Nikolina Lauc: Are Glycans the Future of Biological Age Testing?

[00:00:00] Boomer Anderson: Welcome to decodingsuperhuman. This show is a deep dive into obsessions with health performance,and how to elevate the human experience. I explore the latest tools, scienceand technology with experts in various fields of human optimization. This is yourhost, Uber. Enjoy the journey.

Yeah on the podcast. I have my friend Nina Lauc joining me.She's the CEO of glycan age. And we get into glycans. Once again on the show,you guys know that I'm obsessed with benchmarking, meaning I like to have ameasurement or metric for whatever I'm trying to accomplish. In the case oflongevity, I'm really focused on biological age.

Yes. It's a little uncertain as to what that outcome willbe, but I feel like it is a good metric to have in my back pocket to really seehow I'm doing for those particular goals. There are numerous. Markers that youcan use for biological age. You can use telomeres. We'll do a podcast on that.Very soon.

You can use epigenetic age. And we've talked about that withDr. Veronica, certainly, but you can also use something called glycans and Dr.Gordon loss has been on the show before talking in detail about glycans andNina. And I catch up in this friendly chat. More about glycans, but also totalk about how the utility of them, the production ability of them and whatreally the future has for glycans.

The show notes for this one are@decodingsuperhuman.com slashglycan two, as in the number two and enjoy my conversation with Nina. Back inthe days when conferences were a thing, you would often see people atbiohacking conferences or even health conferences around with a light up theirnose, particularly a red light.

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If you want to check this out, head on over to vielight.com.That's V I. L I G H T use the coat boomer and you're getting 10% off. And givenhow much these cost, that's certainly a good discount. Enjoy my conversationwith Nina on the click heads. Hi Nina. Where in the world are you today?

[00:03:30] Nina Lauc: Hey, blue moon. I'm in London.

[00:03:33] Boomer Anderson: All right. So London, and wedon't know when this is going to get released exactly, but sort of mid 20, 21,you've had quite a interesting lockdown experience, which is reportedlygetting, you know, I guess opened up a little bit in the next couple of weeks.Where do you blend it?

[00:03:55] Nina Lauc: Oh, well anywhere, but here,

[00:03:59] Boomer Anderson: I mean, London is like, it'sfunny because London in the summer is actually quite beautiful.

Um, but I can understand if you've been there for quite awhile. It's.

[00:04:10] Nina Lauc: It London is great. Um, but it hasbeen, uh, you know, year and a half and constant lockdown. So you do desire togo somewhere else,

[00:04:20] Boomer Anderson: getting the itch to get on aplane. Are you

so as much as I want to talk about those destinations, I dowant to get into today a little bit about course glad cans now. One of thetroubles I've always had in explaining my glycan age tests to people, but also,uh, what glycans are to others is just like, what are glycans. Exactly. And Iwould love to just hear straight from the expert.

So Nina, how do we explain glycans to people?

[00:05:01] Nina Lauc: That's one of those key challengeswe have, because if, even if you explain what the glycan is, and you canexplain to the sugar, people still think it's, or they would still associatewith the sugar wheat. So maybe they would think about glucose or don't thinkabout sugars.

They know the very few of us actually know that sugars are akey component of all of ourselves. So since we have it. Multicellularorganisms. They're all, uh, all the proteins are glycosylated. So there, andthey are very important is making us individually unique. And one of the waysthey do know they're important is ABO blood, blood groups.

So the glycans and blood cells decide your blood group. Andif they can decide your blood group, then you can imagine how important theyare in a lot of their processes. But the differences. Sugars. Yes, we eat them,but we also have them as a core component of our biology.

[00:05:56] Boomer Anderson: Okay. That was much simplerthan the explanation I was thinking of.

Like, uh that's. That's great. And so, um, when we talkabout just sort of testing glycans, because, and we're going to get in a littlebit today in this whole idea of biological age and you know, when we testglycans, I always, and this is. And implication on glycans or anything. Ialways have to ask the question about how much do we know and how verifiableare the accuracy of these tests.

Right? Because if you think about, uh, some something likefairness back in the day, right? They couldn't get the vitamin D test, right?Like something like 60% of the time. So how accurate are our, is our ability totest glycans these days?

[00:06:42] Nina Lauc: So that's one very key advantages.The research lab and the lab that invented us is also the core analytical labof the human glycan project.

So we have this large dataset of over 150,000 people, somewhich were followed in biobanks for 20, 30 years. So we know not just that weknow how glycans change with age. But we know how they change within theindividual person with age and all of this is public. It's published. Even ourmethodology that we use on these dry blood stains, which is the commercial, uh,glycan kit, um, is published and peer reviewed.

Uh, showed that they can be stable in the post up to twoweeks. So then we can do research on it, not just the, we can claim it as acommercial company, but we can, you can use the same type of analysis for rigidscientific research and the accuracy in terms of chronological age. Causethat's the biggest confusion.

So if you talk about biological age, a lot of the, uh, well,just to put this into perspective as well. So we first developed the club.Around 2010 and we published it in 2013 and then Harvard's clock, or theepigenetic clock was published sometimes 2014. Yeah. Actually came before itsclock, our first application for it, or the idea was actually forensics too.

