You are getting older every day. But how old are your cells and organs really?
Understanding this could help us live longer and healthier, many longevity experts believe. Among them is Dr. Douglas Vaughn. He is director of Northwestern University's Potocznak Longevity Institute and its Human Longevity Laboratory, where people can come to have their so-called biological age calculated. By figuring out whether the cells and organs of a 50-year-old are similar to those of a 65-year-old or a 30-year-old, scientists like Vaughan hope to identify treatments and lifestyle changes that will help people live healthier, longer. This concept is known among longevity enthusiasts as “lifespan.”
Vaughan believes that researchers are getting closer to finding methods to slow down or even reverse the aging of people. He says he wants to ensure that everyone benefits from these advances, not just the super-rich.
“We want to find ways to slow aging for 99% of the world's people, not the 0.01%,” says Vaughan, former chief of cardiology at Vanderbilt University. He joined Northwestern in 2008 and previously headed the medical department.
The institute aims to help create a network of longevity laboratories on nearly every continent by next year, Vaughan said. Plans are already underway to establish laboratories in Japan, the UK and South Africa.
As part of TIME's series of interviews with leaders in the longevity field, we sat down with Vaughan to talk about these efforts and all things aging.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What drew you to longevity research?
As a cardiologist, I spent years studying a protein called plasminogen activator inhibitor, or PAI-1. [which plays a role in blood-clot regulation]. About ten years ago, we discovered that a rare genetic mutation in the gene encoding PAI-1 protects people from aging. This genetic variant is present in 10% of members of the Old Order Amish community living in and around Adams County, Indiana. Such genetic variants are very rare in people outside this community.
We found that carriers of this variant are protected from aging in a variety of ways. They live about 10 years longer than other members of the community. They don't have diabetes. Their cardiovascular system is younger than that of their healthy counterparts. They have longer telomeres. This was my entry into the world of the role of PAI-1 and aging, and the springboard that ultimately pushed us to create the Human Longevity Laboratory.
Before we move on, we should probably define what aging even is.
There are at least two versions of aging. One of them is your chronological age, and everyone knows this. Each time you orbit the Sun, you add a year to your chronological age. There is also a version of your age that we call biological age, which is a cumulative expression of the aging of your organs and your system as a whole.
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Biological and chronological age do not always coincide. We all know people who seem immune to aging: people who live into their 80s and 90s and don't experience many of the frailties and other problems that people typically experience after a certain age. We also all know people who age faster. This may be due to chronic diseases or circumstances such as chronic HIV infection, chronic kidney disease or diabetes; as well as adults who have survived childhood cancer, or people who simply live in the wrong place, have the wrong diet and the wrong climate.
Differences between biological age and chronological age raise the possibility that aging is malleable.
What do you do at the Human Longevity Laboratory?
We measure people's biological age through a series of tests. We perform DEXA scans to determine body composition; we measure the aging of the heart and blood vessels; we check gait speed and grip strength and pulmonary function. We also use molecular tools and artificial intelligence-based biological age clocks.
One of the AI-based tools we use involves taking an image of a person's retina. We're working with a group in New Zealand that has analyzed hundreds of thousands of photographs of human retinas. We put the images in the cloud and return your biological age in a few seconds. So we do some fun things that you won't do when you visit your PCP.
What do you hope to achieve by testing people's biological age?
We are trying to understand if you have a gap between your chronological age and your biological age. You want your biological age to be less than your chronological age if you can, but of course we see people who have a biological age greater than their chronological age, and those are really the people we focus on. We are trying to see if we can slow down the aging of people who are disadvantaged in terms of aging due to chronic disease or circumstances. The big hypothesis is the idea that age is the most important risk factor for almost all the diseases we encounter in adults. So if we can slow down aging even a little, we can extend the health span of people.
How accurate are these biological age measurements?
Since we opened the first version of our laboratory more than a year and a half ago, more than 300 people have completed our protocol. This gave us the opportunity to compare different measurements to see which were most reliable. This gave us confidence that we could take these measures relatively quickly, accurately and accurately.
