#310 - Can We Measure Aging Well Enough to Treat It? | Dr. Nir Barzilai & Mike Haney

Aging science has gotten much better at describing who appears to be aging faster or slower. What medicine still lacks is a reliable feedback loop: a way to tell whether something we do is actually changing the biology that drives age-related disease.Dr. Nir Barzilai argues that solving that measurement problem could turn geroscience from an interesting field of research into something doctors can actually use: measure where you are, intervene, measure again, and learn what works.Free course: Improve your metabolic healthGet our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠What We Cover:What centenarians reveal about living longer and spending less time sickWhy changing one hallmark of aging can affect several othersHow TAME was designed to test metformin as an anti-aging drug and to convince the FDA to treat aging itself as an endpoint—and why it failed to get off the groundWhy metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists, and some osteoporosis drugs are being studied as potential gerotherapeutics, or anti-aging drugsHow FAST is searching existing clinical trials for biomarkers that change when an intervention affects aging biologyWhether aging needs continuous monitoring or can be meaningfully tracked a few times a year🎙️ About the Guest:Dr. Nir Barzilai is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research and a professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he directs the Institute for Geroscience. 📍What Dr. Nil Barzilai & Mike Haney discussed:05:10 - Aging is a condition, not just a label05:59 - Why aging is what drives disease08:19 - Should we call aging a disease?10:20 - Why the species may have a ceiling around 11514:34 - Why changing one hallmark of aging changes the others23:08 - Metformin was anti-aging before it was a diabetes drug31:55 - Centenarians live longer and spend less time sick40:12 - How TAME tried to make aging an FDA endpoint48:17 - Metformin, SGLT2s, GLP-1s, and osteoporosis drugs as gerotherapeutics52:26 - FAST: finding biomarkers that actually change with treatment56:49 - Whether aging needs continuous monitoring, or a few checks a year1:01:16 - Where behavior still fits once we have anti-aging drugs🔗 Helpful Links:Hallmarks of Aging: An Expanding Universe (Cell, 2023) PaperCompression of Morbidity Is Observed Across Cohorts with Exceptional Longevity (JAGS, 2016) PaperMetformin as a Tool to Target Aging (Cell Metabolism, 2016) PaperGeroscience-Guided Repurposing of FDA-Approved Drugs to Target Aging (Aging Cell, 2022) PaperBiomarkers of Aging for the Identification and Evaluation of Longevity Interventions (Cell, 2023) PaperFAST: Finding Aging Biomarkers by Searching Existing Trials FAST InitiativeARPA-H PROSPR / FAST award ARPA-H FAST projectWatch the conversation: https://youtu.be/HbeGjwCw6vkFind us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📲 Connect:Connect with Dr. Nil Barzilai on X: https://x.com/NirBarzilaiMD👋 Who we are:Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and t