Cause we saw the change a lot with age and we tried to usethem to identify. If we can tell the age of a person, and then if this is acrime scene, you want to know if that's a young person or an experiencedcriminal and that they were not well, they were most accurate to what we knewthen, but they were not very accurate because our very ability fromchronological age is about nine years.

And you compare this to DNA methylation. Their very abilityis a couple of years or two plus minor. But the difference is that we are, uh,we see biological age, which you can explain by also looking at, uh, well inthe scientific papers, other part matters. So other blood markers, BMI, uh,other, uh, elements, which tell if a person is healthy or unhealthy and, um,with epigenetic or DNA methylation, it can be just explained by age.

So if you know the age of a person, you can explain theclock or you can explain it.

[00:09:05] Boomer Anderson: Yeah. So when I was kind ofdelving into this with, uh, a professor at Stanford, my understanding ofHorvath's clock is that because it has a 90 plus. Correlation to chronologicalage, probably the most relevant case for it is for that forensic evidence.

Um, and what I'm really excited today to delve into you withis because there's slight differential, uh, with glycan H um, or with glycans,is that. How we can use this as people who are looking to practice longevity ina way, because if you think about like the art of practicing longevity, you'redoing all this stuff today to really hope that someday in the future, you justdon't drop down and die faster than you would like.

Right. Uh, and I would love to just get into some of the. Iguess lifestyle implication or lifestyle choices that we can make in theirimplications on glycans. Because when I'm looking at, for either me or for someof the clients that I have a, a metric that can measure the success oflifestyle modifications, Horvath clock becomes a little bit more of a blurbecause it's so correlated with chronological age.

And so, yeah. When it comes to glycans, uh, what are some ofthe things that affect glycans? You mentioned BMI earlier, but what are some ofthe other effects as well?

[00:10:44] Nina Lauc: Yeah, so that's one of the that'sone key advantage is that we saw this big difference and it wasn't just. Weunderstand that that's some type of biological age.

What type is that? The second part of it explaining alsowhat type of glycans we look at, we look at glycans on your immune, uh,antibodies and they regulate inflammation. So based on what type of likens youhave on these immunoglobulin G antibodies. They would be more prone, planetaryand anti-inflammatory.

And we would see that with aging, they change theircomposition changes of being more pro-inflammatory and less of the good antiinflammatory ones. And this also inflammation zone. So someone, the key driversof chronic conditions where we are immune system, basically, I think so. Well,whichever reasons, and we all break in different places.

Uh, so when you're talking about longevity, it's not justabout how long you're going to live. You want to live healthy. So in a way, itdoesn't matter if you're going to live an extra 20, 30 years in poor health,you want more? Yeah.

[00:11:48] Boomer Anderson: I don't want to be in ahospital. Right? Like sitting 20 to 30 years in the hospital bed, I have zerointerest in that.

We're

[00:11:54] Nina Lauc: really keeping people alivesometimes, but it has to be good quality.

[00:12:01] Boomer Anderson: Okay. So you mentioned, uh,the immune system and inflammation as being, and that is sort of one of those,uh, those hallmarks of a disease, if you will. And you know, I guess what aresome of the other areas that we can observe with the glycans?

Uh, I know that there's certain ones that we can. Observedmore in a research laboratory versus with a commercially available test, butI'd love to just kind of go through some of those verticals.

[00:12:34] Nina Lauc: So the obvious one is BMI, and thatwill be validated both on celebrated or higher BMI has, uh, uh, acceleratesyour aging, lower BMI, EWH slower or healthy BMI age slower.

And we also did, um, weight loss, intervention, andbariatric surgery, which then reverse the glycan clock within six months.Post-surgery. These are obese individuals who lose 20, 30 kilograms in a very shortperiod of time. So it's a, it's a little bit extreme. Then we looked at diets.So we fought. Is there a particular diet?

Cause we know weight loss works and we will followparticular diets to achieve the same goal. Is there a diet that works better thanothers? And that's something that's going to be published in two weeks, um,where we looked at the towels,

[00:13:23] Boomer Anderson: any, any sort of hints thatyou can give us

[00:13:26] Nina Lauc: a little bit, but I'll share itwhen it's out.

It was a mixture of. Both low carb, high carb, high protein,high fat, low fat. Um, and we saw the, exactly, and this was a, a thousandpeople followed her six months. We saw then every of these type categories,half people benefit, half people don't. So we're actually really unique interms of what that works for us.

And we can't get tell you in advance, which of these dietswill work for your longevity or your glycan aging or immune aging. Or you cantest it so you can try a certain diet for a free month period, and you will seea response in your likeness, which could be positive or negative. It cancorrelate with BMI, but it can also correlate the things which you can see.

And one of those is, um, triglycerides. So a lot of peoplego for a keto diet and for some people they've really do well on it, or maybethere's different types of keto, and maybe it's also different for differentpeople, but for some, they could be a super fit, healthy individual, but theycould have high fat markers, which we know are not good for your health.

And glycogen will detect this.

[00:14:40] Boomer Anderson: So, uh, specific biomarkers,it will be a ma BMI would be a calculation, but specific biomarkerstriglycerides would have more or higher triglycerides having a link with higherglycan age. Do I have that right? Yes. Okay. Are there other particular markersthat you guys have noticed that have general correlations with a higher glycanish?

