Increasing Plant Diversity Improves GlycanAge Significantly - A Self-Experiment
First things first - we have a 15% discount code available for the GlycanAge test - ‘LONGEVITYBLOG’.
Now go run your own self-experiment!
Glycan Age Test Self-experiment Results
In a series of recent posts, Longevity Blog has been investigating glycans and their many important roles in the body.
There is much to learn, but the key takeaway is that they play an informative role to the immune system by ‘tagging’ which of the many foreign molecules in the both are friend and which are foe.
We’ve some ideas on how you might improve your GlycanAge - by eating more types of plants! Read on for more!
If you’re across the basics of how the immune system works, you’ll be aware that inflammation is a sign that the immune systems is activated.
And while this can be highly valuable for enacting repair of specific areas of the body (e.g. damaged tissue), it is also a destructive process (e.g. tear down and rebuild that tissue).
As we age, levels of chronic inflammation rise, both as a result of and a cause of the aging process.
In your quest to maintain your ‘youthfulness’ and achieve longevity, monitoring and improving levels of inflammation in your body is highly important!
However this has not always been easy. There are many ways to measure inflammation in the body - which to choose? How to improve it?
It turns out, there is a simpler answer - don’t track the result of inflammation, instead track the molecules which signal - should inflammation be ‘on’ or ‘off’?
That line of thinking brings us to glycans and specifically the GlycanAge biological age testing kit.
In this post, we’ll review the results from our Founder Nick’s GlycanAge self-experiment. For the nitty-gritty details on the how & why the experiment was conducted, including the hypothesis and scientific framework, be sure to read that post first!
Read on for a few basics, and then a deep dive into the results.
Self-experimenting with diet to inform the immune system
Hey everyone, Nick here! I’m excited to share with you that I was able to improve my GlycanAge by 6 years in just 3 months, with a specific dietary change.
That change? Eating at least 30 different plants per week.
This self-experiment was completed in effort to improve a GlycanAge that was already quite favourable (30 yrs for a 35 yr old) in an individual who was already ‘doing all of the right things’ with diet, exercise, sleep and stress.
From my perspective, -5 years just wasn’t quite good enough. I was convinced I could improve further, as I’d achieved much younger biological age by other measures, and I like a good challenge!
To complete this self-experiment I dutifully designed and tested a specific hypothesis, which was:
“By programming the immune system with a diversity of plant information (local & organic where possible), chronic inflammation will be reduced as the immune system learns more about what is friend and what is foe, leading to an improvement in the Glycan Age”
Let’s briefly talk about why adding more plants to the diet could be reasonably expected to improve GlycanAge and then take a look at the evidence which shows it worked.
Why would 30 plants per week improve glycanAge? The basics
Of course I suggest you read the introductory post, which will offer you much more detail, but here is the main line of reasoning why eating a diversity of plants is likely to improve your GlycanAge.
Delicious veggies from our local farmers market. Full of environmental information just waiting to program your immune system. Eat me!
The immune system is constantly monitoring what you eat - deciding what should and should not be allowed into the bloodstream.
This surveillance occurs in the small intestine at your “intestinal epithelial cells” (IECs) which act as a filter, whereby nutrients, electrolytes, water and beneficial bacteria are allowed into the bloodstream (while the ‘baddies’ are not)
The immune system that is supporting the IECs with this ‘filtering' step is learning what is good and what is bad through the diet you eat
This effectively means that your diet is information about your environment
The diet is then responsible for telling the body, through a diversity of food and organisms, what is ‘friend’ and what is ‘foe’ - and it does this through partnership with glycans
Thus the hypothesis:
When you don’t eat a diverse diet your immune system receives less information = more inflammation (and higher GlycanAge)
However, the opposite is also hypothesised to be true: more information = less inflammation (and lower GlycanAge)
Did it work? Experimental results
The results from this self experiment are provided through the GlycanAge online dashboard, which delivers a biological age result, but more importantly, a breakdown of the three most important glycan indices.
These indices summarise the 24 glycan types which regulate inflammation in the body, and are broken down in GlycanAge test results as follows:
G0 are glycans without galactose, which are the most proinflammatory. These are represented by the Mature Index.
G2 are glycans with two galactoses, which are suppressing inflammation. These are represented by the Health Index.
GS are glycans with sialic acid, which also suppress inflammation. These are represented by the Youth Index.
Result: GlycanAge improves by 6 years
I am presently 35 years old. My GlycanAge at the start of the self-experiment was 30, an encouraging result. After eating 30+ plants per week for 3 months, my GlycanAge further improved by 6 years, to a value of 24.
If you’re interested to understand a bit more about how this biological age estimate works, you can read our interview with glycan expert Prof. Gordan Lauc.
One very important question that we asked Prof. Lauc was about the importance of the absolute value of biological age versus the relative changes that occur over time.
“It’s also important to not worry about the absolute number, because the absolute number is also strongly affected by genetics. Approximately 30-50% of the GlycanAge is determined by your genes, you cannot fix it.
It is the relative number, the pace of changes in biological age which are important. If your GlycanAge is increasing more slowly than your chronological age, then that’s good. ”
My GlycanAge at the start of the self-experiment.
My GlycanAge at the end of the 3 month experiment.
Result: glycan indices improve across the board
One aspect of the GlycanAge test kit that I really like is that they give me direct access to raw data, a summary PDF report and insightful indices which breakdown the biological age estimate further.
Not many biological age test kits will offer you this level of detail, and it provides an important layer of additional insight into why a given self-experiment worked/didn’t work for improving biological age.
Intriguingly, the self-experiment resulted in across the board improvements in these indices. The changes in the % relative to my peers (percentiles) reveal this in a straightforward way.
For example, the ‘Health - G2’ index improved by 0.11. What does that mean? My result is now better than 60% of others in my age group, whereas before it was only 49% (a below average result).
The three major glycan indices at the start of the self-experiment.
The three major glycan indices at the end of the self-experiment.
Improving GlycanAge with diet: Discussion
Interpreting the results of a self-experiment is very important. We cannot simply look at the data in results form and make a conclusion. In the spirit of science, we must discuss them!
The most important aspect to discuss here, is how the self-experiment was controlled. In essence, this means limiting as much as possible, any external factors which could ‘confuse’ the results.
Importantly, we need to examine any changes in the four main drivers of GlycanAge results. As Professor Lauc outlined for us in his in-depth Longevity Blog interview, these are: stress, sleep, exercise and diet.
Let’s briefly review each.
Controlling Diet
I kept a simple list organising plants I ate into groups of 10 for each week of the self-experiment. This was done in the ‘notes’ app on my iPhone and was very easy to manage.
In our experiment we turned the ‘diet knob’ in a very specific way. By introducing the primary experimental change of eating 30+ plants per week.
First of all - compliance. I can confidently report that I was fully compliant over the 12 week period of experimentation.
In no week did I eat less than 30 different plants. I ate as many as 40 different plants and as few as 31 different plants.
I did not change my dietary protein, carbohydrate or fat ratios or overall intake of calories.
