62: Biological Age Test Review: Epigenetics Explained Simply | Hannah Went

62: Biological Age Test Review: Epigenetics Explained Simply | Hannah Went

Michael Kummer: I looked at my age report. I'm way older than I am so I can go back to drinking beer, um, and eating at McDonald's because evidently it ain't working. 

Hannah Went: The biological age we report out is capturing. everything that's happened across your entire lifetime. So 

Michael Kummer: going back to what you said before, you know, 20 percent of our, I guess, health outcome is based on genetics, what we inherited from parents and, you know, their parents maybe, but 80 percent is really our lifestyle.

Hannah Went: only five, six years ago when we, could really start to measure biological aging in an accurate, precise, sensitive way and understood it a little bit more. This clock right here is the best at predicting all cause mortality and morbidity. And what we see here on you, Michael, is you're just going to be a little older, like I mentioned, about 4.5 years older. 

Intro: Are you ready to revolutionize your health and reconnect to your primal self? Welcome to the Primal Shift Podcast.

Sponsorship: I'd like to thank Peluva for sponsoring this week's episode. Peluva is the brand behind my favorite zero drop minimalist shoes with the distinctive five toe design that allows for correct dynamic movement of the foot when walking or running.

The latter is impossible when toes are encased in a single box, even a white box. I love my Peluvas because they give me the most authentic barefoot style experience but with sufficient cushioning to use them all day, even on hard surfaces. Peluvas are also incredibly stylish and I really like how they look.

I've been using my peluvas during intense crossfit workouts, while walking their dog, and even during a recent 8 day trip to Disney World and they've been unbelievably comfortable. They feel like walking barefoot on a putting grain. Now you can try a pair of Peluva's with no risk by visiting peluva. com, that's P E L U V A dot com.

Make sure to use code KUMMER for 15 percent off your first pair. And now back to the episode.

Michael Kummer: All right, Hanna, thanks so much for joining me. Um, this is a very important day in my life. I think a major milestone because I've realized that everything that I've been doing over the past couple of years in terms of trying to, you know, eat better, sleep better, sleep better.

exercise more, do all the things right to slow down my aging. None of it has been working. I looked at my age report. I'm way older than I am, so I can go back to drinking beer, um, and eating at McDonald's because evidently it ain't working. 

Hannah Went: Well, let's dive into it, Michael. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah, let me give, you know, what's your take on my report?

I'm older than I should be. 

Hannah Went: Well, I think this is a very common misconception of biological aging, right? Everyone wants to test their biological age and if they don't get an age that's younger or 10 or 20 years younger, it's what's going on? What am I doing wrong? And I think we need to step back and think about this more in terms of the big picture and ask ourselves, What does this metric actually mean?

Why am I testing this metric? And to answer that question, this is a biological age outcome that is capturing how you are aging historically, right? It's not just a moment in time. 

Michael Kummer: The 

Hannah Went: biological age we report out is capturing Everything that's happened across your entire lifetime. So think back to when you didn't have everything in your control.

Michael Kummer: When I was actually drinking beer every day. 

Hannah Went: When you're actually drinking beer every day. So, you know, I think, I think that's what I said in the beginning. A really big misconception about this test is I'm doing everything right, right now. Why am I older? And, We have done, I think, a pretty good job here at my company, True Diagnostic, on educating what that really means.

You know, this is capturing everything that's happened through childhood, any traumatic events or stressors, your entire environment growing up, whether it be different socioeconomic status, whether it be different education levels, any type of flu, viral infection, disease diagnosis, surgeries, whether they be any of those things.

Unelected, elected, I can go on and on, right? Or any disease diagnosis as well. Those are going to cause fluctuations throughout our pace of aging. in our lifetime. And that's really where you end up with this biological ages. How have you been aging across your entire lifetime? And of course, different events are going to cause that to go up and go down.

All right. 

Michael Kummer: So, and we're going to take a very close look and we're going to share it on the screen as well. Um, my specific report and kind of dissect it a little bit and see, you know, what's good, what's not so good and what can I do to, you know, maybe improve even more. But before we do that, maybe just for the sake of, you know, everyone's understanding, you What is epigenetics?

What is epigenetic testing? Um, what does it tell us and what does it mean? Can you maybe? Yes. 

Hannah Went: Epigenetics, what does it mean? Epi is a Greek prefix. It actually means above. So we're looking above or on top of the DNA. It's really DNA regulation, right? A lot of people are familiar with genomics. or seem to be.

So I like to compare it to genetics and genetics is really your infrastructure, your hardware of the body. It's the nature you get from your parents, 50 percent from parent one, 50 percent from parent two, but your epigenetics is going to be the nurture. It's how you are interacting with your beh, uh, behavior and the environment.

And it's really, Considered to be about 80 percent of all of your health outcomes where you're in control now and your genomics or your genetics is only going to be about 20 percent of your entire health outcomes. So it's really powerful that we're learning. We are in the driver's seat of our own health, right?