[00:15:04] Nina Lauc: So in that first study, in 2013, welooked at them and I don't know all of them in top of my head, but there wasabout 25 different biomarkers from insulin resistance, glucose, HB, A1C, badcholesterol, triglycerides waysides BMI, and a number of others, calcium aswell. And all of these correlated with higher blankets.

So we can explain this variability of why somebody has ahigher or. Older or younger, like nature by looking at those biomarkers. Andwhen we can explain up to 70% of the variability and back then we werecomparing it to telomeres. So we compared it to the telomere studies where theycan explain 15 to 20% of the variability.

We can explain a lot more of it. I haven't worn knowledge,but another ask. Uh, of these glycans is this. Sometimes they change beforethese things happen. So we have these other biomarkers we're developing for,uh, prevention or prognostic, uh, for diabetes and cardiovascular events.Where, for example, in diabetes, they'll change, the glycans would change 10years before you have a high HB A1C where you have this dysregulated Lucas.

So they would, you wouldn't be able to run the traditionalblood tests and identify the problem. This changing before that's happening.

[00:16:23] Boomer Anderson: So that's very interestingand diabetes, obviously I'm closer to the cardiac side of things, but, uh, whenit comes to diabetes and you're saying that we noticed shifts in glycans thatare.

Roundabout 10 years beforehand. So let's say I'm a 20 yearold and I'm just eating garbage because 20 year olds can eat garbage. Right?Uh, you generally will see a shift towards something that could be like prodiabetic as soon as 10 years beforehand. That's incredible.

[00:16:58] Nina Lauc: So we can identify particular likecomply, uh, patterns, which all have this chronic inflammation trait, but wecan make them specific.

So that's the whole, cause it's not like one molecule, it'sa whole group of different ones. Uh, you know, all of them have a certainmeaning and mannerism, and we're learning all about

[00:17:17] Boomer Anderson: this. So just real quick,because you mentioned chronic inflammation and the, the markers that I think oftraditionally as chronic inflammation would be something like high sensitivityC-reactive protein.

Does this mean? And if you're not able to comment on this, Icompletely understand, but does this mean that a glycogen, these groups ofglycans can be predictive of. Higher inflammatory states, even if the HS CRP issort of steady state, uh, lower, if you will,

[00:17:49] Nina Lauc: sometimes it correlates, but alsoyes, also. Yes, we do not.

I think we've maybe in one exercise paper, we have a CRP anda bunch of others. Uh, Glycans were more sensitive or there was shown to bemore sensitive. And there's a big difference between the low grade chronicinflammation and acute inflammation. So C is still acute inflammation. You canchange it in a couple of days.

Um, uh, something going wrong with glycans, they have a longhalf-life. So you always see this average over a prolonged period of time. Italso mimics aging or follows aging in a very precise way.

[00:18:28] Boomer Anderson: Very cool.

[00:18:29] Nina Lauc: You've mentioned the 20 year oldseating junk food. I can tell you a fun story. Let's hear

[00:18:34] Boomer Anderson: a fun story about 20 yearolds eating junk food.

Cause I bet everybody listening to this, which is they were20 years old and could talk to their 20 year old self and say, don't eat thejunk food.

[00:18:47] Nina Lauc: Yeah, I think a lot of us make themistake. And I think I could say I was one time ago though. Um, but we did thesoftware development company. Uh, with 35 engineers, we tested all of them.

They took like a corporate program and they're all guys in theirtwenties. You know, they were mainly barely fairly. Some of them were high BMI.Others were actually quite skinny and all of them came back 10, 20 years. Sowe, they joked about, we call them senior engineers or senior developers, butthey all had the same environment and same habits.

So they would literally, for breakfast, it was cereal forlunch. It was cereal or it was junk food.

[00:19:28] Boomer Anderson: So refined carbohydrates do anumber on your glide cam. But

[00:19:32] Nina Lauc: a lot of people are sensitive. Notall. You had some interesting studies now showing that some people arecompletely, they can tolerate them really well for them, if so many differentthings.

So it's not just the carbs, it's the processed fats. Andthey had something, they call the salad where they put chips and popcorn andany leftovers in the office. It was insane. Wow. It was a salad. And then theevening, they just said they had beer as a culture. So yeah. Lots of theseunhealthy habits and you also can change them overnight.

Uh, but we had a nutritionist work with them. Sheimplemented little things in their work that so basically they would have awork task and another one would be, you know, eat the cereal, but add someoatmeal, you know, little changes to get there. And we had some high adopters,so we had some who really.

Made a big change. So from to really radically changingtheir diet and not coming to the office as much, but cooking at home. And wehad them, uh, one of them reversed 10 years within six months. Wow. The oneswho didn't change in reverse, it was so interesting that the environmentdoesn't matter. You know, what size there were, it had the similar input impacton all of them.

There was literally one guy, uh, who had the good result whowas an ex sportsman and had. Better habits than the others.

[00:20:51] Boomer Anderson: So when, wow, where do I wantto go from here? There's a, there's so many questions that I could ask aroundthis. So when I'm, let's go down the clinician route, because this is, uh,fascinating to me because you and I have exchanged messages many times on this,we look at the, that biological age world and there are dozens of tests outthere.

Right. And there's. 20 different interpretations ofHorvath's clock, even though one company owns the IP. So it's impossible tohave 20 different, different interpretations. There's there's telomere age, asyou've mentioned, there's glycan age. And, you know, as, as a clinician, youknow, we want to set up benchmarks for our clients, right?