Inevitably, I did eat more soluble fibre due to increased plant diversity, however, I was already eating many organic vegetables and select fruits to begin with.
I just was not eating many different types, instead favouring about 10-15 different plants which I ate repeatedly.
It was as a fun challenge to find new plant foods to try! It resulted in my whole family eating more plants as well - an added bonus.
Controlling Sleep
As any good longevity focussed biohacker, I’m quite religious with my sleep schedule.
During the experiment, I did not change my bedtime or my wake-up time. There was no significant changes in sleep duration or quality. I also did not change any sleep-related supplements.
As monitored by Oura Ring, sleep time was between 7.5 - 8 hours per day with a sleep score of 80 on average.
The below is a gallery of images you can click through (4 in total) showing the sleep score and total sleep from early and late in the self-experiment.
Controlling Exercise
As set out in the opening post for this self-experiment, I maintained a consistent exercise load to within 10% on average (in a given month) as measured by my Garmin smartwatch and heart-rate monitor.
No significant changes were made to total time exercising, exercise intensity or the type of exercise I was completing.
I kept up my routine of 4 weeks of triathlon training with a one week de-load. Average load over the period was unchanged at around ~750-800.
Controlling Stress
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This aspect of the self-experiment was more interesting! I’d originally set out to complete this experiment over 6 months with two GlycanAge tests. However I cut it off at 3 months. Why?
Australia went into a sudden COVID lockdown, upending my life routine and introducing significant additional stress (homeschooling in and of itself would confound the results, haha!).
I simply could not continue the self-experiment for the additional 3 months and maintain good control over the experiment.
Thankfully, I was able to complete the 3 month self-experiment with no significant lifestyle or stress related changes. So this was well-controlled overall.
Conclusion: Eating a diversity of plants significantly improved my GlycanAge
To design this self-experiment, I used Dr Jenna Macciochi’s suggestion to eat 30+ plants per week to boost the immune system.
Immunity: The Science of Staying Well is one of the most up to date, accessible and helpful books out there on building a healthy immune system. Check it out! (Amazon Affiliate link)
We are fortunate to have a pretty clear cut result in this self-experiment.
It was well-controlled and occurred over a short-time frame, with very limited opportunity for external factors to confuse the result.
Moreover, the magnitude of the change in GlycanAge was significant. A 6 year improvement is well outside the measurement error.
Had my GlycanAge improved by only 1-2 years, we would not be able to make such a strong conclusion.
In addition to the size of the change in GlycanAge, there was significant improvement in all three of the glycan indices, where I improved by ~10% in age group relative terms.
This firmly suggests hypothesis looks to have been ‘proven’, with the expressly limited scope of this being an ‘n of one’’ dataset.
Conclusion: Eating more plants improves GlycanAge (for me, and maybe you as well!)
Practically, what does this mean?
For one, I know that I should most definitely keep eating 30+ plants/week! I now consider this part of my longevity strategy.
This is in addition to other tactics like supplementing with NMN, which I also determined to improve my biological age through a seperate self-experiment.
This is precisely how we should use these types of tests. In an intentional and controlled way to test a change and see if it helps you in your longevity journey.
While the ‘conclusion’ is only applicable to myself, this design of this self-experiment provides the opportunity for other wellness and longevity enthusiasts (that’s you!) to use this approach to improve their biological age.
However, if you do not already have healthy diet, exercise, sleep or stress habits - start with those first! Don’t forget that losing weight is the surest path to reducing inflammation and improving your GlycanAge (we asked Gordan!)
If you plan to give it a try, be sure to reach out on Twitter or Instagram and let me know!
You can check out GlycanAge test kits here, and don’t forget to use the code “LONGEVITYBLOG” to save 15% on your order!
Follow me on Twitter for the latest #Longevity news!
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RT @rebeccavziegler: The cryonics payoff matrix. Choose wisely my friends. https://t.co/l1rzsmOC2w -
My rate of aging: 0.79 It’s the new street cred What you got? https://t.co/aHzWHAfCnD https://t.co/L3rZC4QFN2
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It’s official - I’m co-producing and hosting a new #longevity docuseries, and will begin shooting in a few months… https://t.co/wLGqRrBfbp
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“The #longevity segment opened my eyes to the groundbreaking advances in biotechnology, health, and wellness. The i… https://t.co/F8YB7PAeMW
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I’m completely mindblown by what AI has done over the past 3-6 months, and it continues to accelerate… https://t.co/hh0JslucRg
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Longevity legends take on many shapes and sizes https://t.co/X9vGa7gvOe
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RT @BradStanfieldMD: Avoid These Popular Supplements (shout out to Professor Matt Kaeberlein @mkaeberlein & Professor Brian Kennedy… https://t.co/cy9CXldgUS
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Who are influential persons in #longevity who are of Asian, African American or other “minority” group in the US?
I also posts related #Longevity content to Instagram as well, follow me @nickengerer
FDA & TGA DISCLAIMER
This information is intended for educational purposes only and is not meant to substitute for medical care or to prescribe treatment for any specific health condition. These blog posts are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and only may become actionable through consultation with a medical professional.
Self-experimenting with GlycanAge - Before and After Diet Changes
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Simply use the code “LONGEVITYBLOG” at checkout
Glycan Age Test review & Self-experiment
As we’ve learnt over the past few posts, glycans are incredible molecules with many important roles in the body.
Perhaps the most important of which is providing information to our immune system about what foreign molecules (i.e. diet, dust particles, bacteria, etc!) are friend and which are foe.
My GlycanAge biological age test kit - just a few drops of blood, drop it in the envelope & it’s ready to go!
As such, they strongly regulate inflammation in to the body, and as we’ve learnt - they are impressively capable of predicting age-related disease onset.
Also, their ‘youthfulness’ can maintained by paying attention to certain lifestyle factors - chiefly diet, exercise, stress and sleep - monitoring them can help us track how we’re doing as we biohack our way to long & healthy lives.
In this post we’ll cover:
The role of glycans in immunity
How glycans are involved in the digestive system
How to use diet to improve GlycanAge
Why food is information for the immune system
Setting up a self-experiment for improving GlycanAge
Plus - snippets from our interview with world expert on glycans - Professor Gordan Lauc
Glycans Regulate Immunity
It is the role of glycans in immunity and disease related processes which makes them so important with respect to the aging process.
Such is their potential impact, that any personalised longevity strategy should likely include an effort to maintain youthful glycan characteristics.
A tumour cell being tagged with 'bad guy’ glycans (represented by the squares, circles, diamonds on cell membrane). Image credit: Gly-tech
“Youthful” in this context essentially means ‘anti-inflammatory’, meaning:
the immune system is not overactive
chronic inflammation is not present (or in advanced age, well managed)
the ravages of inflammaging (the negative feedback cycle of inflammation creating more damage & inflammation) are avoided
How Glycans Impact the Immune System
As we learned in our exclusive interview with world expert in all things glycans, Professor Gordan Lauc, glycans keep track of foreign materials in the body, tagging them as ‘friend’ or ‘enemy’ so that our antibodies know whether to activate inflammation (attack) or suppress inflammation (don’t attack).
