This is another in a series of posts in which I think out loud about how to organize and conduct a useful short self-experimentation or single person informal trial of an alleged rejuvenation therapy. The focus is on senolytic drug candidates, because those are the only potential rejuvenation therapies worthy of the name that are currently accessible to ordinary individuals such as you and I. The general points made here are applicable to any other novel therapy that might arise in the years ahead, however - and arise they will - as well as to assessment of personal fitness, should that topic interest you. You might look at the last post in the series for a general outline of how such a study would be planned at the high level.
The usual cautions apply in these matters. There is risk in using senolytic drug candidates: they are chemotherapeutics, and one should well understand their profile of side-effects and hazards - which means, at a minimum, reading through a fair few scientific papers and reports. Further, just about everything to do with taking matters into your own hands with any sort of pharmaceutical is illegal in the US, even those that are not controlled substances, albeit rarely prosecuted when it is a matter of individual use. "Rarely" is not "never," however, and the prevailing cultural zeitgeist is that you are a terrible human being for even trying this, regardless of circumstance. This is a sad state of affairs, especially for those who are dying, priced out of the US market but not the global market for specific pharmaceuticals, and nonetheless forbidden to make the attempt to help themselves.
Here, however, I will say little about senolytics, and instead offer a first take on a practical list of tests that might be used to assess whether or not anything happened as a result of self-experimentation in rejuvenation treatments. This is the essence of the thing: there is no point in trying a treatment and merely hoping for the best. That adds no value, and helps no-one. A world in which hundreds or thousands of people are trying an approach and publishing their own measurements is a different story, however. Should it come to pass, that will go along way towards helping to push more formal trials into progress, by identifying promising directions that might otherwise take some time to be discovered by the slow and formal trial process.
A Short List of Simple Tests
For a first venture, it helps to keep things simple and flexible. The objective is a set of tests that anyone can run without the need to involve a physician, as that always adds significant time and expense. Since we are really only interested in the identification of large and reliable effects as the result of an intervention, we can plausibly expect a collection of cheaper and easier measures known to correlate with age to be useful in this matter. Once that hill has been climbed, then decide whether or not to go further. Don't bite off more than is easy to chew for a first outing. I picked the following:
- A standard blood test, with inflammatory markers.
- Resting heart rate and blood pressure.
- Heart rate variability.
- Pulse wave velocity.
- Biological age assessment via DNA methylation patterns.
The cardiovascular health measures in that list are those that are impacted by changes in the elasticity or functional capacity of blood vessels, such as would be expected to occur to some degree following any rejuvenation therapy that addresses senescent cells, chronic inflammation, or other factors that stiffen blood vessels, such as calcification or cross-linking. Positive change of the average values in most of these metrics are achievable with significant time and effort spent in physical training, so movement in the numbers in a short period of time as the result of a treatment should be an interesting data point.
Bloodwork
There are online services such as WellnessFX where one can order up a blood test and then head off the next day to have it carried out by one of the widely available clinical service companies. Of the set of test packages offered by WellnessFX, the Advanced Heart Health is probably the most useful for present purposes. But shop around; this isn't the only provider.
Resting Heart Rate and Blood Pressure
A simple but reliable tool such as the Omron 10 is all you need to measure heart rate and blood pressure. It is worth noting here a couple of general principles for cardiovascular measures. Firstly, the further away from the center of the body that the measurement is taken, the less reliable it is - the more influenced by any number of circumstances, such as position, mood, stress, time of day, and so forth. Fingertip devices are convenient, but nowhere near as useful as something like the Omron 10 that uses pressure on the upper arm. Secondly, all of the above-mentioned line items also influence every cardiovascular measure, so when you are creating a baseline or measuring changes against that baseline, carry out each measure in the same position, at the same time of day, and make multiple measurements over a week and take the average.
Heart Rate Variability
There are surprisingly few consumer tools for measuring heart rate variability. Some of the regulated medical devices are quite easy to manage, but good luck in navigating the system to obtain one. The easiest way is to buy second hand medical devices via one of the major marketplaces open to resellers, but that requires a fair-sized investment in time and effort - which comes back to the rule about keeping things simple at the outset. After some reading around the subject, I settled on the combination of the Polar H10 device coupled with the SelfLoops HRV Android application. I also gave EliteHRV a try, but despite all the recommendations, I could not convince it to produce sensible numbers for the heart rate variability data, while SelfLoops HRV had no issues.
Pulse Wave Velocity
For pulse wave velocity, the situation for consumer tools is even more sparse. I was reduced to a fingertip device, the iHeart, picked as being less unreliable and easier to use than the line of scales that measure pulse wave velocity. The recommendations suggest that decently reliable data from non-invasive devices is only going to be obtained by measures at the aorta and other core locations, or with more complicated regulated medical devices that use cuffs and sensors at several places on the body. Still, less reliable data can be smoothed out to some degree by taking the average of measures over time, and being consistent about position, time of day, and so forth when the measurement is taken. It is a trade-off.
DNA Methylation
DNA methylation tests can be ordered from either Osiris Green or Epimorphy / Zymo Research. I picked Zymo's product because at the time I first wrote this, the Osiris Green founders were still bailing out their laboratory after Hurricane Irma; they are back in business now, however. The normal level of variability from day to day for individuals in these tests is a question mark at this point in time, but the price is acceptable for that level of uncertainty, given how well this class of test has performed in academic research to date. As for the cardiovascular measures, it is wise to try to make everything as similar as possible when taking the test before and after a treatment: time of day, recency of eating or exercise, recent diet, and so forth.
Scheduling
The schedule for a single person self-experimentation trial might look something as follows:
- Day 1-7: Once or twice a day, take measures for blood pressure, pulse wave velocity, and heart rate variability.
- Day 7: Bloodwork and DNA methylation test.
- Day 8 and on: Carry out the treatment.
- Day 30-36: Repeat the blood pressure, pulse wave velocity, and heart rate variability measures.
- Day 36: Repeat the bloodwork and DNA methylation test.
One person's data is an anecdote. We won't really understand the profiles of potential rejuvenation therapies, or indeed any new interventions, until a great many people have tried them and reported on the results of trying them. At the moment, that proceeds through small trials organized by a variety of companies. History suggests that few people will in fact self-experiment in a useful way that that adds to the bigger picture, but nonetheless, formal trials don't have to be the only effort taking place.
Costs of Measurement
For the choices mentioned above, the rough costs are as follows:
- 2 MyDNAge tests: $600
- 2 Advanced Heart Health tests from WellnessFX: $760
- Omron 10 device: $70
- iHeart device and Android application: $210
- Polar H10 and SelfLoops HRV Android application: $110
Which amounts to $1750, along with a fair amount of time spent reading around the subject and becoming familiar with the devices and their quirks. The hardware is of course reusable for any other health assessment you might want to carry out. There is a lot of reading material out there produced by members of the quantified self movement, for example, that focuses on assessing the results of more mundane matters of exercise, weight, and fitness. I encourage you to explore it.
View the full article at FightAging