You want to understand. What is working and what's not, andthen make adjustments on the fly. Uh, uh, Horvath clock seems to be, you don'treally get to see as much of the adjustment, at least in my experience. Um, asmuch of the adjustment, certain adjustments, uh, within six months time period,it's usually a longer term.

Uh, how would you. You know, and I know you guys do workwith clinicians. How would you have people set up experiments with, I say,experiments in quotes, uh, benchmarking with their clients, uh, so that theycan start to track some of these lifestyle modifications that they'resuggesting. And what's the sort of appropriate timeframe in between tests.

[00:22:31] Nina Lauc: So the half-life of these glycansis three to five weeks, but let's say three weeks. So when we do research, theminimum we would want to have samples is about six to eight weeks and that'sthe bare minimum. And they would need to be a very significant intervention.Uh, commercially we say free months.

You can also see a bit of a change between months is moreoptimal and within six months you can really see a dramatic change. So you cansee the tenure drop, but when you drop the intervention and some are reallypredictable. So with weight loss, it's quite predictable unless you'reover-training. So if you're pining on top, uh, uh, so caloric deficiency on topof intensive exercise, then.

Double distress in the body and they will rebel and have theopposite effect while a lot of people do when they go and lose weight. So it'sa nice way to, if you're achieving that sustainably. And what we see is doingone by one works. So if you're just focusing on exercise and then recovering,that has a positive effect, if you're just, I think recovering and has apositive effect, um, some things that you can do in clinic that we can docommercially that work really well.

Oh, so quite interesting. And they're quite predictable andone of them is hormonal optimization.

[00:23:49] Boomer Anderson: Okay. So doing something likea TRT or hormone balancing kind of extra.

[00:23:54] Nina Lauc: There's quite a science to it. Thenwe actually, it wasn't a big focus area or research. And till we doing certainthings symptoms with menopause this year, but maybe 2017, we gather samples of600 people that were collected about 20 years ago.

And they were. Some intervention studies where hormones wereknocked off, both in men and women. And we had a cohort of 46 year 46 youngwomen who were with another hormone, knocked off canola hormones and half werein placebo, half on estrogen. We saw the placebo H nine years within fivemonths while the estrogen patches didn't or they stayed in the same range.

Uh, and it's actually something similar. We see in thetransition phase to menopause with men also, they were knocked off testosteronefor 12 weeks. And then half were giving, uh, testosterone and half were givingtestosterone where then aromatase inhibitor to block its conversion toestrogen. And we saw that the ones who were giving, uh, just as Austrian thathad a positive change or they didn't have the negative, um, didn't change in anegative way.

And the ones which got the inhibitor had the negative chain.So it's actually the conversion. Of a testosterone to estrogen that benefitsmen as well. And I was quite excited. There was a mice study done a few monthsago where, uh, in this, uh, I forgot the name of the aging Institute, but it'sone of the ones in the U S where they gave the mice, this non feminizing, um,beat.

Uh, 17 nester dial and they extended the lifestyle of themice by 20%, the male mice, which was the strongest longevity drug in micetested so far apart from this other telomere drug that just came out, um, theextended by 40%. So our best longevity drug for mice that we knew until a monthago was estrogen.

[00:25:59] Boomer Anderson: Okay. So this kind of wouldgo contrary to what a lot of people would think in terms of aromataseinhibitors and packing on more muscle with testosterone, et cetera. And so, Imean, is there a, an, and maybe we don't have this level of data yet, but isthere a certain amount of data that sort of dose dependent, meaning that, uh,Can you have too much estrogen, which case I know a number of those metabolitepathways and one of those can potentially lead to cancer or DNA damage.

Right. Um, is there a certain level of estrogen that becomeslike, Hey too much? And then your glide get affected or do we no. Yeah. Yeah. Ilike to be completely transparent with all the. I like to show you exactly whatI'm using on a day-to-day basis to really perform at my absolute best. And thatincludes technology supplements, all of those things.

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[00:27:47] Nina Lauc: There's lots of different types ofestrogens. And there's definitely a type one dose difference. So that's, uh, Ithink going into this similar, the research in men is similar to women wherethey made this MIS assumptions that testosterone will cause prostate cancer,which validated it. Um, same was done for women.

And even on a higher scale, there was a whi study in the U S20 years ago, that was costs a lot of money and there was a financial crisisand they didn't see any benefit because introducing the women who are 10 yearspost-menopause and there was. Uh, hatred T back in the day, which was made frompregnant horses urine, then the older, it was the same type of progestogen wehave in the contraceptive pill.

And also the estrogen only didn't have an increased risk ofbreast cancer, but the combined one, uh, had a small increase spread. So it wasone point 26% increased risk. And if you're comparing this to smoking, forexample, smoking is a 27.9 increases. Uh, of cancer. So it's not statisticallysignificant. So there, lots of, um,

[00:28:54] Boomer Anderson: this is when people go andmanipulate data drives me fricking nuts,

[00:28:59] Nina Lauc: and that caused a big scandalbecause a lot of women went off patriotic.

It was a lot of lawsuits and there was even a clinician whonow correlated it with increase risk of Alzheimer's cases, which is mainly awoman's disease. 65% of all patients are women. So we do know that it has. Uh,protective properties in that in a way, if you look at the immune system hasthe anti-inflammatory property, and that's what we see in pregnancies as well,but also for men, it protects the immune system and protects their brain.