We're no longer. just a victim to the predispositions that our family have passed on to us, whether it be metabolic disease, type 2 diabetes, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so it's, it's really exciting that we're able to take this gene expression data and report it out to reflect our number one risk factor of all cause mortality morbidity, which is aging.

Michael Kummer: Okay. And so gene expression means the activation, whether or not the gene is actually doing something in a particular moment. 

Hannah Went: Exactly. Yes. And we have about 50 million of those processes going on in the body at any given moment. So there's a specific epigenetic modification that we measure here at True Diagnostic, my company, and that's going to be what's called DNA methylation.

That is quite literally explaining those on and off switches. So if something's methylated, I think, you know, stop sign. It's not going through the entire process. The central dogma, we're going to end up with a phenotypic outwards expression. You're just not expressing or coding for that gene. But if that methylation is not present or the position is unmethylated, green light, your gene expression is turned on and we're going through the central dogma.

You're going to have expression levels there. So the goal really isn't We want to turn all genes on, right? We want to turn all genes off. There's some good genes and there's some really bad genes. And an example I like to give people is, hey, you want your oncogenes or your cancer genes methylated and turned off, but you want your tumor suppressor genes unmethylated, expressed and turned on to suppress those tumors.

So it's really a healthy balance. And I think at the end of the day, that's what it all comes down to is how can we balance our lifestyle, you know, our, our social interactions, our health and wellbeing. throughout our entire course of life to have the best, not only lifespan, but health span to those healthy years at the end of our life.

Michael Kummer: Right. And so going back to what you said before, you know, 20 percent of our, I guess, health outcome is based on genetics, what we inherited from parents and, you know, their parents maybe, but 80 percent is really our lifestyle. And so, you know, there is this saying that, you know, your genetics load the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger.

And I guess, you know, that reflects what you said. Uh, very well. You know, it's, it's not just, Oh, you know, I have bad genes. No, you have a poor lifestyle, you know, exactly. 

Hannah Went: Most of the 

Michael Kummer: issues that you're facing. And so, all right. Um, so in terms of aging process, then how does that whole, you know, gene methylation and, and epigenetics influence aging and, and how can we even, how can you even tell how old someone is biologically?

Yeah, absolutely. by looking at genetic expression. 

Hannah Went: Yeah, that's a great question. It goes back to the history of this field, which actually came out after the first iPhone. So it's very, very new. I want people to understand that that we're still in early days. It's really cutting edge science and what makes it so exciting.

So about 10 years ago, only a decade ago, a professor at UCLA by the name of Dr. Steve Horvath presented at a conference that by looking at these on and off switches. We can predict how old we are, like the, our correlation value. So how correlated is, you know, these methylation markers to aging was above, you know, 0.

99, which is considered excellent. And I wasn't at that meeting. I know many people who were, and they just go. You know, the room was stunned. They were dumbfounded. You just don't find correlations like that in science. It never happens. So we knew that, Dr. C. Porvath, I would say, knew at the time that that work was very, very special.

It wasn't really until 2018, 2019, you know, only five, six years ago when we could really start to measure biological aging. in an accurate, precise, sensitive way and understood it a little bit more because we're able to better power these algorithms. And what, what we're doing is we're using what we call these epigenetic clocks or biological age clocks.

And, um, We don't really, I never really hear anyone define, well, what's a clock, right? I mean, it makes sense with, with aging, right, as, as time goes on, but that just means we're taking a specific number of these gene expression markers and looking at them in a way which is reflective or predictive of outcomes.

So there's all these different biological age clocks or epigenetic clocks. none of them are the same. They were all trained on specific data for a specific purpose and a specific outcome and hopefully validated depending on the study as well. So we know aging super complicated, right? It's multifactorial.

We keep getting these new hallmarks of aging re republished or new ideas of why or how we're aging and epigenetic regulation is a hallmark of aging, but it looks really, really promising. And I know I'm biased, probably the best one out there right now because it is. by far the most predictive of outcomes.

And if we're measuring something, we need to know what it's going to lead to. So we can actually decrease that risk and in effect change by using interventions in between. 

Michael Kummer: So you mentioned correlation a lot, you know, and I'm not a scientist, but I know that a lot of scientific evidence out there, um, is especially in the nutrition field, you know, that's kind of where my interests.

lie a lot. Um, it's observational, right? So you observe something and then you, you know, establish a correlation, like, you know, owning a TV, you know, increases your risk of heart disease. Well, but it's not the TV causing the heart attack, right? It's probably confounding factors that are, you know, associated with owning a TV maybe.

Um, how much of that plays into those epigenetic clocks, meaning that, uh, what is the baseline and, Because at the end of the day, there is no one who is perfectly healthy, right? Who we can say, okay, this is our, you know, patient X. We know if this guy is now 40 years old and the epigenetic clock says he's 40, then we have a good baseline.

Um, how does that work? 