“When antibodies are developed, they do not know whether a given foreign object will be an enemy, like a bacteria or a virus, or if it is friendly, such as food or a dust or something else they should ignore.
After the antibody binds to this foreign object, what happens next is determined by glycans. This very complicated process (glycosylation) is regulated by least 40 different genes.
These glycans decide whether antibody will kill a target cell (activate inflammation) or will it suppress inflammation”
Glycans, Immunity and Digestion
A major role of this immune surveillance process is centred on digestion. This is because the process of taking what we eat, and turning it into our own cells or energy requires active decision making on what should be allowed into the bloodstream.
Ultimately, food is “a foreign object” (using Prof. Lauc’s words above) that has entered the body.
This is clearly done for the purposes of providing fuel and supplying important nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals. However, much more than simple nutrition comes along for the ride.
This includes a host of ‘commensal’ (friendly) bacteria, and sometimes, bad ones, along with the occasional plant compounds that may stress the body (such as glycoalkaloids in the ‘nightshade’ family of veggies).
Our immune system has an important role to play in screening which of these compounds should be permitted to pass through the wall of the small intestine and into the blood stream.
We’ll revisit this in detail later in the post!
Using Diet to Self-Experiment with GlycanAge
I (Nick here! Founder at Longevity Blog) am currently experimenting with improving my GlycanAge through a change in my diet, and in this post, I’ll explain what changes I am making, why and how to make this self-experiment an effective one.
Changing diet to improve my GlycanAge - can it be done? Certainly - the question is - for relatively health people, how?
This self-experiment will explore a hypothesis related to increasing the diversity of plants in my diet and potential improvement in my GlycanAge.
However, before we get into the specifics on how this experiment will work, let’s introduce some important background knowledge to support the approach.
Improving GlycanAge with Diet
Improving GlycanAge through changes in your diet can be either quite easy or mysteriously challenging.
If you’re someone who needs to lose some weight - you’re in luck. You can very likely improve you GlycanAge by simply losing weight. Look no further than our interview with Professor Lauc for the reasons why:
“Longevity Blog: Could you point to a successful model for testing and improving your GlycanAge in a way that you can say, I know what did improved it, it was _____ ?
Gordan Lauc: One good example is weight loss. Losing extra weight helps the vast majority of people, because obesity is a big driver of inflammation.”
However, if you’re already at healthy weight, how to use your diet to improve GlycanAge is not immediately obvious. In fact, clinical research with GlycanAge and diet has shown this to be quite challenging (see below tweet & follow me on Twitter for more!).
1000 people were divided into groups eating very different diets
— Nick Engerer (@nickengerer) July 16, 2021
The outcome? It was impossible to predict which diet was best for whom
However, by monitoring glycans, that became possible. Their role in inflammation signalling can reveal - what diet works best for you? pic.twitter.com/D7AyNlzVfp
Improving GlycanAge with Diet by Eating More Plants
Despite this challenge, I believer I have developed a solid hypothesis for testing how people at a healthy weight may be able to reliably improve their GlycanAge.
Through some serious homework, I also believe that this proposed change in diet that would also have relevance to other self-experimenters, and it could be replicated reliably.
This approach will leverage the sub-process of our immune system screening food particles and non-human organisms (i.e. bacteria) as they are processed in the duodenum (small intestine).
This critical step occurs before entering food materials and/or friendly bacteria are permitted to enter the bloodstream and intimately involves - you guessed it, glycans!
Food as Information for the Immune System
To continue down this line of reasoning, you need to adapt your thinking of the small intestine. Stop thinking of it as ‘inside’ your body, and start thinking of it as ‘outside’.
It is within the small intestine where a critical decisions is made - namely, what foreign materials from the diet are permitted to enter the blood stream.
Pictured: Intestinal villae, lines with intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) along with several other functional cells include macrophages (immune surveillance cells). Image Credit: Nature Reviews: Immunology
The small intestine is lined with “intestinal epithelial cells” or IECs for short. IECs are a single layer of cells with two key functions:
1) be a barrier to anything harmful - toxins, bad bacteria, viruses or antigens
2) act as a filter, whereby nutrients, electrolytes, water and beneficial bacteria are allowed into the bloodstream.
In this secondary function of ‘filtering’ where a detailed and highly important involvement of the immune surveillance system takes place.
The details are vastly complicated, but we can afford a useful simplification here.
Assuming you have tight junctions between the epithelial cells of the small intestine, only the foreign material ‘accepted’ by your immune system is permitted to pass through.
Anything else - and your immune system signals ‘attack’ - producing inflammatory signals.
IGG glycolisation (that’s science talk for how glycans are being used within the body - read more about this in the interview with Prof. Gordan Lauc) plays a critical roles in this screening process, and the ‘tagging’ of foreign material as friend or foe is at its peak level of activity at this epithelial junction.
Critically - this highly complex process includes many trillions of bacteria, which participate in the breakdown and processing of food materials by the body.
These so called ‘commensal’ bacteria are actually actively recruited and ‘pulled through’ the epithelial junctions by the immune system.
The commensal bacteria are pivotal to your broader bodily health, with your overall wellbeing depending on a vibrant and diverse population of these friendly bacteria in the gut.
Food as Information
Local organic root vegetables from our weekly farmers market. Covered in healthy soil based commensal bacteria - just waiting to program your immune system.
The activities of food screening and bacterial populations in the gut are tremendously influential on inflammation in the body.
To better illustrate this, we’ll adopt a basic framework - where our diet is information about our environment.
This is the case because the food we eat, the bacterial populations in that food, as well as ‘antigens’ (‘bad things for us’) effectively ‘program’ our immune system.
In prehistoric times, this information was often life-saving, as it was critical for our bodies to become well adapted to the organisms, toxins and food sources around us in order to survive.
In this way, we evolved for our diet to signal “this is what your environment is like and thus how you should adapt to prepare for it”.
Now consider the modern environment, where food is sterilised and our environment is kept much cleaner than ‘nature’ could ever be. Your immune surveillance system is now cut-off from this critical source of information!
Why does this matter? Well, because in a relatively sterile environment, your body lacks enough exposure to healthy bacteria and the wide variety of food it needs to know when or when not to attack.
What does that mean? A sterile diet effectively means your immune system’s default mode is ‘attack’. The immune system, out of interest in self-preservation, will work to eliminate a foreign material it is not comfortable with (used to seeing).
Add it all up and you get - you guessed, more inflammation.
Eating a Diversity of Plants Programs Immunity
In viewing food and organisms from the environment as information, we can begin to build up our glycan self-experiment in the following way.
If your body is not provided a diverse amount of information about the environment through a diversity of food and organisms through the diet, it will tend to react with ‘attack’ more often.
Through our framework: less information = more inflammation.
On the flip side the pathway to reconciling the overactive immune system is through providing ample information about the environment through the diet.
Dr Jenna Macciochi’s Immunity: The Science of Staying Well is one of the most up to date, accessible and helpful books out there on building a healthy immune system. (Amazon Affiliate link)
This will then support the immune system with a more comprehensive view of what foreign materials are ‘friendly’ and which are not.
