickler for whole food vitamins.
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Thanks for this entry.
Can you talk more to above, are you saying it’s bad or good to supplement with
- Vit D
- Magnesium
- Boron
?