What's Holding Back the Field of Aging
The Aging Measurement Problem
Younger Phenotype is the first company that has practical experience in managing aging in the individual. This is in contrast to others in the anti-aging industry, who can only validate their approaches by means of statistics; in other words, they are concerned with groups, not individuals.
We have been able to achieve remarkable reduction in biological age in a number of early adopters. This was accomplished via the measurement and optimization of biological function through individualized lifestyle adjustment. These aging reversals have been documented as changes in certain clinical biomarkers of aging, such as systolic blood pressure, blood glucose, body mass index (BMI) and improved physical performance. The changes were fast (within months) and readily measurable.
In our further efforts to manage aging in these individuals, we employed our proprietary health guiding principles, which go way beyond simply “exercise more” and “eat more fruits and vegetables.” However, over longer time scales (years), we have found it very difficult to demonstrate that the pace of aging has further slowed in response to our interventions. We realized that we simply did not have the technology to track any changes associated with either age or our interventions over time scales of less than six years.
Upon a thorough review of the current state of the art in aging measurements, we realized that the entire scientific community is suffering from the same problem: there are no means to precisely measure aging in the individual on a reasonable time scale, which we consider to be two years or less. The shortest time scale that can currently be achieved is six years.
Because of the inadequacy of aging measurement, the development of anti-aging drugs is severely hampered. It is extremely difficult, without adequate measurement, to prove to the FDA the efficacy of an anti-aging drug.
Ultimately, the aging measurement problem undermines the practical utility of future anti-aging drugs. Because of the lack of precise measurement, there will always be doubt in the mind of an educated user about whether the drug, even if approved by the FDA, will actually work for him or her. What if, by a stroke of bad luck, the use of promising drug, over a long period of time, actually accelerates aging in a subgroup of individuals, bringing premature disability and the onset of age-related diseases? Because the time scale of aging measurements is too long, it would be too late for these individuals before such unintended consequences were discovered.
Based upon our experience with measurements and our extensive analysis of the aging-measurement literature, we concluded that in order to manage aging in the individual, the measurement of aging must be brought to a level of rigor comparable to other technical fields.
Although it is certainly not a Manhattan Project-sized challenge, solving the problem of the measurement of aging will require a substantial effort. Towards this end, Younger Phenotype has developed an extremely detailed plan for tackling this problem, the resolution of which will have paradigm-shifting implications. Although this information is closely-held proprietary information, we are eager to share the details with appropriate parties under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