This conceptual framework is precisely what Dr Jenna Macciochi lays out in her book Immunity: Science of Staying Well.
One of the key recommendations from this exceptionally insightful book is to eat a diversity of plants regularly, preferably local and organic ones.
The result will be a stronger immune system, which Dr Macciochi argues, is one of the only *real* ways to “boost your immunity”.
In her book, immunity expert Dr Macciochi says there is a valuable ‘rule of thumb’ for improving your immune system with diet.
What’s the rule? We’re glad you asked..
“A good rule of thumb for the biggest impact on health is to aim for over 30 different plants per week.
Whereas the opposite is also true. Eating 10 or few has a potentially damaging effect on the microbiota”
Why is this the case? It’s all about diversity of information about the environment.
And that information is programmed in the body via your glycans.
GlycanAge Self-experiment: A Diet with Diversity of Plants
My GlycanAge as of April 2021 is already ‘favourable’. But that’s not good enough for a longevity focussed biohacker now is it?
How low can we go?!
Coming full circle, this logic leads naturally to the experimental hypothesis:
“By programming the immune system with a diversity of plant information (local & organic where possible), chronic inflammation will be reduced as the immune system learns more about what is friend and what is foe, leading to an improvement in the Glycan Age”
The is precisely the hypothesis that this self-experiment will evaluate. So let’s get down to it!
My GlycanAge was first measured in April 2021.
My GlycanAge is 30, whereas my chronological age is 35.
According to Prof. Gordan Lauc, this is a great result.
“Longevity Blog: What is a “good” GlycanAge result Gordan?
Gordan Lauc: Anything which is younger than your chronological age, I would say it’s good.
It’s also important to not worry about the absolute number, because the absolute number is also strongly affected by genetics.
Approximately 30-50% of the GlycanAge is determined by your genes, you cannot fix it.””
Self-experiment: Starting Conditions & Control
This result does make sense. In the 6 months leading up to this test, I maintained optimal levels of physical activity (training for sprint triathlons), a healthy balanced diet (eating small meals across the day, mostly vegetarian but with animal protein 3-5x/week), sleeping fairly well (Oura ring sleep scores at 75-85 on average) and well managed stress levels.
So in each of the four levy lifestyle factors (diet, exercise, sleep, stress) for my GlycanAge, things were in tip-top shape.
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In this self-experiment, beginning from 1 May, I will eat 30+ plants per week.
Where possible, this will be from local and organic sources (of which we have plenty in the Byron Bay Area!).
Experimental Control
As discussed in my previous foray into self-experimentation with the NAD precursor NMN, it is challenging, but not impossible, to perform a well controlled self-experiment.
We approach this by keeping lifestyle factors as constant as we can, not changing any other key variables, and running the self-experiment for as short a time as possible.
For the GlycanAge self-experiment I will:
maintain a consistent exercise load to within 10% on average (as measured by my Garmin smartwatch and heart-rate monitor)
keep my same sleep schedule (7-8 hours a night)
not make any large lifestyle changes that might negatively impact my stress
not make any other changes to my diet (we’ll have to keep in mind that my diet will also have a reduction in non plant foods - to make room for all of the plants!)
Experimental Test Period
The experiment, according to advice from Prof Lauc will be run for a minimum of 3 months and maximum of 6 months.
This means I will re-test date on 1 August and again on 1 November.
I asked @GordanLauc - how often should we test @GlycanAge?
— Nick Engerer (@nickengerer) July 20, 2021
⁰⁰The half life of IGG glycolisation is ~3 weeks. 1 month would be the shortest period for re-testing
Lifestyle change effects take a bit longer. Modify diet, sleep, stress or exercise?
Recheck every 3 to 6 months pic.twitter.com/hjuVEdWIBo
Other Relevant Items
To keep track of my plant intake, and ensure that eat enough plants, I am keeping a weekly record of all of the plants that I eat.
I keep this pretty simple, recording them in the iOS notes app - presumably you could do this just about anyway that you please.
There is of course an important question - what is a ‘plant’? What counts as 1x plant?
I will only be counting whole food plant sources which equate to at least one serving of that food.
So for example, I would not count ‘bread’ to be a plant, although it comes from wheat flour at it is quite refined/processed (not a whole food). I would however count rolled oats as a 1x plant (limited processing, effectively a whole food item).
Follow our Founder Nick on Twitter for the latest #Longevity news!
-
RT @rebeccavziegler: The cryonics payoff matrix. Choose wisely my friends. https://t.co/l1rzsmOC2w
-
My rate of aging: 0.79 It’s the new street cred What you got? https://t.co/aHzWHAfCnD https://t.co/L3rZC4QFN2
-
It’s official - I’m co-producing and hosting a new #longevity docuseries, and will begin shooting in a few months… https://t.co/wLGqRrBfbp
-
“The #longevity segment opened my eyes to the groundbreaking advances in biotechnology, health, and wellness. The i… https://t.co/F8YB7PAeMW
-
I’m completely mindblown by what AI has done over the past 3-6 months, and it continues to accelerate… https://t.co/hh0JslucRg
-
Longevity legends take on many shapes and sizes https://t.co/X9vGa7gvOe
-
RT @BradStanfieldMD: Avoid These Popular Supplements (shout out to Professor Matt Kaeberlein @mkaeberlein & Professor Brian Kennedy… https://t.co/cy9CXldgUS
-
Who are influential persons in #longevity who are of Asian, African American or other “minority” group in the US?
Nick also posts related #Longevity content to Instagram as well, follow him at @nickengerer
FDA & TGA DISCLAIMER
This information is intended for educational purposes only and is not meant to substitute for medical care or to prescribe treatment for any specific health condition. These blog posts are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and only may become actionable through consultation with a medical professional.
How GlycanAge Biological Age Testing Works - An Interview with Glycan Expert Gordan Lauc
Glycans Can Be Used to Estimate Biological Age
In our most recent post, we explored the basics behind biological age testing with glycans.
Working up from the basics (what are glycans?) through to how glycans interact with inflammation in the body, and ultimately are a signal of the aging process itself.
We also heard from Nikolina Lauc, CEO at GlycanAge, a longevity technology company based in the United Kingdom, whose mission is to “bring glycoscience into the hands of both clinicians and consumers to inform, guide and preserve your future health”.
GlycanAge has recently made it possible to purchase a direct to consumer kit to assess your ‘glycome’, which as we will learn in this follow-up post, is a powerful indicator of your future health and longevity.
Today, we’re publishing an exclusive interview with glycan expert and GlycanAge Director Gordan Lauc.
Gordan is not just a glycan expert, he is THE global authority on all things glycans.
As a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Zagreb, he kicked off the Human Glycome Project in 2017 and has built the world’s largest human glycome database.
Through this effort, he has built an entire research team who have pioneered the glycomic analysis technology required to inspect glycans quickly and efficiently.
It is this technology which has made consumer testing of biological age and personal health status through glycans possible.