Um, so it's an interesting space of debate, but in the, in,in now already, uh, at least 20 clinical practices, we see predictable results,a couple of months post therapy. They all have it now is body DentiCal or thesame molecules as we've produced. So the best engine is made from wild yams. Soit's a different type of drug than it was 20 years ago.

And people would mainly say same as with aging. Menopause isnatural. You seem treated, but it same as with aging, it's the inflection pointof many different diseases and I'm less worried that there's a hormonedeficiency. Then you're exposing yourself to a lot of other, uh, complicationsthat come later on.

So it's a booth space and we do see those differencescomparing private or in the UK and they tests and no, uh, public or NHS in UKand private and there, those different. In a way that in private, they willoptimize it more. There'll be more responsive to anthems and what you'rereporting well in. Um, and they test, it would be the lowest or the smallestdose for the shortest period of time.

And they wouldn't see as much. There's definitely a dose andthere's nothing estrogen bias. So I fought that there, we could have anestrogen bias and that's a big space of, um, uh, interest, but we actually seethe people who have, uh, uh, like a condition connected to it. Likeendometriosis would have a negative result.

So it all comes back to balance. If you're looking at, uh,the missus movement. The right level of balance, not too much, not too little,which is always hard to get to. That's

[00:31:12] Boomer Anderson: fascinating as a person who'slooked at sort of the network of hormones and, you know, when you're able tobalance them, what it does to a human in terms of performance.

Um, I I'm guessing that would all be captured within aglycan age test. Right? So if I were to have a balanced network of hormones andas a result, less inflammation, uh, that would. Serve as a net benefit, ratherthan just let's say, going with testosterone and raising the hell out of that.Uh, it's probably better as we say to balance the network, is that, do I havethat.

[00:31:48] Nina Lauc: Absolutely. I think what, whatwould the first research we did where it was a knockdown, then it's like ahysterectomy. Well, I'm sorry, I'm really talking just about women, but in away you control that with natural aging or menopause or manual pause, differenthormones, decline at a different pace, and you have to optimize it to thatperson.

It's not a standard protocol. It's really a little bit.

[00:32:16] Boomer Anderson: Very cool. You mentionedendometriosis. And so, um, one of the difficult areas for a lot of clinicianscan be around auto-immune conditions. Um, And since you have mentionedendometriosis net impact, can we eat, I mean, maybe this hasn't been done yet,but like, can you use glycans as sort of a predictor of potential auto-immunerisk in people?

And do you have clinicians that do. That's something

[00:32:47] Nina Lauc: we don't do commercially, butthat's definitely their potential. So we very much focus there, our researchand the big diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular, and that was the topic oftaking it to Frederic stages. But we have identified some glycans which arecausal in auto-immune viruses.

They do play an important part. Then you can probablystratified them. Same as we do for some lesser disease, 10 different optimalconditions.

[00:33:18] Boomer Anderson: So, I guess I would love atsome point for these tests to be commercially available. I understand all ofthe hurdles that you have to go through to get something that's closer to adiagnostic test to be available. But, um, and you can tell me Nina, if you'renot allowed to comment, but in terms of how these tests would work with.

Let's say an auto-immune condition you would observe. Is itobserving a particular GlyCAM pattern that is, uh, Kind of common within, yousaid thyroid, so Hashimoto's or graves, um, and then being able to recommendlifestyle changes before it becomes an issue, or are you kind of noticing it asit becomes an issue?

Cause like, you know, earlier you mentioned something aboutdiabetes being sort of tenured predictable. Uh, what, what is to the extentlike how. How much of a minority report type situation can we get into here?Like how fast, how quickly can we predict this stuff? So

[00:34:22] Nina Lauc: I would, I would guess. But thatresearch needs to be done or at least I haven't read it yet.

And one interesting thing. And then this was the first, Ithink, um, uh, diagnostic application, but 30 years ago was for writers wherethey saw the glycans change 10 years before. So I would assume that in mostconditions they would actually change before. And you would have a warning. Onechallenge we have.

Would that be this now is can you put it. So we're doingearly intervention studies to see if you can actually impact it with lifestyleor early from college. To actually not have them happy. Cause that's the otherpart. If you're going to tell something something's going to happen, you may aswell be able to give him some actual steps to how to prevent it.

Uh, otherwise you you're causing some anxiety and you don'tknow

[00:35:11] Boomer Anderson: exactly. And it's just withsomething like a type two diabetes, I imagine that you can do and I'msimplifying things, but like lifestyle interventions here, generally speakingwork, uh, both in the form of diet. And, you know, drink selection in certaincases, uh, lifestyle modifications, et cetera.

But I guess adherence is probably the biggest issue. And. II'm, I'm very curious when those studies come out, I would love to hear ifyou're able to divert somebody that soon, um, or provide the wake-up callbecause out of all of these biological age and I love GlyCAM and shit, butlike, of all of these biological age, I find this rumored grim age, uh, to bevery interesting.

And I know one of the things you can do with glide, Kansas.Predict a cardiac event. Uh, but these are all tests that tend to scare people.And as a result, I'm guessing that the regulatory authorities don't necessarilywant people releasing that onto the market to, uh, put money, maybe unnecessaryfears into those that, that take them or maybe necessary fierce.

