Hello and welcome to another episode of “WTF Happened to My Body?”. I am your host Natalie Garay. We're going to hop right into this. Today's episode is another one of my new obsessions, which is biological age. And this is something I'm learning more about as well, on my journey to find out WTF is going on with my body.
So, in the last couple episodes, I talked about how I recently did some new blood work through a company called Function Health. I don't have any affiliation with it or anything, but Dr. Mark Hyman is one of the co-founders and he is one of my favorite authors. He's written a few amazing books.
One of my favorites is called “Young Forever”. And I decided to sign up for this Function Health blood work that he offers. It's a membership, it's a yearly membership, and you get some extensive blood work done. And it's just taking a deeper dive into what's going on with my body. Well, I got some new results back, and these aren't all the results, so I've been getting them in waves, in phases.
So, I received some about a week or two ago, and I talked about those in the last couple of episodes. And then recently, I got another set of blood work and to my surprise and delight, it showed my biological age. Which I'll explain what that is in a second, as by my biological age is 33.3 years, meaning my body is showing up 14.5 years younger than I actually am.
14.5 seems like a lot. I was maybe hoping for like a year or two. I know that certain diets, I mean, I'm going to read to you in a second what all of this entails and what factors play into decreasing our biological age. So, 33.3 years is what my biological age shows up, meaning that my calendar years differ from my biological years.
So, I'm going to read to you what this says according to the description that they offered. It says, Calendar age, also known as chronological age, is the number of years that have passed since birth. We know this. Okay. Biological age, on the other hand, is an indicator of the quality and rate of aging on a genetic, cellular, and molecular level.
Faster biological aging increases the risk of diseases associated with aging, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, cognitive decline, and dementia. Kidney failure, hormonal imbalances, muscle and bone loss, autoimmunity, and macular degenerate, oh my goodness, degeneration. So, again, dementia was something my mom was diagnosed with.
She eventually passed due to the effects of dementia. That was three years ago. And when she was diagnosed, actually it wasn't until after she passed that I started taking huge measures to find out what is going on with my body to see if I could prevent it or prolong it. And what was going on with my body, finding a baseline and seeing what I could improve.
I also have a family predisposition for diabetes. So That was something that I wanted to take a look at as well. And I've learned a lot about metabolic health. Which I'm going to do a whole episode on too, and that is just looking at the foods that you eat and how it spikes your glucose levels.
And consistent glucose spikes breaks down the cells in the mitochondria, which then can lead to aging more quickly, to disease, etc. And what that looked like for me was using a continuous glucose monitor, which are more and more available for people who don't necessarily have diabetes, but want to control their glucose levels and find out exactly how their eating habits affect their glucose levels.
So, like I said, I'll do a whole episode about that because that has changed a lot of how I eat, my activity level and the order in which I have my activity level and then eat, which is really fascinating to me too. And there's a whole book about it by the co-founder, which I have not read yet.
And it's in my Audible library called ‘Good Energy’. I believe her name is Dr. Casey Means, and I could be wrong on the last name, but she wrote a book about glucose monitoring and the company that she-co founded to stay on track of that. So going back to biological age versus chronological age, I'm going to share a little bit more about what they say here.
Biological aging occurs as a person gradually accumulates cell damage, which affects cells’ ability to repair, rebuild, and function. Here's an example. Two people with identical calendar ages can be very different biological ages. You may be 60 years old by calendar, but 40 years old biologically.
At the same time, your 40 year old peer might be 70 years old biologically. Everything we do impacts our biological age, diet, exercise, environmental toxins, and physical and emotional stress. Optimizing those inputs and others like prioritizing quality sleep, reducing exposure to environmental toxins, and even using certain phytochemicals can reverse your biological age.
While eating a high sugar, starch, ultra processed diet, being sedentary, overstressed, and sleep deprived will accelerate biological age. You can't change your calendar age, but you can reverse your biological age. I think this is really cool. Obviously, I'm sharing about this because while I can't advise you on anything or prescribe anything or offer any advice, what I can share is my experience.
And this is how I'm learning about my body and how I hope to better help moms north of 40 who are experiencing any sort of these symptoms or things that are related to aging or hormone shifts or cognitive decline. All of my favorite things to learn about and talk about and share about.
And I thought that this was intriguing, fascinating. Also, of course, exciting for me to know that I'm 47 going on 33.3. But just a little bit of information about what I've been doing. So again, I went to see a functional medicine late 2022, which led to doing some extensive blood work showing me the foods that caused inflammation in my body.