Hannah Went: Yeah. I mean, you, you made a good point there, right? You're talking about correlation versus causation. None of this I would say is purely causation at this point. I think epigenetics is getting the closest to actually saying. This is looking like, you know, causation in terms of aging.

So there are actually some really cool epigenetic biological age clocks that are, uh, causal and measuring kind of damage through aging as well that are getting closer and closer and chipping away at that. But again, this is going to be correlation. That's going to be a lot of, uh, epidemiological association studies, right?

Um, what we're able to do though is really, Zoom out and say, all right, what are we really good at measuring and predicting? That's what these epigenetic markers or where they really succeed and surpass any other type of biomarkers. So let me give you a couple examples. You took the test, Michael, right?

You, we sent you a kit. You pricked your finger. It was probably, I don't know, 10, 15 drops of blood on the blood spot card. You send it back, you get results in two weeks. Yeah. Two, three weeks. Well, what could we actually report out by looking at that raw data file? We look at about a million of those methylation markers.

We can tell you your smoking status. We can tell you your alcohol consumption. We can tell you where you live down to the zip code based on your environmental toxins. I'm not saying we report out on all of this, but that's the information we're getting. So we're seeing epigenetics become quite literally the fingerprint of your life.

I mean, maybe it's better than even your actual fingerprint because it's changing due to your specific environment. And it's very unique because it's truly N of one precision medicine at its finest where, you know, because a supplement or because something works for one person, it doesn't mean it's going to work for you.

We're very unique in our own biology. So the, the issue, or I would say the limitation, With this approach is really two things and I think things we can overcome which are the size of the data It's massive and we can still collect a lot more and then number two our imagination. This is just such a new field It's really hard to think about a new novel biomarker coming out in 2024, right?

We think we know everything already with our CBC panels our hormones as it relates to health So we're really starting to see a paradigm shift happen Mm 

Michael Kummer: hmm 

Hannah Went: which is uncomfortable. It's change. It's going to take some time, but I'm telling you it's happening. And I do see this being, you know, point of care, standard practice in even GP offices within the next decade or so.

And maybe even sooner, depending if there are specific disease predictors outside of just aging, I'm talking, you know, general, general health, you know, wellness to a sense. 

Michael Kummer: It all sounds incredibly interesting because I mean, I see it every day and not, you know, obviously I, again, I'm not a scientist, neither am I a doctor, but, you know, people have issues, you know, and someone says, Hey, but I've been doing this and it's, you know, issue is gone.

Someone else does the exact same thing doesn't work, you know, and, and I've already seen it. From a, you know, very, if you break it down to, you know, very simple things like, you know, how carb intake, you know, versus, you know, fat, are you more efficient at burning carbs versus fat, you know, and that also might depend on your genetics, but also, you know, everything that you have experienced, you know.

over the course of your lifetime, you know, all the toxins, maybe that you have in your body, you know, your environment, your stress levels, there are so many things that influence what might be the best diet, the best exercise regimen, the best, you know, whatever the case might be. Um, and I think your, the information that you collect and analyze and interpret can help, uh, doing that.

And I, I certainly hope that, you know, in the future, this is going to be used for prevention in the one hand and not just for coming up with, you know, fancier pharmaceuticals, you know, that completely ignore lifestyle changes and making lifestyle change because based on what you said before, 80 percent of our health outcome is based on lifestyle, right?

It's not the lack of pharmaceuticals that are, that we are missing. It's probably the wrong or poor lifestyle choices we're making that put us into certain, um, positions. Now, Are there any ethical considerations in terms of collecting that data, having that information and who has access to it, who doesn't, you know, what's your take on that?

Hannah Went: Absolutely. The, you know, another, these are really great questions. Like, well, you're, you're hitting all of them on, on the dot, so this would depend by company, right? You're gonna have to ask each company their, their policies first and foremost. So I can tell you what we do here at True Diagnostic and, and how we differ, and I think how we really excel in that area is first and foremost, we own our own lab.

I actually think we're the only epigenetic testing company that owns our own lab. We're located in Lexington, Kentucky. I'm in our cool podcast room. I see the lab right across from me, across the hallway. And the sample is only sent here and touched by our laboratory technician's hands. So, you know, if you're out, if you go through a company who's outsourcing to another lab, chances are there's some type of, you know, Data use agreement, data sharing agreement that you are clicking yes to and their terms of service and privacy policy without really knowing 

Michael Kummer: it.

Hannah Went: Right? Um, we are a CLIA certified lab. We're CAP certified. So those are just fancy ways of saying, Hey, we meet all the rules and regulations and check those boxes. We're also, you know, SOC 2 compliant, you secure Amazon web service for our cloud. Um, database as well. They're, you know, I would say definitely the best in the world.

One of the leaders in this space and in data storage. So we take data compliance security very, very seriously. Um, not to mention, you know, we're a privately owned company. Very small, intimate company as well. So we're, we're not selling or using that data in any way. 

