"Your DNA doesn’t tell you how old your body really is — but your blood might.
In this video, I reveal the one test that may be the most accurate biological age marker ever discovered: NT-proBNP — a molecule that quietly tracks how fast your body is aging, cell by cell.
I’ll walk you through the science, the studies, and even how to calculate your own NT-proBNP biological age using my lab results. The formula is explained in simple terms.
No hype, no theories — just real data.
00:00 - Intro
00:49 - What NT-proBNP Really Is and Why It Matters
01:32 - Where Does NT-proBNP Come From?
03:35 - What Are Normal NT-proBNP Levels For Age And Gender
04:13 - From Heart Marker to Biological Age Marker
07:05 - How Scientists Created the “proBNP-Age” Test
11:30 - How to Use The Formula To Find Your Biological Age
12:21 - I Show You LIVE How I Figure Out My Biological Age Using This Formula
14:46 - The 6 Rules of a True Biological Age Biomarker
20:57 - How They Tested It — The U.S. NHANES Study
21:56 - The Bologna PBAR Trial (2025): The Supplement Test
23:45 - The Japanese Centenarian Study (2025): The 105-Year-Old Proof
25:19 - Closing Words"
I’ve never heard of this, so wanted to do a little research. Here is what CGPT5 says:
Prompt:
Provide the scientific and clinical evidence that NT-proBNP is a molecule that tracks how fast your body is aging
CGPT5 Response:
Short answer: there’s some evidence that NT-proBNP correlates with “how old your body acts,” but calling it a rate-of-aging tracker is a stretch. It’s a strong risk and decline signal (cardiac wall stress → higher levels with age, frailty, and mortality), and one group has even proposed an NT-proBNP-based “biological age.” What’s missing is gold-standard validation that changes in NT-proBNP over time equal changes in an individual’s aging rate across organ systems.
Here’s the evidence, by bucket:
1) Cross-sectional: rises with age even in “healthy” people
NT-proBNP climbs steeply with age; large cohorts show many otherwise‐healthy adults over ~70 exceed the common “rule-out HF” threshold (125 pg/mL), purely because of age and lower kidney function prevalence with aging.
Multiple population studies find stepwise increases across decades in asymptomatic community samples.
2) Prospective risk: powerful predictor of mortality and CVD in the general population
In US-representative and European cohorts, NT-proBNP is an independent predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality years in advance; risk rises across the distribution.
Meta-analytic and large cohort work shows the association holds across glycemic states (normoglycemia → diabetes).
3) Frailty / functional aging signals
Higher NT-proBNP associates with frailty phenotypes (weaker grip, slower gait) and lower “intrinsic capacity” (WHO construct of functional aging) in older adults.
In very old adults, higher levels predict faster subsequent cognitive and functional decline, not just cardiac events.
4) “Biological age” proposals using NT-proBNP
A geroscience group proposed “proBNPage,” a biological-age estimator centered on NT-proBNP; in their data it out-performed several standard labs for mortality prediction. This is promising but comes from a single research program and isn’t yet a field standard.
Relatedly, proteomic/epigenetic work shows DNAm “EpiScores” can predict levels of proteins (including NT-proBNP in newer panels) and link to lifespan/healthspan risk—supporting the idea that natriuretic signaling sits on aging-relevant pathways, though this is still indirect.
5) Longitudinal change (closest to “pace”)
Repeated measures matter: rising NT-proBNP over time predicts worse survival and new-onset heart failure, even after adjusting for classic risks—i.e., trajectories carry prognostic information. That’s “rate-of-deterioration,” but primarily cardio-renal, not whole-body aging per se.
Bottom line for “does it track how fast you’re aging?”
Yes, as a systemic risk and decline biomarker: it increases with age, correlates with frailty/functional loss, and strongly predicts mortality—features you want in an aging biomarker.
No, not proven as a global pace-of-aging meter: it mainly reflects cardiac wall stress (plus kidney function and volume status). It’s not part of widely validated multi-system aging clocks (e.g., PhenoAge/GrimAge) and hasn’t shown that interventions which slow aging consistently lower NT-proBNP in healthy people. (The strongest interventional data are in disease states.)
How to use it (practically)
If you’re tracking biological aging, NT-proBNP is useful context—especially trends—but you’d pair it with multi-system measures (e.g., a clinical “phenotypic age,” DNAm clocks, VO₂max, grip strength, inflammation panels). Treat unexpected elevations or upward drift as a red flag for cardio-renal stress first; interpret through the lens of age, sex, BMI, eGFR, atrial rhythm, and medications.
NT-proBNP is an abbreviation for N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide, a protein that is released by the heart when its walls are stretched, often due to fluid overload or pressure. It is used as a diagnostic aid for heart failure, as it can help determine the likelihood of the condition and stratify a patient’s risk for future cardiac events. Because it is more stable in the blood than active BNP, NT-proBNP is a convenient and reliable biomarker for heart conditions.
NT-proBNP is a good marker to measure for longevity, but it’s not exactly a biological age marker or a good indicator of aging of the body as a whole. It’s very specific to the heart so it’s a good marker of heart damage and heart health, but it basically only correlates with aging of the body as a whole because heart health declines with aging and heart damage increases with aging. A good example of this is that a 20 year old person with a heart problem can have very high NT-proBNP levels, similar to that of an old person, yet basically all aspects of his body will be very young except for the heart.
This is what Tony (the author) says in the comment section, under the video:
"I’ve been getting a lot of comments saying that NT-proBNP can be lowered or that certain studies show it going down. Let me explain this one more time. I already said it in the video, and I will repeat it here. If your heart is not under stress and you are healthy, whatever NT-proBNP number you have is your number. You cannot lower it. There is nothing to lower. The heart only releases NT-proBNP when it is under pressure. If your heart is not under pressure, that value will not drop, no matter what exercise you do or what diet you follow.
You can only lower NT-proBNP if it is high because of a medical problem. If you have heart failure, a heart attack, uncontrolled blood pressure, or another condition that is creating wall stress, then treating the condition can bring it down.
But if you are healthy, you cannot push it lower. And here is the part nobody likes to hear. Even though you can’t lower it when you are healthy, it will still rise as you age, even if you stay healthy. That is exactly why this biomarker works. It shows biological stress and biological age that you cannot “hack."