Our interview subject, and global glycan leader, Professor Gordan Lauc.
While an impressive figure of great reputation, Gordan is also a great conversationalist, amateur gardener and all around collaborative and friendly bloke who is passionate about helping people lead healthier lives.
Through collaboration with GlycanAge, we sat down with Gordan for a 1-on-1 interview, diving into the details behind how the human glycome works, and how to use it to assess biological age.
We even documented Gordan’s input on how you can run your own self-experiment with GlycanAge, to improve your health and overall longevity.
Let’s get into it!
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This interview was conducted on 20 May 2021, over Zoom and is an audio transcript with minor edits for clarity, brevity and correctness.
Screen capture from Gordan’s YouTube video where he briefly tours his state of the art glycan laboratory.
How does the GlycanAge test work?
Longevity Blog (LB): Gordan. We recently checked out a video that is uploaded to YouTube. It was from an Instagram Live video with longevity doctor. Dr Joseph Raffaele.
In this video, you briefly toured your glycan laboratory. We found that absolutely fascinating.
You had a few generations of machines that were in place, and it made us naturally quite curious.
Could you explain what happens when a GlycanAge sample comes into your lab?
Tell us about the process of going from blood sample to glycan analysis!
Gordan Lauc (GL): Glycans are very complicated molecules. You cannot just read the letters in the way you read DNA or protein, they're branched. They're chemically very similar, but in the same way very diverse. Analyzing glycans is a challenge. This is why we need so many fancy machines.
When we do the GlycanAge test, it focuses on the glycan immunoglobulins. First, we have to fish out immunoglobulins (IGG) from the blood sample (a dried blood stain collected by fingerprick),
We have a special technology to get just IGG out of all other proteins in the sample. From the IGG, we remove the glycans, using a special enzyme which acts like a pair of scissors. It removes the one group of glycans called N glycans from the IGG.
After this, we have to dye them to make them visible in our machines. These machines use capillary electrophoresis, or chromatography, which separates glycans based on their chemical structure. Then we quantify the amount of each of them.
For the GlycanAge, we focus on glycans which change with age.
LB: There's around 2,000 to 3,000 types of glycans, is that right?
GL: When we talk about the total 'glycome', there are approximately 2000 different glycan blocks. For IGG, there are 24 major structures, so this “fishing out” process of the immunoglobulin reduces the number of glycans significantly. Using these individual structures we calculate the changes which happen with age.
Biological Aging and Glycan Immunoglobulins
Pictured: A 3D model of an human immunoglobulin
LB: In this biological age analysis, there is a close link between the IGG N glycans you're analysing as age markers and inflammation.
Can you can you explain that connection between these immunoglobulins and inflammation in the body.
GL: Immunoglobulins are the main weapons of our immune system. They are made to recognize any foreign object (bacteria, virus food, any foreign molecules) which comes into the body. They do this by a relatively complex genetic process to make a hypervariable domain to bind to this foreign object.
LB: A complex process certainly - give us the simplified explanation.
GL: When antibodies are developed, they do not know whether a given foreign object will be an enemy, like a bacteria or a virus, or if it is friendly, such as food or a dust or something else they should ignore.
After the antibody binds to this foreign object, what happens next is determined by glycans. This very complicated process (glycosylation) is regulated by least 40 different genes. These glycans decide whether antibody will kill a target cell (activate inflammation) or will it suppress inflammation.
Inflammation and Glycans
LB: And it is this increasing level of inflammation across the body which is tied to aging. What does a youthful version of this process look like?
GL: What we see in young people is that the majority of immunoglobulins have these anti inflammatory glycans. But when there is an attack by a foreign invader, like a bacteria or virus, then you need inflammation.
The problem is that as we live longer. We are genetically not made to live over 40. Once you stop making children, your genes don't work for you anymore, they work against you!
As we're getting older, this process gets disturbed, and immunoglobulins become more and more pro inflammatory. And actually, what we are measuring in the GlycaAge test are these molecules which regulate inflammation.
GlycanAge Biological Age Estimate
LB: This is how you can produce a biological age estimate, right? If you know what the glycome of an old person would look like versus a young one, you can make a prediction. Talk about how you create a biological age assessment using this information?
Pictured: A GlycanAge biological age testing kit. We discussed some of the basics on these kits in a recent post.
GL: Initially when we developed the DNA typing, we noticed that glycans correlate with age. At the time, we were thinking to use this information to determine the age of a person who left a blood stain at a crime scene.
This is relevant information for police investigation, whether this was a young guy or experienced criminal.
We tried to correlate the glycans with chronological age, and this was reasonably successful.
When we did this, approximately a decade ago, this was one of the most accurate ways to determine the chronological age of a person. Subsequently methylation test was developed, which was way more accurate in predicting chronological age.
LB: But there is still unique value in the GlycanAge test, particularly in assessing lifestyle factors?
GL: What we have learned is that our test deviates from the chronological age, approximately nine years. But not in a random way! But in a way which associates with lifestyle.
On our GlycanAge test, people living healthy lifestyle will always be younger, while people living an unhealthy lifestyle will be older. Also, people with different diseases will generally look older too.
What is Biological Age?
GL: We realized that the GlycanAge is not a good test of chronological age, so we can't use it in forensics, but it is very informative about something we call biological age. Although biological age is a very tricky word, because there is no golden standard.
Learn more about assessing your biological age in our interview with Chronomics CSO Dani
There is no universal unit of measure of biological age. And so someone can give you any kind of number and you cannot say whether it's right or wrong.
LB: Let us ask you about that, Gordan. What do you think about this term biological age? Is “age” the right term? Or is it more of a “biological score” or a “health score”?
Why do you think the industry has chosen the term “biological age”? It sounds nice. But we’re hearing from you that that term is a bit squishy.
What Health Information Does GlycanAge Provide?
An example of the ‘indices’ for the G0 (top) and G2 (bottom) IGG glycans. A GlycanAge test gives you access to this information as well as your biological age.
GL: When we do research, we report 24 directly measured glycans and maybe additional 50 different scores.
But the problem is that this is too complicated for people to understand. So then we made two levels of simplification.
One level is that we have three key indexes or scores, which is G0, G2, and GS.
G0 are glycans without galactose, which are the most proinflammatory.
G2 are glycans with two galactoses, which are suppressing inflammation.
GS are glycans with sialic acid, which also suppress inflammation.
LB: These three indices are reported to users when they complete the GlycanAge test.
This ‘first level’ of simplification provides direct insight into the levels of inflammation driven by or suppressed by each group.
How are these indices useful for the user?
GL: These three indexes are something which one can use to quantify three different aspects of regulation of inflammation. These three indices are exactly measured from the blood sample. This means, anybody in the world who has the right equipment can take the same blood sample and they should get the similar number.
LB: From there, biological age is the next level of simplification?
GL: The ultimate simplification is the biological age, but that's just the name, you can also call it a score. This is the model number. It is not a number which has an absolute meaning.
Screenshot from one of Gordan’s presentations on the GlycanAge biological age clock. Source: YouTube and also this pubmed article.