Michael Kummer: Okay. All right. Uh, maybe with that out of the way, let's, let's dive into my report and, uh, and see what damage I've done, uh, let's, let's do it over the past, uh, 42 years or so.

And maybe then, um, because I, I took some of those tests, not exactly the same because I know that OMICM age test is new, relatively new, um, but I did two of those age tests in the past with you guys. And there was also, it seems like at least if nothing else, my biological age in comparison to my calendar age has gone down by a year.

So I don't know, maybe that's a positive thing or not. Oh, 

Hannah Went: awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Very positive, yeah. It seems like you, you've taken the test from like multiple, uh, sources, so I can definitely combine all of them so you can start to see the change of them as well. 

Michael Kummer: Cool. 

Hannah Went: Yeah, so here's the, the summary report, right?

We have, we have you here, Michael, and, um, we have your omic m age. So let me try and zoom out a little bit for you here. What are we seeing on this omic MH? I'm happy to hop right into it, Michael, and you can hop in with questions if you have any. 

Michael Kummer: Go ahead. Go ahead. 

Hannah Went: Awesome. So what is this omic MH? Well, this omic MH is named omic for the layers of the multiome in the body.

You know, we have our, our DNA, our genes, our epigenetics, we have our metabolomics that are going to feed into our proteins and then our phenotypic outwards expression level. So we want to combine omic data, different layers of our underlying biology to create the best biological clock ever created. And we did this with Harvard.

So this clock right here is the best at predicting all cause mortality and morbidity. And what we see here on you, Michael, is you're just going to be a little older. Like I mentioned, about 4. 15 years older. Um, so your biological age is going to be 46. 47 compared to this, you know, 42. 32. So you can think back, right?

You mentioned some beers were, were, were had as, as you were growing up, right? There, there's going to be different life events. So we're, we're grabbing an accumulation across your, your lifetime. This isn't something to be too worried about. I'll tell you why. Because when we actually compare you to the rest of our true diagnostic population, you're in the 52nd percentile.

So you're actually just a little bit above average. So most people are aging a little bit faster at your same chronological age. And this is important to talk about the population here because the true diagnostic population, is very, very healthy, right? Um, it is about 20, 000 people you're being compared to that are extremely optimized and looking to optimize, right?

They're, they're, you know, doing things that we're talking about on this podcast already and into their health and wellness. Now, what happens is because we see, because we have, um, that increase in biological age, We're going to have an increase, just a very small, ever so slightly increase in disease risk.

Right? Increased risk of death, cancer, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, COPD, and depression. Um, these, these are pretty small. They're not too worrisome by any means. We know if we're older, we're going to have that increased risk. If we're younger, we're going to have that, that decreased risk. Um, how do we change these?

Well, we changed them by actually decreasing our overall omic m age because this is a risk due to Biological age and aging faster and we can talk about different things. We actually want to target here as well You know, the main four things are going to be lifestyle related where we dig into sleep nutrition stress and physical exercise.

Those are usually the top four we really want to dive into and focus more on those lifestyle factors first before even moving into supplementation or medication or procedural based therapies. So these are relative risk, Michael, meaning it's your risk at this time, according to your aging. It's not an absolute risk saying, Hey, you're going to die.

right now or you're going to become diseased at this point. So it's, it's just talking about, Hey, this is your relative risk at this moment, according to your biological age. And again, any outcome you see on this report here is going to be from epigenetics, it is going to be all changeable too, which is something very positive.

Michael Kummer: Yep. 

Hannah Went: Any questions about that one? 

Michael Kummer: No, makes sense so far. 

Hannah Went: So the next outcome is going to be the pace of aging metric. You're familiar with this one, aren't you, Michael? Yes. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah. That was the first time I did. I'm like, okay, at least I'm aging slower than I should. So, 

Hannah Went: yes. So this is the one that's super, super positive.

This is, is, let, let me give a little bit of background on this one because it's really fun to talk about and it's, it's really impressive. When we compare this to the overall omic m age, this is more of a three to six month current pace of aging, right? So it's saying, all right, Michael, we know you have a little bit of historical aging.

You've been working on reducing that because it seems like your, your pace is below one. So for those of you who can't see the screen, this looks more like a speedometer. It's a value between 0. 6 and 1. 4 and it tells you how quickly you're aging biologically for every one chronological year. So the study took place in Dunedin, New Zealand.

That's why it's called that. Weird, funky name and they measured about 1, 100 New Zealanders across a 50 year longitudinal period and they're still testing them today to Make this algorithm better and better and continue to collect more data. So it's a really unique study They have about a 96 percent retention rate and continue to grow that over time.

So you come out at 0. 87 Michael. So you're aging 0. 87 biological years for every one chronological year. So this looks awesome. We at least want to be below one. I usually call like 0. 95 to 0. 99 the danger zone because you don't want to be teeter tottering over the one mark there because we know if you're above one, your risk of all cause mortality and morbidity increases by about 50 percent over the next seven years.

