“After 8 months of Blueprint I reduced my epigenetic age by 5.1 yrs in 7 months” | Hacker News Reader

“After 8 months of Blueprint I reduced my epigenetic age by 5.1 yrs in 7 months”

blueprint.bryanjohnson.co

26 pointsyasp36 comments

I would not put much trust into some poorly-understood biomarkers, especially ones that have grandiose naming like epigenetic age. The naming alone implies more than I suspect these markers can deliver.

The price is also kinda ridiculous, $70 a day for meals and supplements.

Holy crap that's over $2,100/month! Over $25,500/year. Even discounting the regular food you are not eating this is crazy.

Well, the guy sold his company for $800M. It's pocket change to him.

Especially when an example of a biomarker is ability to hear out of the left ear. Yes, fixing that (if you could) could improve your quality of life, but unless there's a train coming from the left side, it won't make you live longer.

Those tests also seem ripe for the nocebo effect.

All this testing and measuring seems a coping mechanism for trying to find and control some sort of objective measures in squishy, uncertain, biology.

As far as I understood the epigenetic age this refers to are a bunch of DNA methylation tests. All the other tests are in addition to this.

Ah, that makes more sense, though it still looks like someone with anxiety around the uncontrollable to me.

This screams of Goodhart’s Law, or gaming the metrics. Once you go around messing with biomarker of some disease (i.e., age) the metrics are no longer indicative of the underlying phenomenon.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Depends on the disease. Mess around with the biomarker for scurvy and all that will happen is you cure the scurvy.

You know what I find interesting. You pick any food or diet that you believe is healthy, and you'll find someone with some sort of credentials that will tell you otherwise.

https://www.kevinstock.io/health/health-dangers-of-crucifero...

Well now I don’t know what to believe about one more thing…

Human diets have been like that for as long as I remember. The whole cholesterol hysteria of the 90s? converted me to just not consider that science to be settled for decades. Eating a lot of veggies seems to have held up so far

This is pretty funny. It’s like how tomatoes are bad for you because they’re in the nightshade family. I suppose moderation is all I can suggest.

Halfway through the article he brushes off hormetic effects. But it seems likely that a lot of things associated with health and longevity are probably hormetic.

Cold showers, hot baths, moderate exercise, low amounts of alcohol, intermittent fasting, low amounts of psychological stress... all have papers documenting beneficial effects with at least some speculating due to activating body's repair systems (hormesis).

Anyway, the idea that the beneficial effects of vegetables are due to plant defenses isn't an unusual idea - this was on the front page of HN a while back. https://nautil.us/fruits-and-vegetables-are-trying-to-kill-y...

Oh, and on the meat front, if you're into that, I'd suggest fish and birds, avoiding mammals due to the neu5gc autoimmune thing. Or at least, don't overdo it on the mammal.

To my best knowledge there is no benefit in low doses of alcohol.

The trick to make that visible was to exclude all those people who never drank any alcohol due to previous alcohol related health reason from the studies.

That increased health in the group of tee totaleres to such an extend that all seeming benefits of alcohol vanished.

It's hard to control for population effects for sure, but I don't think anyone has successfully done the control you stated. There are a ton of studies finding varying effects like improving "good" cholesterol, and reducing chance of coronary heart disease. But it's also been speculated to have hormetic effects, so just tossing it in there as a plausible. It wouldn't be surprising given how the vegetable thing might work.

Given alcohol crosses cultural and religious lines too, that also makes it harder to find unbiased analyses.

My personal rate of consumption is 125ml of red wine per day. That's just about in the sweet spot if there is one for beneficial effects. Also one of the better forms of alcohol for them. At any rate it's unlikely to do significant harm and is fun to consume. I'd like to note I have family members over 100 who drank red wine every day, and it might also be part of the "french paradox"

<<Anyway, the idea that the beneficial effects of vegetables are due to plant defenses isn't an unusual idea

The beneficial effects of plant-based diets (according to Sinclair, podcasts) is due to lower activation of mTor by plant protein vs. animal protein (also apart from various beneficial plant fibers, flavonols and polyphenols). Animal protein activates mTor most highly, and it is the inhibition of mTor (after main development) that correlates most robustly with healthspan.