So it should be foods to avoid and foods that I should be eating more of. I've always been active, but I was swimming a lot at the time, walking a lot at the time, picked up my Pilates practice a little bit more. And so that helps, of course. I also have used a sauna blanket more. So environmental toxins, you know, are hard to avoid, but we can certainly support ourself and our body by releasing those through infrared sauna or a sauna blanket, which I have because that fits in my apartment more conveniently.
And then supplementation. So it showed when we did this extensive blood work, it showed the micronutrients that my body was deficient in, which leads to, you know, various symptoms. And so I would supplement with food and also with tablets, pills. What do you call them? Also in this platform of this function, Health Bloodwork, shares foods that are recommended to eat in general.
There are foods specific to my body that I do eat. It says foods containing building blocks for the body's biology, and the instructions or code that determines the function of the biological software. You can upgrade or downgrade your biological software with every bite.
A diet rich in whole foods, good fats, fibers, probiotics, phytonutrients can enhance methylation. All your DNA does is code for proteins. Consuming high quality protein is essential to good health, especially with age. Foods to eliminate; obviously ultra processed foods, dramatically cut sugar and starch, which drive almost all the hallmarks of aging.
And then it gives tips for self care. And then how is your biological age calculated? Let's see. Typically, biological age is calculated by measuring methyl groups placement of DNA. Think of them as bookmarks pointing to the pages that need to be read in your book of life. There are indirect ways to get a sense of your biological age by assessing some biomarkers.
So, again, they did about how many biomarkers? 30 or more biomarkers with this blood work that they took. Maybe more, I think it might be more. And, so they calculate that, including the health and function of my liver, kidneys, blood sugar, inflammation, immune defense, red blood health, and more.
These systems greatly influence the way the body can age effectively over time, and keeping a healthy baseline of these can positively impact DNA methylation. On the flip side, if the baseline tilts negatively, the biological age may as well. And then it goes on to talk about the ways, again, in which it's calculated
Epigenetics and DNA methylation; it talks about what they are and how they help. That stuff really fascinates me, talking about the cells, DNA, genes, and epigenetics. I don't know if it fascinates you as much, but in his book, Young Forever, Dr. Mark Hyman compares the epigenome to software that runs your life program.
You can create different outputs by changing the inputs, which are food, exercise, stress, sleep, pharmaceuticals, supplements, et cetera. The epigenome controls which genes are turned on or off, shaping your unique path. Which he says is good news because we can modify our gene expression, whether a gene is on or off, and choose a story of vitality and health.
So he shares an example here. A good example of this is Alzheimer's genotype as seen in the APOE biomarker, which is one of the blood tests. If the APOE4 variant, the highest risk variant, is present, it doesn't mean that the person will get Alzheimer's. They can potentially alter whether or not that genetic switch stays on or off by supporting the brain and body with healthy inputs.
It's possible to prevent and reverse the hallmarks of aging that accelerate all age related diseases- Alzheimer's and dementia, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, to name a few- by supporting the healthy functioning of our cells and DNA processes. So, just a little bit more insight onto what my health journey has been, and again, this is all preventative for me.
There was nothing screaming at me to say ‘you need to do this,’ other than because my mom developed dementia. My grandmother was also diagnosed with Alzheimer's. We don't know what they had as far as their genes go, whether these were gene related or lifestyle related. But my sister and I guess and think that they were lifestyle related.
And if that's the case, then I know that I can prevent or prolong any of this from happening to me. And, again, according to Dr. Mark Hyman, even if I did have the gene, it would just be a matter of those genes being switched on, according to my health routines and food intake. And that I can take control of and that I can not do to make sure that I can prevent it.
So take this information as information. If you're curious about it and you have questions about it, I'm more than happy to share with you the platform that I used to dive a little bit deeper into my blood work and the functioning of my body. I'm always happy to share the resources that I love and find to be very helpful.
And once I do finally graduate with my degree, I'm more than happy to help you on your health journey as a naturopathic doctor. And I'll be sharing more about that journey here and on my website and through my social media which are ‘Natalie Says WTF’. Also, go to my website, nataliesayswtf.com and sign up to get updates on when the book will be launched, and the wellness hub that I am putting together to support moms north of 40 who are wanting to find the answers to their WTF questions.
Thank you for joining me. Please share this episode with a mom that you know could benefit from any of this information because we can only be happier and healthier and stronger together by sharing what we know.
And that is the purpose of this podcast. Until next time, my friends, I'll see you then.