Uh, so it's a, it's a very fascinating. Yeah,

[00:36:26] Nina Lauc: there's lots of regulatory hurdlesthan any disease. Specific claims. Grim, grim age is fascinating. I mean, wedon't have a mortality clock, but it's fascinating what Steve's done and we'reactually doing some collaboration with Steve, tell you much, but we will, uh,we'll look at some of his cohorts and, um, we'll do something together.

Um, I think it's, uh, absolutely. It has like an applicationor a practice. Um, there is one that it's actually a shame. They didn't agreemate, but there was one review paper, um, then with 10 different clocks andthey use something called clinic clin Nomics, which is combination of all theclinical markers, uh, to proteomics, to lipidomics to DNA methylation, andglycolics cause we analyzed there.

Uh, there was a Scottish biobank and Estonian biobank, andthey looked at. Relevant towards disease outcomes or what is the clinicalrelevance of them? And they say one thing they managed to prove that weactually haven't done yet. Uh, they, we knew before that certain levels oflichens correlate with cardiovascular and diabetes know how the acceleration ofa glycan age clock correlates.

Uh, when incidents of future disease and they actuallymanaged to prove it. So XLH acceleration of the clock correlated with hospitaladmissions and future cases of incident disease. So it is a prognostic marker,but it's very raw. They can be lots of different things. So now the challengeof expanding it than the future.

Giving those specific signatures, so you know what will gowrong.

[00:38:09] Boomer Anderson: So by acceleration, uh, justso we define it for people. What we're talking about here is let's say mychronological ages, 35, my glycan ages, 35. Uh, it's not, and we'll get intothat in a second, but. Mm say gear down the line. If my chronological age is 36and then my glycogen age would be something like 38.

That's what we mean by acceleration, right? Is it, it's notjust like the one for one trading off of, right. Well,

[00:38:39] Nina Lauc: they actually calculate this oneabove your chronologically, or even say as an average 10 above or as theaverage conveyor in nine up or down. We say that if it's a little bit aboveyour you're still in the average range for most people fit into the averagerange,

[00:38:59] Boomer Anderson: Nina, you and I run in someof the same circles.

And so I'm kind of curious, like of this kind of healthoptimization biohacker longevity crowd, if there's any kind of. Interventionsthat you've seen, that have worked well, uh, when it comes to glycans eitherwith yourself or with other people that you spoke to.

[00:39:22] Nina Lauc: I think that mostly doesn't haveenough evidence here.

They're very keen to learn more. And one that comes up a lotin our clients is a fasting and we've seen it. Good and bad. We may even see agender difference. We did have a number of women who had an negative changefrom it. So that's one thing we're doing a proper trial with now with one ofthe, one of the clinicians we collaborate with and he's doing for these people.

And I actually have to check if it's both men and women.Cause lot of times to try to avoid the woman. Uh, on fasting and that'd beinteresting to see, cause that's one thing that everybody now does forlongevity. It's the magic thing to do, but stress, same as any other stress.And if you overdo the stress, then you can have the negative side of them.

Not to one very interesting is a cold therapy. And that'sjust clients who do it or who had a good score who had this in practice. Andit's pretty common and that's also stress in the body, but it's intermittedvery short-term stress. And that seems to work in a good way. Cause then itactivates or own mechanism to regenerate.

So having these little shocks is actually built for it. Butthe balance is really important. Then I think with that, you can easily get theright balance and, you know, unless you're going to be swimming in a cold lakefor an hour, maybe that's,

[00:40:53] Boomer Anderson: uh, if you black out in thecold in the winter, that's probably not good.

Um, but there's like, there's a laundry list of sort ofthese longevity. Supplements medicines, whatever you want to call that I wouldlove to see what they do to glycans. Uh, but you know, maybe that's somethingthat will happen over time. Yeah,

[00:41:15] Nina Lauc: we don't have any conclusiveevidence yet, but we haven't had many trials.

I've had clients try NAD boosters, lots of, and meaning somelike a pilot where we did see some significant changes. Only in the few peoplein the others. We didn't want them, maybe the trial was too short. So that wasone, that's one of the assumptions, but yeah. Really want to properly look atthem because unless you're doing something, that's the CBO control, you alwayshave the placebo effect as well.

Of course. Yeah. And so anything you're paying a lot ofmoney for, we'll probably just space neuropsychology have a little bit of apositive impact and we can impact it like an age as well.

[00:42:02] Boomer Anderson: I want to go through myresults if it's okay. And just to give people, and if you're tuning in to theYouTube video right now, you can see the tests.

Um, I'll put the test in the show notes as well, uh, testresults, but if it's okay, I'll share my screen Nina, and we can just gothrough these and you can kind of tell people a little bit about what I am ableto learn about myself, sort of in this lovely, uh, this lovely test. And so. Ina nutshell, what can we, uh, what can we surmise out of this Nina?

[00:42:39] Nina Lauc: So your score is the optimal one,optimal scores, twin. So you're 15 years younger. That's what we do see is thatbecause the people who care about their health are usually healthier by these.So we see a little bit of this, um, positive health bias, even in theirconsumers. Uh, we wish we had more of the ones who had a poor result, causethere'll be more room for improvement.