So you look really good here. Um, the goal is going to be usually around 0. 7, 0. 75. That way, if you think about it in quarters, people who keep that there and keep it steady, they're shaving off a biological age after three years. So, this looks really good on you. Um, it's really associated with, uh, lifespan, health span outcomes, things like grip strength, gait speed, overall cognitive function, brain health, even specific MRI imaging and, you know, volume of, of the brain.

So, it has a lot of great connections and correlations just to overall, uh, you know, functional movements and even facial aging as well. So we usually share this image you see here. So we have an image on the screen right now that shows people, a male and female, who are all the same age chronologically.

They're all 45 years old chronologically, but they look very, very different according to their aging. So the fastest aging cohort members look older compared to the average and compared to the slowest too. 

Michael Kummer: Right. Makes sense. 

Hannah Went: So that's a really good one. You know, people, um, you know, you being in this field, this is, this is a pretty common idea that really it's, um, known as phenotypic, uh, expression, phenotypic variation, right?

We're going to look different on the outside. And that's what this, this aging is really measuring is how do we, how do we look on the inside, right? What are we doing on a cellular level?

So that's the omic MH. That's the pace of aging. Those are definitely the, the most exciting as it relates to our overall aging outcomes and the ones that are most predictive of, of health. The number one therapy, um, Michael, you may have seen this study before for slowing down that Dunedin pace is going to be caloric restriction.

So just a 10 percent overall caloric restriction in healthy non obese adults over a two year period. That's the the calorie randomized control trial that came out about a year and a half ago, um, last year in, in, uh, uh, 2023 in January. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah. I hope people still take it seriously because based on that, uh, the news, uh, reports the other day, just skipping one meal increases your overall, uh, all cause mortality by 92 percent or something.

Did you see that? Absolutely. Yeah. Especially, you 

Hannah Went: know, everything, uh, coming, coming out regarding, you know, skipping breakfast and whatnot as well. I don't know. I think it depends, um, depends on, you know, You know, what you're doing really from a, yeah, intermittent fasting, you know, timing of eating. Um, your circadian rhythm set up.

So there are, you know, multitude of factors that, that plays a role in it. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah. All right. What else do we have in this? Uh, one thing that I, I'm, I'm very surprised or not as excited to hear your opinion on is the, the fitness aspect. 

Hannah Went: Oh yeah. Do you want me to hop to that one now? Let's, 

Michael Kummer: let's check that out.

Um, and I'm saying this in the context that I do CrossFit, um, 42 point something years old, as we know. Um, and I want to argue that I am fitter than any 20 year old that I compete against. Um, so seeing that my fitness age is over 50, I'm like, hmm, how is that possible? 

Hannah Went: Well, let's talk about it. 

Michael Kummer: Oh, 48, sorry.

48, not, 

Hannah Went: not, not quite over 50. Yeah, let's talk about it. So, um, Again, what is this? What goes into it? Right? How is it built? What is it really reporting out on? So this is where we get more into like the characteristic and trait based reports So this is should not be used as a primary outcome Like I've been harping on for the omic mh in the pace of aging.

This is an interesting algorithm That's combining aerobic and aerobic based fitness and your baseline omic mh, too So omic mh is included in this calculation So since you're already aging quicker from an omic MH standpoint, it didn't help you here either. Right? Um, so you're a little bit higher, even higher than your omic MH by about 6.

35 years. So what else makes up this algorithm? There's something else that's causing this to be a little bit older. And this is an algorithm we created, uh, that's based on the infrastructure built by Kristen McCreeby out of UCLA. She created this DNA methylation fit age algorithm. It's based on that same concept.

And, um, we call this one instead, you know, the omic M fit age. And what else is actually included in this is going to be four physical fitness functions. So you have your, your grip strength. We actually quantify your grip strength, your gait speed, your VO two max, and your FEV one. Now these are all functional markers that have been associated with aging.

How the heck are we measuring them just through your blood spot card? Well, we actually took in the creation of this algorithm, thousands and thousands of people's physical function outcomes alongside of their epigenetics and are able to create an algorithm that predicts these outcomes just using epigenetics.

So It's an algorithmic interpretation. It's another biological age clock. In particular, we call these EBPs or epigenetic biomarker proxies. Where again, epigenetics is the input and you have something else as the output. 

Michael Kummer: Would the gait speed influence like sprint performance? 

Hannah Went: Um, yes. Yeah, it's, you know, the, the technical term for gait speed is going to be, you know, your walking speed.

And this is going to be meters per second. So it's. You know, not necessarily sprint, more walking, right? Um, but it's a good question to clarify, 

Michael Kummer: I think. 

Hannah Went: So 

Michael Kummer: just asking, because I, I, at one point in my earlier years, I was the fifth fastest, 100 meter sprinter. So if this says I'm slower than FEMA is, I'm like, I don't know if that's right.

