Do you use biological age tests to quantify your fitness goals? I updated this piece with the latest products (there are a ton) and found a few discount codes too.

Update 10/2/2023: This post has been updated since we originally published it. I evaluated additional top biological age tests for 2024, removed companies that are no longer offering tests, and updated the post to reflect the most recent pricing. The post has been cleaned up and links were made current.

According to TikTok, I’m either 46-years-old, 37-years-old, or 29-years-old. As a 34-year-old woman, that’s, ahem, less than ideal.

TikTok offers a filter that guesses how old the user is based on their uploaded face. Pulling my long hair up into a ponytail ages me by over a decade, and standing in natural lighting makes me appear younger than I actually am.

With all that said, it’s natural for humans to crave and eat limited amounts of sugar. After going through all the research, here’s what I am doing for myself.

For example, foods high in fructose stimulate ghrelin while suppressing leptin—hormones responsible for hunger and satiety. Sugar can promote chronic hyperglycemia, which can both lead to weight gain and is another risk for diabetes. And sugary drinks, especially, are tied directly to obesity.

Sugar and aging: a bad combination (so what should we do?)

People looking to stay young for a long time should limit their sugar consumption. While how added sugar works in the body isn’t simple or predictable, there are literally thousands of studies tying added sugar to diseases of aging.

Obstructive sleep apnea is widely “underrecognized and underdiagnosed.” But individuals with moderate to severe sleep apnea have a notable elevated risk of mortality from cancer and stroke compared to individuals without. People with obstructive sleep apnea and parasomnia have higher risks of breast cancer. The same study finds that parasomnia also increases the risk of oral cancer.

Update 8/23/2021: This post has been updated since we originally published it in October 2020. I evaluated additional top sleep trackers and apps for 2,022 added Biostrap, updated the post to reflect most recent pricing, and added additional commentary on my reviews. The post has been cleaned up and links were made current.

I didn’t used to have a harmonious relationship with sleep. In fact, sleep used to be a source of anxiety for me. I have parasomnia, an amalgam of disorders that, occasionally, give me hypnopompic hallucinations Severe hallucinations when waking up from a deep sleep. 0 night terrors Nightmares that lead the dreamer to wake up screaming and thrashing without recollection of the dream itself 0 and, most dangerously, somnambulism The fancy word for ‘sleepwalking.’ 0 which has led me to drive while sleeping and scare the living piss out of my poor husband after we watched Paranormal Activity together (it didn’t help that I was mutely standing over him at 4:15 AM with my eyes wide open).

So it should come as no surprise that I’ve built quite the relationship with my own sleep metrics and have more than a layman’s knowledge of sleep science. Which brings me to this article.

Alpha-ketoglutarate is a good example of a much more science-based substance to impact aging. But only using AKG is not enough to significantly slow down the aging process. There are many reasons why we age, and AKG can also address only a few of them, in a very specific way.

Note: Since I’m leaving on vacation tomorrow (Yellowstone baby!), we’ve got a special guest post for you this week from Dr. Kris Verburgh and the fine folks at Novos Labs; a longevity supplement startup targeting multiple aging hallmarks with different life-extending compounds. They’ve been featured on Longevity. Technology and also have a fantastic blog we’ll link to below that’s worth checking out. Since our next content block will be all about different anti-aging supplements and the science behind them, we thought this overview of Alpha-Ketoglutaric Acid (AKG) for longevity would serve as a nice teaser for when we finish up diet and nutrition in October and switch over. So without further ado, take it away, Kris!

In the last few years, we have seen the rise of more science-based supplements to slow down aging.

Various companies have emerged that want to use a more scientific approach to develop anti-aging supplements. This is very good, because prior to this new wave, most “anti-aging” supplements had very little or no science behind them.

Caffeinated coffee might be protective to overall health, but so is decaf. For example, a 2,019 systematic review published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics aiming to “investigate the association of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee consumption and all-cause mortality” found “similar inverse associations [between] caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee [and all-cause mortality.]”

But is coffee healthy? And do coffee drinkers live longer than non-coffee drinkers?