The only thing you can do is optimize the indexes. If youscroll down, you'll see, uh, free indexes, which are activating categories. Sowe, from your IDG, we extract these 27 different lichens. And then we put themin two features as an analogy. And one of them is the, like a material or theones we label as bad or pro-inflammatory.

And then the other two are like, can help you, which welabel as good or anti-inflammatory. And you have a really good balance of both.You're actually in the 88 and 92%. So your percentiles are better than mine.Cause I'm also 20, but I don't have as the sentences here.

[00:43:48] Boomer Anderson: So w but as you said, there'sstill, even though I have, I've got a good score, there's still some thingsthat I can work on it.

And I do think with these tests, there is a tendency thatpeople that are healthy are the ones that buy them. And so, as you mentionedbefore, that sort of positive health bias, but even here I can look at this andsay, well, yeah, I mean, 80th percentile, but I wasn't a B student. I want tobe an, a student.

And so there's, there's some work that I can do. This is, Imean, it's very fascinating. Uh, one of the things, and I'll stop trying myscreen now, but in terms of the responsiveness, you've mentioned three months,um, if somebody were to be sort of one of these, um, health optimizers, if youwill, is the ideal cadence three months or six months, or does it really justdepend on how frequently or change your intervention?

[00:44:42] Nina Lauc: It really depends on intervention.And if it's rug, sometimes we see really significant impact within two or threemonths, a lot of customers who trial Metformin. You can see, but a lot of themalso have the, uh, vulnerability or they would have their, you know, therewouldn't be a bathroom or pre-diabetic, but if they would have a continuousglucose monitors that would have any big spike with certain foods.

So it could be that it's. Um, them as an individual or thebias towards it, rather than med formulas is wrong because that's a big trialthat everybody's waiting for, the results for. If it's exercise, you can alsodo a lot of damage pretty quickly. And some of it can accumulate. So we'veworked with athletes in a different way where we analyze them a little bit morefrequently and they can, they, if they're really intensively training, we cansee about an average of a five-year spike and then three months, but they'retrained to compete.

So they are, they're knowingly doing damage. And then we seethem recover about three months after. And it's a good way to measure. Thatrecovery and with professional athletes, we generally see them older unlessthey're doing regenerative medicine, stem cells and different, modern ways todo that now. And some of it stays post to retirement.

So if we're looking at a professional soccer player orfootball player, he's about 10, 15 years older, like, like an age on average.And he. Extend that. So every year for measuring, he's going to stay at thatunless he does an intervention. So it's a nice way to look at sports. And a lotof the health optimizers also do a lot of intensive sports.

So if we're a bit score, I would say, if you're doing somethingreally intensive, you want to measure that's causing damage and you can bereally in the zone where you just get the good score for out, but you could seea significant change if you push yourself a little bit too far.

[00:46:41] Boomer Anderson: So, and. It really depends alot on periodization.

Right. But if my puritization for new experiments is everythree months, then perhaps I want an every three month Clyde can age. Uh, if myperiodization is more like six months or I just happen to retest everythingevery six months, and that just works for me, then that could work as well. Um,it seems like there's plenty of options here.

That's for sure. Well, then you

[00:47:06] Nina Lauc: have options. And if you're justlooking at aging and you have a good score, then once a year is perfect or evenless frequent, but you would measure it to see how your agent is doing. Andthen if you had something significant happen, you may want to see the impact ofthat, but it really should be customized to your experience.

And we do some times. Recommend around your birthday.

[00:47:29] Boomer Anderson: Yeah. It's usually that's agood selling point for clients in general, right? Uh, so, uh, Nina, what's thefuture of glycan angel look like anything new coming out soon.

[00:47:43] Nina Lauc: Then most new thing is a novelmolecular diagnostics for pain menopause. So I, we knew nothing about this andI, well, we knew nothing about, I knew nothing about menopause a year ago.

And our whole team, we saw that something around menopausewas there was a gender difference in aging. But when, when we went to themarket, we realized. Changes way before menopause happens. And then we realizedmost of this women don't know that this is connected to menopause because theystill have their cycle and they can see, you can still have your cycle for, foraverage of four years, but after 10 years, so you can spend a decade experiencethem all kinds of symptoms from depression and anxiety being misdiagnosed with.

Fibromyalgia or all kinds of other actually inflammatorysymptoms and have the wrong diagnosis or take the wrong drug. Even had thecelebrities like the director of Vogue and Oprah being misdiagnosed. They willhave, I put mutations there you'll go to the best doctors. They would do allthe tests. They wouldn't find a problem.

They was still fight. Give them the medication because theyhave the symptom until they realized that this could be menopause connected. Soyou don't have any. Current molecular diagnostics for menopause and the lastattempt or the last, uh, diagnostic application was the FSH test, which wasinvented in the 1940s.

Wow. From Merck. So you haven't had innovation in a longperiod of time. Uh, so it's, I think it's a very huge unmet need. 1.2 billionwomen globally entering menopause at 2025. And most of them don't know whenit's going to happen and they don't associate the symptoms and there is a tabooas well. So it's something that you may be discreetly went to buy your tests,but you may not want to share it with your friends or yeah, but for

[00:49:41] Boomer Anderson: yeah.

Korean. Yeah. That's very cool. Um, I'm really excited tosee that come up.