Hannah Went: You're like, wait a second. And it's, it's a good call out too, because these markers aren't perfect, right? They're a proxy. We can make them as. perfect as possible if we, if we had, you know, a lot more data and, and train this, you know, on and on and on. Um, so they're not going to be exact. They're going to be inferences or, or proxies, but they're going to be still pretty good biomarkers.

Um, so for you, you know, you're in the 50th percentile for grip strength and gait speed. Like this looks great. Um, this talks to me more about your CrossFit experience where, you know, we really want to maybe Focus on a little bit more as well is FEV1. So, these ones are the lower outcomes for you, which is probably bringing down that, that omic mfit age.

I, I just did a, a, another recording earlier with someone, a report review, and they had the same type of trend. And usually the, the response I get is, is really like, I don't want to focus on aerobic exercise, right? Um, so my advice here would be, we need to do more aerobic, right? Really long distance running, more cycling, swimming, biking, hiking.

Um, focus on exercises that are going to work on your oxygen uptake or your, um, force, force expiratory volume, which is the FEV1 or kind of the lung expansion. 

Michael Kummer: Gotcha. 

Hannah Went: So yeah, yeah. A lot of people follow the same trend. Um, you know, I'm, I lift weights myself. I, I like don't prefer to do cardio, you know, maybe I'll, I'll try and get my, my 10, steps a day.

And, um, if anything, I choose the stair stepper, you know, 10 minutes, 500 steps on the stair stepper. I'm good to go. 

Michael Kummer: Alright. 

Hannah Went: So that's the physical, physical fitness report. There's one outcome I want to talk about on here as well that I think can greatly help your aging. 

Michael Kummer: Okay. 

Hannah Went: So remember when, remember back to when you took this test, how you were feeling at that time.

I want to cover the CD4, CD8 T cell ratio. So in very simple terms, this is a ratio, um, healthcare providers use and look at to which is informative on the overall function of the immune system. It's just the best, best marker to look at. And why is it the best marker? Well, it's the best marker because it is very informative on disease states.

You can see some of the outcomes in the graph here on the right. Um, if this is low means you're immunosuppressed at the time you took this test. And we actually see yours being low, Michael. So you want this, cell type ratio to be between one and four, at least one, you're going to be at 0. 29. I 

Michael Kummer: think we had COVID again.

I mean, we didn't test obviously, but we were all had, you know, symptoms that are very, felt very familiar, um, to a couple of years ago. And so I suspect something was going on at the time, um, but I don't know exactly what it was. 

Hannah Went: Absolutely. So yeah, any type of suppression, viral load, et cetera, it's going to cause, yeah, you know, overall, um, dependencies on the immune system and you're fighting that if the infection or you're working against it.

So your immune system is going to be suppressed. What can we do for this? We need to load you up with some vitamin D, zinc, you know, um, there's some growth hormone secretagogues out there that can help with better, um, thymic rejuvenation as well, getting out in the sun more, um, and any type of natural overall, uh, immune response.

Boosting regimens could be super helpful. IVs, you know, vitamin C, glutathione, things like that. 

Michael Kummer: Right. Okay. Interesting. 

Hannah Went: Um. That should help. Like, obviously this will boost your immune system too, but that should help your overall aging, even your omic mH to a sense. And so obviously measure your D levels alongside of that.

We don't want those to be too high, um, but they need to be high enough. 

Michael Kummer: Right. Right. Um, and then all, you know, just seeing all of that, obviously, you know, it makes sense to perform that test. How often should you perform that test? Because you ideally, you want to see a trend, positive trend, right? This is a snapshot.

You want to have another snapshot and another snapshot, and then hopefully, you know, see a trend in the right direction. 

Hannah Went: Thank you for saying that. Um, because, because this is a very fun, sexy topic right now. Everyone wants to test their aging. They think it's really cool. And it is cool. Don't get me wrong.

Um, but they only do it once. And it's like, Hey, if you're testing your blood base values, right? Your CBC panel, your triglycerides, your lipids, et cetera. Um, your, your, you know, insulin levels. If you are testing your hormone levels, right. I get that done every six months. 

Michael Kummer: I 

Hannah Went: do this. I do my own testing right alongside it to actually see that trend.

So, The second test is more important than the first test. The third test is more important than the second and first and so on and so forth. We need to test longitudinally to measure that actual trend and point of change. 

Michael Kummer: Makes sense. Was that the only immune thing that was going on or are there other tests in there?

Um, or are there reports that are worth looking at? 

Hannah Went: Yeah, let me take one. Well, I don't know if this one would be worth looking at, but we could definitely discuss it because I think people are most familiar with it, which is that the telomeres, right? So have you tested your telomeres previously? ever? 

Michael Kummer: Um, I think with your test in 2020, I believe I had the But 

Hannah Went: just no other outside companies, right?

No, no, no. Okay. So I bring this up and, you know, we'll probably not remove it from the reports right away, but definitely phase it out. Telomeres, for those who are unfamiliar, these are the caps of your chromosomes, a part of your DNA that keep everything tight and regulated and coiled up. So as we age, think of it like a shoestring.