However, we know that the higher biological age number means more inflammatory glycans, and that means more low grade chronic inflammation.
This chronic inflammation is something which happens with aging and with disease. A smaller number of the GlycanAge means more immune suppressive glycans, less low grade chronic inflammation.
This is a number which is modeled. We use 1000s of people (over 150k) to build a model and compare an individual to this model to determine their GlycanAge.
Of course, it's not absolutely “accurate”, because there is no golden standard of accuracy. But what makes GlycanAge different from other indexes of biological age, which are being used is that we know that glycans which we measure are functional effectors of inflammation. They're molecules which do the damage.
Improving Your GlycanAge Biological Age
LB: Gordan - let's talk about improving our biological age. In other interviews, we've heard you talk about four key factors: sleep, diet, exercise, and managing stress. Making postiive changes in these lifestyle can help change the glycan based biological age estimate.
Can you can you explain why that's the case? Why are those four factors driving the GlycanAge?
GL: These four factors are the key factors of healthy life. Now, we all know, we need enough sleep, we need healthy diet, we need a moderate amount of exercise, and we don't need too much stress. There is no magic in that.
The problem is that this is extremely difficult. We cannot do it all. It simply is not possible in a modern society.
Could GlycanAge testing help identify the most optimal diet for YOU?
The other important thing is that we are all very different. The more research we do, we are learning this.
For example, we did recently cohort of 1000 people on five different diets. And each diet is good for somebody and bad for somebody else, so there is no universal diet, which will help everybody.
LB: Fascinating! Could you share what some of those diets were?
GL: This is still unpublished. I cannot go into details. This was a large European project. But these diets were generally high and low protein and high and low glycemic index and different combinations.
High glycemic index is not bad for some people. It is bad for perhaps most people, but some people cope with glucose better than others.
What we are hoping that the GlycanAge can do is help people to focus on one of the four aspects which is dominant in them.
Gordan is actively collaborating with Dr Joseph Raffaele to explore using GlycanAge on his patients at his longevity clinic in New York. Image Source: LinkedIn
For example, for some people, it could be only a few extra hours of sleep, and then they don't have to spend an hour day in a gym.
For other people, it could be just less carbohydrates. And then maybe they don't have to sleep that much.
GlycanAge is a kind of objective tool to evaluate what works and what does not work for us.
You earlier mentioned this Instagram Live video Dr Raffaele and I did. He has an anti aging clinic in New York where they are testing these ideas.
GlycanAge and Hormone Optimisation
LB: Let's talk about that. Dr Raffaele specifically talks about hormone optimisation.
We know that there's a real strong relationship between hormone balance in women, for example, and menopause and perimenopause.
Research with GlycanAge is finding a close link in aging and hormone levels. You also just mentioned diet.
So here’s our next question: How do we create understanding on what an individual needs in terms of their own personalised approach to improving their GlycanAge?
GL: This is exactly what we're trying to do at the moment. We started to work with Joseph to test his patients, and they all turned out younger. His average patient is 20 years younger, for male and I think 15 for a female patient, which is unbelievable.
Estrogen levels change significantly over the course of a woman’s life. GlycanAge is closely correlated with these changes.
I asked him - what are you doing to your patients? What are you giving to them? He's giving them more or less everything one can do.
We decided to dissect what works in which patient, and are now trying to do proper, placebo controlled randomized trials to see which of the approaches work.
What we know is that estrogen is a very dominant factor in woman.
We had, we got samples from one very interesting study where menopause was chemically induced in young women. In a half of the group, the estrogen was returned with estrogen patch, and the other half of the woman received a placebo.
Estrogen supplementation completely prevented the change in the IGG glycome while the woman who were on placebo aged nine years in a few months on average. Some women going through menopause age as much as 20 - 30 years within a year (on average, this number is only 7-9 years)
This loss of estrogen is extremely strong regulator of IGG glycosylation. The problem is when these women lose their good glycans, its promoting low grade chronic inflammation.
We know for example, from animal models that this is causative of hypertension. The increased risk of cardiovascular diseases known to occur with menopause could be partly caused by the wrong balance in IGG glycans.
LB: Clearly the estrogen balance and associated with changes that occur in menopause are very important for aging in women.
What about hormone levels in men? Is it a drop in testosterone which drives the changes?
GL: Interestingly in men it is also estrogen which regulates IGG glycosylation. In the same study, they also had a group of men where the gonadal hormones were blocked. When the testosterone was returned, it saved the glycome from changing.
Pictured: Testosterone, which plays a secondary role in GlycanAge. It is the change in conversion of testosterone into estrogen, which is altered in ageing in men.
But if the testosterone was added back in combination with another drug which is blocking conversion of testosterone to estrogen, this (the glycome remaining stable) the protective effect did not happen.
So in men, it's not testosterone which regulates IGG glycosylation - it's estrogen.
Hormones are very important regulators. But it's not only hormones, and it does not work to the same extent, in everybody.
So we definitely need to do more research to understand it.
Self-Experimenting with GlycanAge
LB: Hormone optimisation is clearly a really interesting topic area. Here, you've highlighted how it works for women, how it could work for men in the estrogen sense, which is fascinating.
Let’s talk about isolating specific changes one could make using GlycanAge test results. On Longevity Blog, we focus on helping our readers conduct self experiments to find out what works for them.
Want to see an example of using GlycanAge to try to improve your biological age? Our Founder Nick is kicking off his own self-experiment, and wants to take you along for the journey. Subscribe to content notifications to learn how to do this yourself!
For GlycanAge, what does this process look like? Could you point to a successful model for testing and improving your GlycanAge in a way that you can say, I know what did improved it, it was _____ ?
GL: One good example is weight loss. Losing extra weight helps the vast majority of people, because obesity is a big driver of inflammation.
However, when trying to lose weight, people often make a mistake. I personally did the same mistake when I realised my GlycanAge was not ideal. I decided to sweat it out. I was hiking in mountains, three, four hours a day, for the whole summer.
While some aspects of my health did improve, my GlycanAge did not improve much. This is because overtraining is also causing inflammation. Usually people think more is better, but for physical activity, it is not!
What is a “Good” GlycanAge Result?
LB: How can users of the GlycanAge test use that information to strike the right balance?
GL: There is no magic coach who will tell you what to do. Even the best coach can only know what is good for an average person. But there is no average person in the world! We're all different.
Pictured: Our Founder Nick’s GlycanAge from April 2021. This is a ‘good’ age for him, as it is 5 years younger than his chronological age.
He will of course be trying to get it even lower!
What people have seen with our tests, and this is what makes me happy, is that, often they get a poor GlycanAge result.
At first, they're angry, they claim the test is not good. This is why we also offer a free consultation with some of our nutrition and lifestyle experts to help them identify the problem.
Soon, they find the problem.
Maybe I'm overworked. Maybe I'm not sleeping enough. Maybe it is too much stress, I have family issues.
But when people resolve these problems, GlycanAge improves! This is a fantastic motivator.
You know you did something right when you turn out now 5-10 years younger on the scale.
