tanuki

Thanks @mccoy , will dive in when I have a moment @IgorF Actually I wouldn't expect much benefit from any short term studies. The main antiaging benefit of the carnosine should be decreasing burden of dietary AGEs and the formation of the new ones inside body, that's why I tend to take it with a meal. Cardiovascular disease takes many years to develop and AGEs are only one of factors there so it's dubious if anything can be find in 14 weeks study. The most reasonable study would be lifelong study of animals where the experimental arm would be supplemented with carnosine, then we could evaluate it's effect on the survival rates. Something like ITP mice study. Potential issue is that AGEs are only one of the hallmarks of ageing so in isolation effect could be too small to be detectable, especially in mice that often die due to cancer that as far as I know isn't affected in any way by glycation. Don't know if taurine has behind many research showing efficacy in preventing glycation so not sure if thats an alternative.

I was using carnosine for several years since I read an article showing 20% lifespan extension in mice fed with carnosine. There were also several human studies showing decrease in AGE formation but I think all of them used obese/diabetic individuals. As the supplement is quite expensive (~40$ per month) I am considering if it is worth such money so recently I revised the available studies. Turned out that the most promising study, the one that showed life extension in mice was using senescence accelerated mice and it improved only average not maximal lifespan: http://protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v65/full/65071018.html Strangely , I couldn't find any more lifespan studies with this supplement, the one above was done over 20 years ago. Moreover for some reason SENS foundation members never mention it and decided to go with other agents in their anti AGE program. Seems strange that nobody in anti ageing field further tried to explore it and it remained pretty obscure comparing with other supplements like NAD or astaxanthin. Is there some reason for that I am missing? It seems like a good candidate for ITP study. Have you heard about more recent studies using carnosine?

Unfortunately in study they didn't observe increase in maximal lifespan only median so might not be so useful for people having healthy lifestyle and low risk of diabetes, low inflammation etc. Might be useful biomarker to keep track on as one ages and supplement when needed.

Thanks, I am going to try freestyle libre 2, they are currently offering one sensor for free to new customers - at least in UK.

Thanks for expanding on it, really informative I decided to buy one of CGM but seems that reviews are overwhelmingly negative for both systems: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/dexcom.com https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/freestylelibre.co.uk They mentioned constant errors and readings way off compared with finger pricks to the point it seems unusable Have you guys tried any of those two systems?

As I understand there are two problems with elevated blood glucose - spikes in insulin that hypothetically can lead to diabetes later in life and higher chance for protein to react with glucose to create more AGEs. The first claim hasn't been proved, I'm more worrying about the second issue as we know that is happening among diabetics. So it would make sense to minimize level of glucose just to minimize rate of AGE formation during lifetime as we still don't have any method to undo damage they make. I was surprised by some readings I took, noticed that after eating sweets and ice cream the spike is rather normal and comes down pretty quickly while eating complex carbs like potatoes gives me a big long lasting spike. The worst thing to me seems to be drinking alcohol while eating - elevation in glucose can persist until the next day. Another questions, I looked at dexcom and they offer several products - one, G6, G7 but it seems for us not having diabetes it doesn't matter which we choose, is that right?

thanks for sharing your insights, I'm using finger pricks but their accuracy is pretty dismal, I can get relatively high 5.4 on one finger while other finger shows me nice and low 4.8. I think only affordable option will be buying cgm pack for 1-2 months, observer patterns and adjust lifestyle and diet to minimize peaks. I'm intrigued what concerns you can have about addressing peaks in healthy people?

It seems both options are pretty expensive I thought it's just one time purchase but actually they have to be constantly repurchased so for example libre cost 110 Pounds for 2 sensors that can last max 28 days Dexcom costs around 160 pounds per month. It's few times more expensive than using finger pricks though obviously it's only option if I want to monitor glucose during sleep or exercise. According to your post they aren't any more accurate than finger pricks, correct?

I am thinking about buying continous glucose monitor, has anyone made some research on it and can recommend me the most reliable one?

Thanks for sharing that podcast I recently watched the one with Sniderman He also said (at 49:50) that there is no evidence that changing HDL has any impact on risk so I stopped worrying about it, at least one less thing to keep track of.

Actually it's ratio of Total Cholesterol to HDL - one of the things they usually put on report here I also believe they are not bad though probably there is a room to improvement My understanding from perspective of CVD is that there is that the lower numbers for non-hdl and triglycrides - the better

Good to see you back Matt, I hope you get better soon I was reading a bit more about Finasteride and my conclusion is that it's a bit of russian roullette and risk is really skewed - vast majority of users don't have any issue whatsoever but for 1-2% , probably having some unfortunate genotype it might turn out to have really awful side effects, most likely untreatable for now. My hair loss issue is not very serious, it's more like mature hairline and my intention was to get it back to more juvenile stage. I am not even sure if finasteride would be effective for that.

Thanks for really useful info, didn't expect that test prices can vary so much between countries. Most likely will do it and probably a bunch of other tests when I go to Europe. My results were: Serum chol - 147mg (3.8 mmol) non-hdl - 108 mg (2.8 mmol) Chol/Hdl 3.8 triglycerides - 124 mg (1.4 mmol) They seem relatively good so don't know if pushing them down can bring any further benefit in risk reduction However it might be just that existing studies are too short term to detect it. I am still young and I consider risk in perspective of living for next 100 years so it can matter if the risk is linear and the lower chol and non-hdl chol - the lower risk.

That's interesting, I often listen to Attia's podcast and somehow I missed that bit. Is there some known common ways to optimize ApoB? Not sure if that's viable to test it regularly, I see it's costing over 150 GBP if I want to do it privately, it's doubtful that NHS will be happy to sponsor it.

Recently I have blood tests done and generally everything looks great, I calculated my biological age through PhenoAge and AgingAI 3.0 and they gave me results lower than my chronological age by 9-10 years. One thing that worries me though is low level of HDL - I had 0.99 mmol/L (38.3 mg/dl) so slightly below the range considered healthy. I'm doing resistance training 2-3 days a week and walking at least 1h-2h on the other days so I am quite active. I am eating good quality olive oil (1-2 tbsp) nearly every day, nuts, flax seeds, oily fish, low in saturated fats and I got a lot of fiber (>50g). Diet is mildly CR. So I am doing a lot of things that should elevate HDL and have no ideas what else can I do. I noticed that this level was quite low in the past as well and I suspect there might be some genetic component in it as my grandmother died relatively early due to cardiovascular disease. Any ideas how to get it higher?