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Of course, when we talk to people, our conversations can be quite complex. We'll look at the different results and explain that there are caveats and they may not be ideal. Based on the results obtained, we make some recommendations regarding their health and lifestyle. We've had people, even celebrities, discover that they're not as “young” as they thought they were, and it's been an epiphany of sorts to rethink their lifestyle and how they take care of themselves.
What advice did you give to the participants?
We encourage people to be a healthy weight and have a BMI below 25. We encourage people to exercise regularly. Unsurprisingly, both of these things are beneficial and can even lower your biological age.
Alternatively, you may be a person who has nothing wrong except that you have evidence that your kidneys are aging or your cardiovascular system is aging, then you may be referred to specialists in these areas to optimize your treatment plan and do everything they can to protect you from aging of these organs.
Now it gets more complicated when you start talking about other interventions like medications and supplements that people want to take. It's kind of a mess right now. I don't think we have clear evidence regarding creatine or THEY or stem cell infusion or plasma cell infusion. I don't think there is any good scientific evidence for any of these types of interventions.
I think we can find effective measures. We [at Northwestern] are going to try out different interventions. We are committed to the idea of measuring age along multiple dimensions and then testing the effects of interventions on those different dimensions, be it a stress reduction program, rapamycin, metformin, or Ozempic.
There are biological age watches that anyone can order online and try at home. What do you feel about it?
I wouldn't support any of them now. There's more to it than just one test, so I think we still have a lot of work to do to figure out which combination of tests is actually the best and which is the most informative for the average person.
How much does it cost to measure your biological age at the Human Longevity Laboratory?
In our clinic the price is 4200 dollars. I think this is the most comprehensive biological age testing that can be obtained almost anywhere in the world. So in terms of value for what you get, it's probably at the top of the table, but it's not a small amount of money. We also have people that we recruit through our research arm who have participated in clinical trials, and we absorb those costs.
The research you mentioned is being conducted under the auspices of the Longevity Institute, which includes the clinic. What other work does the institute do?
The institute has several different centers, including HIV and Aging and Population Science and Aging. We have [researcher] are developing new wearable devices that detect aging-related changes in various systems, and others are doing amazing work studying the environmental factors that cause biological aging.
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For example, we already know that one of the worst ways to speed up aging is smoking, but it turns out that using cannabinoids also speeds up aging. Additionally, our group is one of many that have shown that long COVID appears to age people faster. On the other hand, living near green spaces slows down aging.
The institute also plans to collaborate with international partners to open more longevity laboratories in the near future, right?
Yes, Tohoku University in Japan cooperates with us. We also have a partner at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami and a partnership with the London Clinic. We also have a long-standing collaborative relationship with the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and will have a laboratory there within the next 12 months.
We don't just want to measure the biological age of people in these clinics. We're going to enroll people in pragmatic short-term clinical trials to see if we can find interventions that can slow the rate of aging in people around the world – no matter where you live, what your ethnicity is, what you eat or what air you breathe – and that will provide some truth to this science. The first study we're planning, which we'll begin recruiting relatively soon, is one looking at how stress reduction can affect biological age.
How big a role does genetics play in aging compared to environmental factors?
I think it is generally accepted that genetics are a key factor in life expectancy. But I think the algorithm is changing a little. If you really crunch the numbers and look at the data seriously, the genetic influence of aging is certainly less than 20%. Other factors are more important, such as where you live, how you live and what you are exposed to.
So while I'm sure everyone knows people who seem to have longevity in their family (they can remember ancestors who lived to be 90 or over 100 years old), it is quite rare, and finding these specific genetic variants is extremely difficult.
Do you think that in the next half century we will be able to make people live to be 150 years old?
I think we might have one or two outliers that could get there. But if someone who is 50 now has an illusion or fantasy that they will be 150, they will have to live another century and, well, most of us won't see it.
Our goal is to actually try to extend people's health span to give them two, three or four years more health. If we could achieve just that, it would bring a lot of benefit to society.
This article is part of a TIME Longevity editorial. a platform dedicated to exploring how and why people live longer and what this means for individuals, institutions and the future of society. See other articles on this topic. Click here.