As we age, we wear tennis shoes over and over. Our shoelaces start to fray at the ends. This is what happens to telomeres as we get older. So, um, it was once thought that these had a really huge relationship to aging. Like we thought we solved aging when we, we discovered telomeres. Now they're just very poor predictors of health.

So they're still correlated, but. Very, very poorly. Um, a lot of this is hereditary as well from your, your parental side, your dad's side. Um, however, we still want to do kind of a sanity check here. We want to, we, we want to look at many hallmarks of aging as possible. So, you know, Michael, you look, you look good here.

You're 7. 2 kilobases. if we extrapolate that you're 40 years old based on telomeres. So this one sounds really good, but again, it's, it's, you know, one that we're not super excited about and you're above the 62nd or you're in the 62nd percentile. So you're doing better than, you know, um, 60 percent of the population.

And you want to have longer telomeres. You want to be in the higher population percentile here. So you're, you're doing great. If someone has, you know, lower telomeres, they're in the 20th percentile or lower, we're thinking, oxidative stress, inflammation, senescent cell buildup. We need to give them some senolytics or antioxidant based therapies.

Michael Kummer: Okay. So that, I think actually I, I, uh, there is that, um, peptide epithelium, is it? Yeah. 

Hannah Went: Yeah. 

Michael Kummer: Is, does that do anything? Is it worth taking in your opinion? 

Hannah Went: In my opinion, no. I think a lot of people would disagree with me. Um, it, there's no, I don't know how that information got spread. Hey, epitalin lengthens telomeres.

I don't think there's any definitive study showing, you know, before and after lengthening of telomeres. If so, um, we don't know the mechanism of action, right? It probably clears out senescent cells. which is where your short telomeres lives. So it looks like you're getting longer telomeres before and after.

Um, but epitalin is a great peptide for, for other outcomes. You'll see a lot of your blood based values become improved with it as well. But I don't know that it necessarily targets telomeres directly. 

Michael Kummer: Gotcha. Okay. 

Hannah Went: So it looks good. You know, Michael, you're aging very well. If, if we've even pulled up some of those longitudinal results, which I can get connected to, you know, your, your previous reports, we will, I think, How many times have you taken it?

It was the 

Michael Kummer: third, but the one I took actually within the same month. One was October 1st, 2020 and then October 26th, 2020. 

Hannah Went: Oh nice. Okay. Yeah, we'll have to get all of those connected. I mean, you know, that's You were actually probably one of the first users of the test. I mean, we launched in July of 2020, right?

And we'll rain our first test in 2020 launched in like January And sent out, you know kits right before COVID So you were one of the you know I'm sure first very first users at least and then you know four years after it seems like you have made positive Changes to reduce that biological aging over time.

So that's why I tell people to get started and get started now Right. You know, people come and say, Oh, my biological age is still older. Well, imagine, you know, how much older it could have been four or five years ago. Right. We want to see that change and we want to see that the positive change too. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah.

And you know, one thing that when I, when I, when I got my first report and I think at the time I was, um, 30, um, how old was I when I was 20, 24 years ago. So I was 38 and my report said I'm, six years or something older. And I'm like, you know, I was kind of discouraged. I'm like, well, I've been doing keto for two years.

How is this possible? You know? Yeah. And, uh, and, and then, you know, I realized, well, you know, I, I, you know, abused not knowingly, of course, you know, my body for over three decades. And I cannot expect by just, you know, making changes for a few years to reverse everything and then, you know, be 20 years younger.

And that's unrealistic. Um, I think the most important point or takeaway should be that. If you're aging faster, you know, at least slow it down, you know, if nothing else, you know, slow it down. So you continue aging now at a normal or maybe a better, slower pace than you were before. And, you know, you can't change your past.

I mean, you can, but there's only so much you can do. Right. And, uh, at some point there was also, you know, acceptance is necessary that, yes, you know, maybe you had a rough, you know, first 20 years and you're paying for it. I mean, that's what it is. You know, there was no get out of jail free card. 

Hannah Went: Right, right.

You're exactly right. And, and it's, uh, I like that mentality at the end too. It's, it's very hard to see any biological ages younger than chronological age, even more so a reversal, right? Because if you're taking this test every six months or every 12 months, you're actually aging six months or 12 months.

So, I mean, you're working against the clock quite, quite literally. So it's, it's, it's really hard to see. You know, any type of reversal or it's really hard to sustain and keep that pace of aging even at like 7, 75. It's, it's a challenge. I mean, it takes consistency. It takes discipline. And as humans, we're not very good at that.

Right? So it's, it's creating something that's unique for, for you, that works for your schedule, that works for your lifestyle and for your, You know, trying to do the best you can to stick to that. 

Michael Kummer: But it's, it's good knowing, I know I'm, I'm a huge fan of, of having all the information and making decisions.