[00:49:47] Nina Lauc: Yeah, I think it meets a reallylarge unmet need that, um, we have other biomarkers which are in differentstages of development, mainly focusing on cardiovascular and diabetes. In thislast study, we actually managed to associate the cardio markers also withmenopause and it's very into men and women and women.

There was one that was more predictive than even the German,uh, high-risk score for men. It was the opposite. There is a complete differentcohort of glycans. So it is. There's lots of gender difference. There's, youknow, uh, population to population. So it's really something that has to becustomized and keep in mind your score, even looking at your score.

Oh, half of it, or depending on the glycan, the influences30 to 50% of your genes and the rest is and behavior and environment. So a lotof that is individual in a way. Um, But it will really be specific. So we'llgive you an aging score for women. Now we can give them a menopause one verysoon, the cardio one and for men as well, we can give them scores or we cangive them addictions.

What way they'll break in 10 years time. And then if youmake a change, it will also respond to that change. So you can measure if thatchanges, get leading to a positive outcome, or if it's even causing you more,that mature enough helping you,

[00:51:09] Boomer Anderson: Nina. I didn't tell you thisbefore, but now we're going to transition into our final four questions here.

And these are kind of rapid fire. I asked them of everybody.Uh, but what is your top trick for enhancing focus?

[00:51:24] Nina Lauc: Meditating for sure. And takingtime out. So meditation

[00:51:29] Boomer Anderson: do you use?

[00:51:31] Nina Lauc: I do be passing them the bunch ofthey're like a 10 day silent retreat and it's based on sensations. It's notverbal or it's not just clear your mind.

It's more observing the body.

[00:51:43] Boomer Anderson: Very cool. A book which hasmost significantly impacted your life.

[00:51:51] Nina Lauc: It was a red. So many, if I canpull one for you, I can probably pull it up.

[00:51:56] Boomer Anderson: You can do top three or juststart rattling them off and I'll cut you off at some point.

[00:52:03] Nina Lauc: Um, well, I loved one cancerresearchers book recently called the first cell.

You also identify problems with the mice research, justwasn't converting to humans, and it's a huge waste of resources and the cancerhealed field. Hasn't moved much in the last five decades or more, and that weneed biomarkers for early diagnostics. And that's really where it makes sense.But yeah. But very powerful book with lots of personal stories, um, of herbeing a clinician then collecting her own biobank cause nobody else was doingit.

Uh, the 60,000 samples for more than 6,000 of her patients.So I loved that book. Uh, and I also love the book from man. Well, um, Britishlady who was originally Jewish called, let it go. She was an entrepreneur inthe 19. Sixties? I think so, or I actually wouldn't be sure, but she was one ofthe early, um, uh, they, they were called freelance programmers, built this onwomen programming from home and there was back then you typed in the card andthen that got in somewhere and they built it to a 5 billion company when shestarted from nothing.

She started on her kitchen table. Um, you know, when she hadto quit her job to have a child. So. I love that book as well. But even thoughthis, I like the female theme, I think the third one I loved him. Paris is afour hour work week. I mainly loved his writing. He just spoke and wrote in away that was approachable to lots of things.

[00:53:46] Boomer Anderson: It's very casual. Right. Soit sounds,

[00:53:50] Nina Lauc: and I can go for more books if youlike.

[00:53:56] Boomer Anderson: Yes. Th the, the fourthquestion is kind of easy, but the third one, uh, what excites you most aboutthe health world right now?

[00:54:06] Nina Lauc: I liked the focus on longevitycause that's really health prevention and there's a big movement towards that.My only, and that excites me is we're really moving towards optimizingfunctional decline instead of waiting until something happens and then beingreactive. So I see huge potential there. What worries me a little bit is thelack of the virus.

Gender and ethnic. So I see that lots of people wouldn'tassociate with what's going on because they're not included. So I would likethat to be expanded a bit more so you can have broader reach,

[00:54:42] Boomer Anderson: well said, Nina, this hasbeen a lot of fun. And I know I'm going to bump into you at some point, whetherit's, while you're escaping your lockdown or some other place, but where canpeople find out more about you and what you're up to with glycan?

[00:55:00] Nina Lauc: I'm not big on social, but I do useLinkedIn and I would go on there like an agency. Um, a lot of the times Ihelped with the post or I helped with the themes. So I think, and it always,somebody is there to help answer comments and, and response. I think that's agood way. And we do a lot of it is education or finding the little snippetsfrom different papers and explaining what it means.

So I would say Instagram.

[00:55:32] Boomer Anderson: Very cool. We'll link to allof this in the show notes, but Nina, I get really excited to talk aboutbenchmarking and obviously, um, I'm really excited to talk to you today. Sothank you for taking the time and explaining to us, uh, really debunking a lotof what's going on in the biological age world, because I know, uh, as a personwho's in this, that it can be very confusing sometimes.

Thank you so much for your time today.

[00:55:56] Nina Lauc: You're welcome. I hope it wassimple enough.

[00:56:00] Boomer Anderson: It's fantastic. If youenjoyed this podcast and enjoyed getting down and dirty and everything, .Please head on over to apple podcasts and leave a five star review. Everysingle review helps and I really, really enjoy reading them.

There's something that just keeps me going when you guysleave reviews, the show notes for this one again, all@decodingsuperhuman.comslash glycan. To as in the number two, have an epic.