@Sextravert & @AJD
I fully agree that BMI is not any optimal measurement but the thing here is not to just take one measurement and just look at that. It’s important to take different things into consideration which can make one measurement showing a wrong value. For example, if you stand on the north pole and use a compass it would point in a random direction. Does this mean that compass is a bad measurement? No, we just need to be aware of its limitations when it shows correct data and when not. The same thing with BMI and other measurements. Like body fat percentage can be impacted by hydration. Dexa scan solve this but most people can not use such scans too often because of there cost. Another measurement is HOMA IR score which checks if a person is insulin resistant or not. Does not work so well on people who are lean. It works best on more overweight people. So measurements are not perfect.
@AJD
Blood pressure both hypertension and hypotension, are interesting ones. I will add those to the list.
@arugula
I would argue that overmuscled is not aligned with a very long life. I don’t think for example we will see any body builder to become a centenarian. But most people are not over muscled and body builders. Most people have a tough time in building muscle and maintaining it. If you find values for over muscled I can add those. If I remember it right, Siim Land talked about BMI as one measurement here for people who are building muscle. I found the video in which he talks a little bit about it.
@PolishGentleman
Yes, they got “worse” biomarkers on for example glucose and lived longer but when Acarbose was added they lived even longer. So I would argue that the glucose biomarker probably showed right that things was not optimal. It would be very interesting if ITP could test combining rapamycin with some kind of cholesterol lowering drug to see if that also gives synergistics effects.
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I would not think anabolic steroids are a pro longevity intervention. Otherwise a reasonable amount of muscle mass has to be sensible for a wide range of reasons. I have more muscle now than when I was in my 20s (43 years ago).
When it comes to steroids I will stick to Vitamin D and its vitaminers.
It is worth using BMI, but in the knowledge of its inadequacies as a measure.
You are right. This is also what Siim Land talks about in the video clip I linked to.
DMac
#24
As a non-medical layperson, I find InsideTracker useful to track the impacts of interventions on key biomarkers
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What biomarker/s or value/s in the insidetracker that you keep an extra eye on when checking the impact of interventions?
DMac
#26
Hi @Krister_Kauppi - I like how the app gives personalised and optimised targets.
Presently, I’m interested in lipids and glucose. I have high Lp(a) and LDL (gotta love genes). Currently I’m on a Rapa vacation as both these biomarkers increased since being on it. Will see what the next blood draw brings….
Another reason I like insidetracker is that I feel it has increased my health literacy. For instance, I had a really low ferritin reading at one point. My GP was that concerned that he wanted to schedule a colonoscopy and endoscopy. The InsideTracker app flagged this reading as a concern but also mentioned that if I had donated blood in the last month, then it could take a little bit of time to replenish this biomarker. I had donated blood 3 weeks before. When I mentioned this to the GP, they asked why I did not tell them this. I retested about a month later and my ferritin was optimised.
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scta123
#27
I always liked this Blagosklonny’s article about
Koschei the immortal, where he is hypothesizing about longevity and body constitution.
https://www.nature.com/articles/cddis2014520
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AJD
#28
I think you overestimate how much muscle you need to cross the threshold into “overweight”. You don’t need to be muscle bound or a body builder. You could be short, stocky and strong. Or naturally very athletic. For years I fought with doctors (while I was a professional dancer) about their characterizing me as overweight because of their BMI charts. Yet my body fat was under 20%—very low for a woman. I’m not really talking about obesity, but just the notion that BMI should be used as a key indicator. Hip/waist rations. Measures of blood lipid profiles. Visceral fat measures. All of these seem to me like more useful indicators of healthy body weight/composition.
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Probably there isn’t one measurement that would take it all in, but combination of many different measurements that gives a real picture.
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“Too much muscle”. Who here has the misfortune of acquiring more muscle than they wanted? I find it funny to hear people talk about gaining muscle as a problem. It is possible to have a lot of muscle (“bodybuilder”), even without steroids, but the acquisition of such muscle has to be a focus of your life. And should a person wake up one day with too much muscle, just stop doing whatever caused it. It won’t stick around. BMI is a bad metric for individuals but seems to work at a population level. My 2 cents.
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A better alternative to BMI seems to be waist to hip ratio, at least, as a cardiac risk prognosticator, according Rudolf E. Noble, MD, Ph.D, of the Cathedral Hill Obesity Clinic in San Francisco.
Sample size is small - 57 obese women.
The data show that in this sample of obese women, waist-to-hip ratio is a better indicator of poor cardiac status than BMI. The former measure was significantly linked not only to the 2 traditional harbingers of unfavorable cardiac status (blood pressure and total cholesterol/HDL cholesterol), but also to triglycerides, another atherogenic index. In contrast, BMI was significantly linked only to the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol.
Taiwanese scientists state:
Our findings suggested that WHR is a better anthropometric index for predicting the risk of type 2 diabetes, and the optimal cutoff values of WHR are considered as 0.89 for men and 0.82 for women in the Taiwanese population.
Both BMI and WHR provide ease of calculation.
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A lot of youtube “gurus” who profess to be longevity experts seem to be going down this route. They eat a lot of animals, too. I don’t understand how they justify either. I totally get eating fish twice a week and using resistance training to stay lean, mobile, and stave off sarcopenia, but they take it way too far. It seems to me that for a lot of men, excess muscle mass and meat-eating is strongly rooted in their ideas of what it means to be masculine.
As for myself, I would like to replace a a few lbs of fat with muscle but it’s very difficult for me. I have to work very hard in the gym just to look firm, not flabby. I am not going to blame it on my age (pushing 60) or gender (female) or protein intake (not high) but my beta thalassemia minor. Thanks, Dad!
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LaraPo
#33
My WHR is 0.72, which is almost ideal, but my LDL is high. Does it mean that I still have good cardiac status?
The study said WHR is a better indicator of poor cardiac status. It is better than BMI at indicating if one is sick. But scoring well does not necessarily say you are in good health; just that you are not sick. It is one measurement.
Similarly, LDL is only one measurement. Cardiologists and IMs will look at other factors before saying that one is at risk of CVD. If I remember correctly, rivasp12 has stated in one thread that LDL below 190 can be addressed by lifestyle changes. That no meds are prescribed at that level, means it is a manageable, not a big risk.
I think I saw you post somewhere that your LDL is in the 150s.
Many here, will disagree with this Cardiologist. But keep an open mind.
Dr. Nadir Ali is an interventional cardiologist with over 25 years of experience. He is also the chairman of the Department of Cardiology at Clear Lake Regional Medical Center. Before working as a cardiologist, he served as an assistant professor of medicine for eight years at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he also received his medical training.
Video is informative, and the delivery is engaging.
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By the same reason, aliens must be real because Grusch has credentials.
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LaraPo
#37
Yes, my LDL was in the 150s. Stopped taking rosuvastatin. Will measure ApoB, etc. soon.
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Perhaps a closed mind is one that ignores decades of research and testing and the predominant opinion of cardiologists in favor of someone who has second-rate credentials and an alternative viewpoint.
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I believe that there was a mouse study that showed diabetes plus Rapamycin equals reduced life expectancy.
Therefore different diseases such as diabetes may make different protocols such as Rapamycin detrimental. Hence the need for Metformin or Acarbose.
I would argue that if your blood glucose measurements are prediabetic or worse, you should not use Rapamycin without Metformin. And maybe not even then depending on the severity of the disease.
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@DeStrider Agreed. High blood sugar is deadly. I am fighting it big time.
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