And if that decision is, you know what, I accept that I'm aging at the rate that I'm aging, and I'm not going to do anything about it. Then at least, you know, you made that decision, but not knowing what you're doing and wishing that you could have done something different. You know, I think that's really where I'm like, you know, know and make a, you know, informed decision instead of just.

Blindly following, you know, whoever and, and not being aware of, of what's happening. Um, cool. Um, so you mentioned it before, before we got on, um, uh, before we started recording, but yes, I do have a, I think I do have a discount code, uh, for sure, an affiliate link. So we're going to put all of that in the show notes.

If people want to try that out. Um, I'm going to, you know, continue doing, uh, those tests. You know, I want to say at least once a year to kind of see, you know, where I'm heading and to kind of gauge if how I feel and how effective my interventions are based on how I feel, if they actually are reflected in, in the data, you know, because at the end of the day, you know, the proof's in the pudding and it doesn't really matter what I think is right.

Um, if my body disagrees, then, you know, I need to do something different. 

Hannah Went: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I continue to hopefully have conversations like this and educate others. You know, the more people that we can get tested, the more we can get this out to the masses is really the end goal. It's helping people live longer, live healthier, fruitful lives, you know, accomplishing all their goals they want to accomplish at the end of their life, whether it's start a new company, you know, have a grandchild, great grandchild, right?

Get a new puppy, new dog, um, and just, you know, Continue to be surrounded and, and have quality of life. So, um, I love your, your messaging, your podcast, everything you do, Michael. And, um, hopefully this will be. You know, become more, more accessible, cheaper to everyone, um, because we realized that's one of the limitations too.

Michael Kummer: Yeah. Um, one more question before we wrap it up. Um, if there are new clocks coming out in the future, um, since you have the data, can you rerun, um, the data using that new algorithm or how does it work? 

Hannah Went: So we have one coming out next week. Fingers crossed at the time of when we're recording this and it goes publish.

Hopefully it should be done, but it's, uh, the symphony age clock. So it's the aging of 11 different organ systems. We created that with the Yale, your brain, heart, lung, liver, pancreas, skin, blood hormone, a couple others as well. Um, So, you know, we can take your raw file, Michael, I probably wouldn't want to take yours from 2020, I'd probably want to take yours from, you know, the one you just did, and we can apply that, but yeah, people pay a small fee, 15 bucks, and then we, we upgrade every single one of the reports, you don't have to pay 15 per report.

report. So you'll get the ones from 2020 anyways, but you know, we, we obviously want to look at that, the more recent ones. So that'll be available next week and I'm, I'm happy to, to upgrade you and give that to you when it's ready. Yeah, maybe 

Michael Kummer: we can then overlay that because it's going to be a couple of weeks anyway before the episode is out.

So we can then, um, I, I'm going to, will I be able to do this in the, in the portal or how is it going to work? Yeah. Yeah. You'll get 

Hannah Went: your results updated in the portal. 

Michael Kummer: Okay. Cool. Because then I can just at least take a screen shot and overlay it and see how, you know, my organs have been aging. And then the, uh, the other thing that, uh, that new, what is it called?

The The Uh, the O M I C M H report for my, uh, older, at least for one of the older tests back in 2020. Because I know that if I look at the, uh, the test reports, it shows, or maybe one more thing that I saw in, in both reports, specifically in the old ones, but also in the new one that Intristic versus Extristic.

age. 

Hannah Went: Yeah. Because 

Michael Kummer: one of mine is way older and the other one is way younger, like 38 to 50 something. Um, what does that mean? 

Hannah Went: Yeah. We're getting rid of those ones in the next couple 

Michael Kummer: of weeks. 

Hannah Went: Yeah. Yeah. They're older clocks. Um, and, and was our main report at one point until we created the better ones. 

Michael Kummer: Okay.

Um, so then for the sake of comparison, um, can I use that old report and get the latest age, so to say, from an older age? Yeah, the 

Hannah Went: omicron age. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'll, I'll get that into your account for you. 

Michael Kummer: Perfect. I appreciate it because then we're going to overlay that as well. So then I can really see.

All right, well, thank you very much, and I appreciate your time and all the insights. Super interesting episode. I'll keep you posted when it's going to go live. We'll tag you guys on all the social platforms where we, you know, at the, uh, the website Clips and the whole shebang and we'll, we'll take it from there.

Hannah Went: Awesome. Thanks for your time, Michael. Thank you. 

Michael Kummer: Appreciate it. Coming up next week on the Primal Shift podcast, Michael Kummer takes a deep dive into the puzzling case of elevated HbA1c levels, despite being on a low carb, ketogenic, or even carnivore diet. In episode 63, Michael shares his personal experience with unexpected HbA1c results that put him in the pre diabetic range, even though his diet and lifestyle should suggest otherwise.

He explores how factors like red blood cell lifespan and overall metabolic health can lead to seemingly contradictory blood sugar readings. This episode offers crucial insights for anyone monitoring their health and metabolic markers, so be sure to tune in for this eye opening conversation.