Elevated GlycanAge and Disease Risk
LB: And as you mentioned before, that reduced GlycanAge comes with reduced disease risk and many other health benefits.
“This is the process I like to see - when people get the bad result, improve and get a better result”
GL: Pro-inflammatory markers usually change up to decade before people become ill. Disease onset is usually like this - you work normally, live your life and at one point you feel pain.
Because of that pain, you go to the hospital, and then you do all the checkups. Then the doctor says - you have inflammation in your guts, this is Crohn's disease, or you have inflammation in your joints, this is arthritis.
This is the end stage, when all the compensatory mechanisms have failed. All the ways your body tried to fix the problem have failed, then you have pain, and then you get the disease.
The problem with most of these chronic diseases, they are irreversible. This is why we call them chronic, you get some medicine, you feel better, you don't have the pain anymore, but you are stuck to these medicines for the rest of your life or the disease returns.
But if you identity and fix inflammation early, often simple lifestyle changes or an early pharmacological intervention can prevent disease.
This is the process I like to see - when people get the bad result, improve and get a better result.
“Approximately half of the GlycanAge is determined by your genes, you cannot fix it. ”
Something which is not so satisfactory for the user is when they are already good. Because then they ask - “what should I do now?” I say nothing, you're good. Just come in a year or two and do it again to see whether you're still good.
LB: What is “good” Gordan? Is it 5 years younger? 10 years younger? Exactly your age?
How does somebody know that they're doing “good”? What says - keep going, stay the course, this lifestyle approach is working for you?
GL: Anything which is younger than your chronological age, I would say it's good. It’s also important to not worry about the absolute number, because the absolute number is also strongly affected by genetics. Approximately 30-50% of the GlycanAge is determined by your genes, you cannot fix it.
It is the relative number, the pace of changes in biological age which are important. If your GlycanAge is increasing more slowly than your chronological age, then that’s good.
I recommend starting to do this relatively early, maybe even at 20 to 30 years old, initially once every few years. Maybe if you make a change in lifestyle, then you do it every few months to see whether something works or not. This is the most informative.
How Often Should You Test Your GlycanAge?
LB: Talk about that part. If one of our readers takes a GlycanAge test, and runs a self-experiment, they’ll be thinking about how to control the experiment. Here, the shorter the time-period, the more likely they are to keep it well controlled.
What is the timescale on which our GlycanAge is changing? Is it 3 months? 6 months? Does it depend on what one is changing? Give us a sense for how often we could retest if we wanted to say test, reducing our stress, for example, or changing our diet.
GL: Glycans change relatively slowly. The half life of IGG is approximately three weeks. I think the shortest period to see something would be maybe a month. But this is for a really radical change. If you start taking a drug, or really changed lifestyle factors a lot, such as completely changing diet, starting to exercise much more.
Normally, we see things changing after three or four months. If you slightly change your diet today, it first takes some some time to manifest in the glycans. Normally, we recommend people when they change a lifestyle, re-test after three months and then six months again. If what you are doing is working, you will see the result.
LB: That's a very clear answer. Thank you. We didn't find a good answer for this out there, and our readers are quite curious!
GlycanAge and the future of longevity?
LB: We are going to move toward the close here.
What do you think the role of testing glycans and GlycanAge is going to be as we transition into a future where more of these interventions are possible to slow, halt or possibly reverse our biological age? Where is the GlycanAge test going to fit in the next five to 10 years?
GL: I think the GlycanAge will be one of the tools to evaluate different types of therapies and interventions. It will also not be the only one. GlycanAge is primarily measuring the pro and anti inflammatory arms of the immune system, and there are many other aspects of aging.
If you’re interested in biohacking your biological age - so are we. We recently published results on using NAD booster NMN for improving you biological age
For example, cellular aging is something completely different. Something that happens within a cell, like telomeres or energy metabolism (NAD boosters) and so on.
GlycanAge is looking at the organism as a whole. I think this will be a very good tool for people to just monitor the way they are consuming their body.
In a reasonable timeframe, this will become a regular medical test, like testing the HbA1c for diabetes. We will soon be testing the IGG glycans for a low grade chronic inflammation as part of inflammaging.
Gordan’s Personal Longevity Journey with GlycanAge
LB: In your own personal longevity journey, you you've openly shared that you've tested you GlycanAge fairly frequently. You’ve learned that you go through phases, right?
For example, stress increases when there is extra work to be done, you start enjoying food a bit more and it worsens. However, then you get on to a new training regime or new diet, and your GlycanAge improves.
“Even now I’m losing weight again, and my GlycanAge is going down again. It’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint”
Is regular GlycanAge testing almost encouraging you to lead a more healthy lifestyle for your personally? Is that accurate to say?
GL: Definitely it's an indicator, which helped me to identify some of the problems I had. I don't have a magic solution for myself, my GlycanAge is still not ideal. But I have learned that my key problem is food. I like to eat too much, I should eat less.
So yes, when it GlycanAge gets too high, then I am motivated to fix it. For example, even now I'm losing weight again, and my GlycanAge is going down again. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint.
How Can You Use GlycanAge Testing?
LB: And what would you say as a closing statement for others who are out there in that same up and down? Those who are really trying to make a health lifestyle change and curious to test their GlycanAge?
What is the takeaway from your personal journey that you’d take the chance to share with them?
GL: I think the most important value in the GlycanAge test is it gives us opportunity to focus on the changes which are effective for us, because there is no standard human. For me, I have that I can occasionally have that extra cake. The cakes are not that bad for me. It's more the fruit which is not so good for me.
GlycanAge can help you customise your longevity strategy. Should you walk more? Sleep more? Eat less?
Not everything which is considered to be “healthy”, is healthy for you. So the key thing we can get from the GlycanAge test, is information about ourselves.
It's revealing the hidden secrets of our body, which we can modify, which we can change.
This allows you to see what works and what does not work for you. So whether we are going to live 50, 70, 90, 120 or 150, it doesn't really matter.
What matters is that for longest we live, we should be healthy and enjoy our lives and not suffering from different type of pain or diseases.
LB: That's a lovely place to close that off Gordan, and thank you so much for chatting with Longevity Blog today.
GL: My pleasure! Thank you for your time.
FDA & TGA DISCLAIMER
This information is intended for educational purposes only and is not meant to substitute for medical care or to prescribe treatment for any specific health condition. These blog posts are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and only may become actionable through consultation with a medical professional.
Biological Age Testing with Glycans - Glycan Age
Should you try a Glycan Age Test?
The GlycanAge test kits - a clean, elegant design with fascinating technology under the hood.
This trend is in its early stages, but is set to continue, as gathering detailed information about your body to assess how quickly it is ageing hits the mainstream.
Today, we are introducing you to a new way to assess your biological age.
Whereas previous methods we have reviewed use age-related blood markers or your epigenome for this assessment - today’s technology from GlycanAge uses your glycans.
What are Glycans? Glycans and Biological Age
To start things off, we should probably address your first likely question - what the heck are glycans?
Clearly we need to understand this a bit first, before we can understand how they can be used as a biological age measurement.