At the turn of the 20th century, it was considered common knowledge that coffee was unhealthy—there were advertising claims that coffee drinking caused blindness and that “you can recover from any ordinary disease by discontinuing coffee.” And while that may obviously be untrue, there are continuing fears about whether coffee is actually healthy or not. Google receives 4,400 queries a month about” why coffee is bad for you” (for context, “why coffee is good for you” gets only 1,300 queries a month).

So with human life extension in mind, I decided to dig into the research. Can coffee consumption actually help spanners extend their healthspan and lifespan? How much is the right dose? How much is too little?

I know that this is controversial in the longevity community, but there was overwhelming agreement among the dentists I talked with that mouthwash is excellent for preventing gingivitis (one study found that it was more effective than flossing) and reducing plaque.

Are you working to extend your healthspan and lifespan? Address the most common aging teeth problems with these dentist-approved tricks.

A serving of mushrooms is just 0.08 kg of CO₂ emissions—only lentils have a lower per serving CO₂ emission level.

One common question J.P. and I get over and over again is about the problem of overpopulation—if human life extension is a humanitarian goal worth pursuing, won’t there be an inevitable environmental crisis? One worse than what we’re already facing?

When we covered the ethics of life extension we partially answered this question based on what we know about population and consumption trends now (tl;dr: we’re more likely to face a crisis of under population than overpopulation). That said, it’s practically impossible to be able to fully forecast environmental trends 50200, and further years into the future. We noted, “Spanners actually need to address it because we will have to continue living through the consequences of climate change if we don’t.”

In other words, if you’re interested in indefinitely extending your own life, sustainable eating should be a priority today because you’ll most likely be alive in the trash-filled, resource-scarce world of tomorrow.

Short of ceasing your grilling activity, there’s no way to completely avoid AGEs, PAH, and HCA when enjoying a summer barbecue. That said, there’s plenty you can do to reduce your carcinogen risk while enjoying smokey flavors over the summer.

Affiliate Disclaimer: Longevity Advice is reader-supported. When you buy something using links on our site, we may earn a few bucks.

Hickory and oak wood and charcoal are the scents of summer. I associate that campfire smell with fireworks, screaming with neighborhood kids while jumping through a lawn sprinkler, and Dad at the grill with a Blue Moon in hand. Barbeque is a wonderful pastime. So help me, nothing will pry it out of my red-blooded American hands, especially not on the Fourth of July.

And that’s a bit of a problem, as I’m also pursuing human life extension. I’m not talking about the potential fire hazard that grilling is (or the associated $37 million of property damage they cause every year). The trouble is carcinogens. There are a lot of well-established barbecue health risks.

The World Health Organization classifies processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen. Processed meat includes ham, sausage, bacon, pepperoni; they’re meats that have been preserved with salt or smoke, meat that has been cured, and meat treated with chemical preserves. Other Group 1 carcinogens include formaldehyde, tobacco, and UV radiation. Group 1 carcinogens have ‘enough evidence to conclude that it can cause cancer in humans.’

There is no question whether or not our current meat production complex is inhumane, unsanitary, or bad for the environment. Almost all chickens (99.9%), turkeys (99.8%), and most cows (70.4%) eaten in the United States are raised on factory farms. There are horrific consequences to this practice.

For example, the EPA estimates agriculture is the biggest contaminator of rivers and streams, to the point where feedlots, crop production, and manure runoff have led almost half (46%) of the U.S.’s rivers to be “in poor biological condition.”

Scientific American also explains, “TDM-approved feed containing antibiotics [are] a necessity if [factory farm animals] were to stay healthy in their crowded, manure-gilded home. Antibiotics also help farm animals grow faster on less food, so their use has long been a staple of industrial farming.” Many scientists worry that antibiotics used at such a scale on farms create unstoppable, drug-resistant bacteria that can transfer to humans; think inconveniences like nose infections or UTIs turned deadly because of the lack of antibiotics available to treat them.

I imagine it would pool into two groups: one made up of ivory tower PhDs quibbling over their latest studies, and one made up of conspiracists who are a little too quick to conflate science with magic.

Affiliate Disclaimer: Longevity Advice is reader-supported. When you buy something using links on our site, we may earn a few bucks.

Update 6/7/2021: This post has been updated since we originally published it in August 2020. Several new longevity life extension blogs have been added and one that is no longer active has been removed.

What would the longevity community look like without life extension blogs?