We keep the brain and the immune system in biologically dark boxes for 93% of our lives :300-lux office light barely registers on the SCN.
IMO we starve the brain and immune system of an essential biological input. Zheng et al tracked 87,577 people (UK BIobank x 8.2 yrs): 1000 lux average, 16% lower dementia risk.
The glymphatic system is cut short on light-starved days (i.e., most) so beta-amyloid and tau accumulate.
In your p-tau217 trial: are you controlling for daytime lux, or just sleep? Because if the coaching moves people outdoors, the light may be doing work you'd otherwise credit to the exercise.
It's a multi-prong 24/7 aggressive coachng strategy for promoting physical activity, sleep health, and all lifestyle factors vs some education materials.
Thank you for your work. I think the article would have been a little more clear if you have included a two sentence explanation of what ‘large-scale proteomics (proteins or other omics/biological metrics and imaging)’ studies are for the layman.
Without meaning to be unduly flattering I found this article and the link to the Nature article to be a brilliant synopsis of an area of science that is exploding at a pace so rapid that the average person can barely keep up with the concepts, to say nothing of the terminology of the proteins and gene components that now number in the thousands of things that are measurable. From a simplistic point of view how can a tube of blood contain 11,000 proteins and remain liquid? So we want to live longer and healthier, but 'we' are unable to try to agree on the steps necessary to combat climate change which just accounted for thousands of deaths? And vaccine hesitancy? Interesting to say the least. I had to look up the meaning of heterochronic parabiosis but I understand that the international society of mouse well-being has raised some moral concerns, which I hope never become something humans have to worry about. Thank you again for a brilliant education, which has proven once again that some people, those who are doing this research, are genetically smarter than others. (me)
Non-scientist here...I can pretty much follow the shape of what you have written here....but one word in one sentence keeps tripping me up. What is the meaning of "simple" in the following?
(Apologies if it has been made obvious and I missed it.)
"Put another way, simple people with APOE 4 are not at high risk for Alzheimer’s, but we didn’t have a way to know that before."
Maybe the future isn't only about replacing chronological age with better numbers, but figuring out how those numbers fit with other dimensions of the aging process. Molecular clocks and functional performance might capture different aspects of aging or help validate each other if they're pointing in the same direction. Do you think routine practice will eventually assess both - for example, pairing organ and cell age estimates with standardized measures like running / walking speed, balance and grip strength? Or will molecular clocks become sufficiently predictive on their own?
We keep the brain and the immune system in biologically dark boxes for 93% of our lives :300-lux office light barely registers on the SCN.
IMO we starve the brain and immune system of an essential biological input. Zheng et al tracked 87,577 people (UK BIobank x 8.2 yrs): 1000 lux average, 16% lower dementia risk.
The glymphatic system is cut short on light-starved days (i.e., most) so beta-amyloid and tau accumulate.
In your p-tau217 trial: are you controlling for daytime lux, or just sleep? Because if the coaching moves people outdoors, the light may be doing work you'd otherwise credit to the exercise.
It's a multi-prong 24/7 aggressive coachng strategy for promoting physical activity, sleep health, and all lifestyle factors vs some education materials.
Pragmatic…great.
The tradeoff is attribution. Move sleep and activity together and light is hiding
Cheap fix: a wrist lux sensor as a covariate…lets you ask later how much of the p-tau217 signal tracks light versus exercise.
Would enjoy talking this through properly sometime. Hard to do light dosing justice in a comment thread.
Thank you for your work. I think the article would have been a little more clear if you have included a two sentence explanation of what ‘large-scale proteomics (proteins or other omics/biological metrics and imaging)’ studies are for the layman.
I'll add that in. Thanks
Without meaning to be unduly flattering I found this article and the link to the Nature article to be a brilliant synopsis of an area of science that is exploding at a pace so rapid that the average person can barely keep up with the concepts, to say nothing of the terminology of the proteins and gene components that now number in the thousands of things that are measurable. From a simplistic point of view how can a tube of blood contain 11,000 proteins and remain liquid? So we want to live longer and healthier, but 'we' are unable to try to agree on the steps necessary to combat climate change which just accounted for thousands of deaths? And vaccine hesitancy? Interesting to say the least. I had to look up the meaning of heterochronic parabiosis but I understand that the international society of mouse well-being has raised some moral concerns, which I hope never become something humans have to worry about. Thank you again for a brilliant education, which has proven once again that some people, those who are doing this research, are genetically smarter than others. (me)
Extremely kind of you and I'm very appreciative of your feedback!
As always an interesting read!!
Thank you!
Outstanding translational medicine that will clearly benefit patients
Non-scientist here...I can pretty much follow the shape of what you have written here....but one word in one sentence keeps tripping me up. What is the meaning of "simple" in the following?
(Apologies if it has been made obvious and I missed it.)
"Put another way, simple people with APOE 4 are not at high risk for Alzheimer’s, but we didn’t have a way to know that before."
Maybe the future isn't only about replacing chronological age with better numbers, but figuring out how those numbers fit with other dimensions of the aging process. Molecular clocks and functional performance might capture different aspects of aging or help validate each other if they're pointing in the same direction. Do you think routine practice will eventually assess both - for example, pairing organ and cell age estimates with standardized measures like running / walking speed, balance and grip strength? Or will molecular clocks become sufficiently predictive on their own?