Glycans is not a term that most people are familiar with, but they actually refer to a fairly simple concept.
First, we start with monosaccharides, which include more commonly known ‘sugars’ including fructose, glucose, and galactose.
Most of us are familiar with these monosaccharides - they are the simple carbohydrates common in our diet. More broadly, they can be thought of as the ‘fuel’ for our cells, as well as the energy source for most biological organisms!
use the code “LONGEVITYBLOG” at checkout to save 15% on GlycanAge tests
Glucose Molecule (Monosaccharide)
Fructose (Another Monosaccharide)
Combining Monosaccharides to Create Glycans
In practice, monosaccharides can actually be linked together in a very wide variety of long chain-like formations. This how you create a glycan.
A very well known glycan (also known as a polysaccharide) is cellulose, take a look at how it is built out of the monosaccharides above, just in a much more complex arrangement.
Cellulose - a combination of glucose molecules to form a glycan
Glycans and information
Glycans are influential in many processes occurring within your body. One way to think of their involvement is carriers of information.
As complex arrangements, there are many unique arrangements of glycans in the body which often represent very important signals regarding your health and wellbeing.
A healthy cell, with healthy glycans at the cellular membrane (the multi-coloured squares, circles and lines). Credit: Gly-tech
The valuable ‘signal’ that these complex sugar structures can offer has resulted in the field of ‘glycoscience’, which studies wealth of information glycans have to offer.
This information includes critical details about your overall wellbeing, with the presence (or absence) of certain glycans can be indicative of many conditions in the body, including many diseases, as well as - you guessed it - the processes behind ageing itself.
Glycans, Inflammation and Ageing
An unhealthy cell, with unhealthy glycans at the cellular membrane. Credit: Gly-tech
Glycans are intimately involved with your immune system, where they are used to ‘tag’ invading pathogens, signalling the immune system to attack and remove them.
Furthermore, the wrong glycans in the wrong place can generate an immune response, which then drives inflammation.
If you’ve learned about the basics of aging, and many of you have, you’ll be quite aware of the importance of tracking and managing inflammation to stay healthy for as long as possible.
The link between inflammation and ageing is known as ‘inflammaging’.
Dive deeper? Read more about inflammaging straight from the source in this very important 2014 paper which established the concept.
High level overview: Inflammaging is the process whereby increasing levels of inflammation add continual age-related stress and damage to the body, including more inflammation - and thus a feedback cycle develops making you age even faster.
Sounds like a great thing to keep in-check, no?
The links between inflammation, aging, and glycans are what make glycans great choice for monitoring your biological age.
GlycanAge as a Biological Age test
While glycoscience still has much to learn about glycans and their role in aging, metabolism, disease and immune function, there are many decades of research and enough large datasets available to support the creation of a biological clock based on glycans.
We’ll be covering the specifics on how this works in upcoming posts, but the key takeaway is: tracking the characteristics of the glycans in your body can provide an accurate and valuable assessment of your biological age.
And in the case of GlycanAge, your biological age will be primarily influenced by four lifestyle factors:
Stress levels
Exercise load (both too little and too much)
Dietary choices (including food allergies)
Sleep (what’s the right amount for you?)
Each of these factors are known to be very influential in how you are ageing.
As such, you can use a GlycanAge test to create a baseline, before making controlled changes/improvements in these factors, and then re-testing to see if they worked (i.e. did you reduce your biological age?).
This is central to what Longevity Blog is all about - self-experimenting and customising your own longevity strategy to make the best gains in your healthspan.
Given the nature of these lifestyle factors (stress, diet, exercise), self experimenting with GlycanAge is a very accessible way to start working to improve your own biological age.
Regularly testing GlycanAge can therefore be used to monitor and improve your health over time, with each of those small changes adding up to positively impact your longevity significantly over time.
GlycanAge and Its Mission
Don’t miss it!
We’ll be interviewing glycan expert Gordon Lauc on how you can used GlycanAge to improve your own health & longevity. Subscribe to get notified when we do!
The concept of using glycans to track and positively impact your healthspan has only been made possible through the vision and ambition of GlycanAge’s CEO and Founder Nikolina Lauc
Founded in 2016, the company is built upon the foundational work carried out by expert in all things glycans Professor (and Nikolina’s father) Gordan Lauc.
But don’t take it from us - hear it straight from Nikolina herself:
GlycanAge Founder and CEO Nikolina Lauc
Describe your motivations for founding GlycanAge - what opportunity did you see?
Nikolina Lauc (NL): GlycanAge originally came out of pure scientific curiosity.
My father is a glycobiologist who's worked in the glycan research field for 30+ years, they saw that glycans change with age and were curious as to how and why they change, as well as what we can do to influence it.
Hence the term GlycanAge, actually “GlycanBioAge” originally, was coined.
Glycans are one of the key regulators of our immune system, they contribute to ageing through a process called inflammageing.
Inflammation is a key driver of almost all chronic conditions and glycans are known to change before onset of symptoms and even a decade before onset of disease, giving us an opportunity to do true prevention and extend one's healthspan.
“Glycans are known to change before onset of symptoms and even a decade before onset of disease”
How would you describe GlycanAge’s mission - what drives your team? What have you set out to achieve?
NL: We want to keep you and your loved ones around for longer through precision health.
Our mission is to bring glycoscience into the hands of both clinicians and consumers to inform, guide and preserve your future health.
Glycans have a large influence on your unique biology, they play an intermediary role between your genetic potential and end phenotype, their true value lies in uncovering which intervention or lifestyle works for you particularly as an individual.
How has regularly testing your own GlycanAge improved your wellness?
“Glycans true value lies in uncovering which intervention or lifestyle works for you particularly as an individual.”
NL: Although my GlycanAge has always been favourable, regular testing helps me measure the damage (for example - COVID lockdowns and weight gain), and get back on track through sustainable change.
Beyond me, I've probably tested the majority of my extended family!
Coming Up:
(1) An interview with GLYCAN expert Gordon Lauc (read that here!)
(2) How our Founder Nick is using GlycanAge to run his own self-experiment (read it here)
Follow our Founder Nick on Twitter for the latest #Longevity news!
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“The #longevity segment opened my eyes to the groundbreaking advances in biotechnology, health, and wellness. The i… https://t.co/F8YB7PAeMW
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I’m completely mindblown by what AI has done over the past 3-6 months, and it continues to accelerate… https://t.co/hh0JslucRg
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Longevity legends take on many shapes and sizes https://t.co/X9vGa7gvOe
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RT @BradStanfieldMD: Avoid These Popular Supplements (shout out to Professor Matt Kaeberlein @mkaeberlein & Professor Brian Kennedy… https://t.co/cy9CXldgUS
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Who are influential persons in #longevity who are of Asian, African American or other “minority” group in the US?
Nick also posts related #Longevity content to Instagram as well, follow him at @nickengerer
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This information is intended for educational purposes only and is not meant to substitute for medical care or to prescribe treatment for any specific health condition. These blog posts are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and only may become actionable through consultation with a medical professional.