Epigenetic clocks are really hit-and-miss and are mostly used at population levels and not a good way to measure changes in a single human. They may be accurate +/- 5 years, which he even says in his footnotes.

Which is not to say he didn't get a lot healthier, but the focus on biological age/epigenetic clocks seems to be more of a marketing instrument than anything else.

The muscle definition is impressive. I think there are less expensive ways to achieve this, though.

Some of the supplements are questionable here. I would be careful taking NADH supplements given some conflicting evidence of benefit.[0] I would also be careful about supplements in general given that perhaps half do not contain the main ingredient listed on the label and unlisted contaminants and fillers are often present.[1]

References:

0. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cancer-research-p...

1. https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-...

For someone familiar with the science can you comment on the typical uncertainty/variation in epigenetic age measurement? I love error bars, wish they were mandatory.

Okay this I find a bit absurd:

>Fitness Scores (ref: ACSM) Scoring equal t to top 10% of 18 year olds in the following: Bench press single rep max, 235lbs

Why are you comparing your max lifts against an 18 year old? Since when are they the ones lifting the most? This doesn't seem to indicate anything at all

It usually takes years of training to get to big weights and most 18 year olds don't lift at all so that "top 10%" statement is meaningless

Yeah sorry 235lbs 1RM isn’t a good metric even for an 18 y/o lifter

Maybe he’s comparing them to look good or b/c he’s measuring against his children (he mentions teenage son)

This guy isn't a lifter though, and 235lbs at 160lbs bodyweight is really good for someone who isn't.

I had a friend who was 150-160 with a 315 max so is it really?

Others who are that weight can hit 350+

To be able to bench over 200 you have to have done at least some chest/press training

That specific lift wasn't even what I took issue with, it was the fact that he's comparing himself against 18 year olds. The first lift was just left in my copy/paste

It’s better than not lifting but it’s nothing to brag about for sure. Most people I know who train or lift and are ~160lbs usually do 225lbs for reps (~5 or so).

I wouldn’t even comment on this, but did catch my eye and knocked some credibility points off / made me question significance of other metrics

Someone should make a fad diet calendar, you can have a different diet every day!

Whatever happened to the ancestral diet? I was looking forward to sauerbraten and spatzle every meal.

Spätzle was poor people food, so it does not combine well with Sauerbraten in the eyes of the ancestors.

Where are the bodies at, Bryan?

I bet $100 this guy will mess up his kidneys soon.

Have you seen those meals? I’d rather kill myself here and now

I stopped at the cost $62.91 / day (vary by geography)

Costs more per day than the food for my whole family and not even includes Weißbier, I'll pass

Honestly, if you remove the ton of supplements he takes for dubious reason, only look at the meal and realise you can probably substitute some of the most expensive ingredients for similar but cheaper ones, it's just a fairly sane vegan diet: protein rich beans and grains, steamed greens, mushrooms, olive oil, fatty nuts.

No idea why it costs him so much.

Yeah that was my thought too when skimming over it ... A lot of it is just whole plant-based foods, and 90% of people will probably get all the benefit from just that, leaving aside all the supplements.

The one thing I think is good is the variety of ingredients/produce, and that can be fairly expensive (but probably not as expensive as what they're charging). You can do it cheaply if you live near a market, and have multiple people with a similar diet

I think the most useful thing here is the list of supplements at the end. Isn’t there a study from this week that says nicotinamide is carcinogenic?

Not precisely, but it appears to make existing cancers worse[1], so definitely risky.

1: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221111155632.h...

You’re taking melatonin every night? Good luck trying to fall asleep without it in a few months.

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