Evidence of Causality in the Relationship Between Excess Body Weight and Accelerated Progression of Aging
Excess visceral fat tissue produces a greater burden of senescent cells, so in that sense one might argue that it is literally causing accelerated aging. Generally researchers content themselves with pointing to the epidemiological data, in which being overweight correlates with greater incidence of age-related disease, greater lifetime medical costs, and a shorter life expectancy. Here, however, an effort is made to prove causation in human data: that the excess weight does in fact cause all of these problems.
Limited by the quality of evidence, possible potential reverse causality and residual confounding, observational studies have been almost unable to identify a causal association between being overweight and aging. In this regard, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) can be used to reveal cause and effect. However, RCTs are costly in terms of money, time and manpower. Instead, Mendelian randomization (MR) is a popular and effective method for causal inference in recent years. It takes genetic variation (single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP) as the instrumental variable to deduce the causal association between outcome and exposure, which can effectively avoid the confounding bias of traditional epidemiological studies.
We collected genetic variants associated with overweight, age proxy indicators (telomere length, frailty index, and facial aging, etc.), from genome-wide association studies datasets. Then we performed MR analyses to explore associations between overweight and age proxy indicators. MR analyses were primarily conducted using the inverse variance weighted method, followed by various sensitivity and validation analyses.
MR analyses indicated that there were significant associations of being overweight on telomere length, frailty index, and facial aging. Overweight status also had a significant negative causality with life expectancy. Moreover, the findings tend to favor causal links between body fat mass or body fat percentage on aging proxy indicators, but not body fat-free mass. In conclusion, this study provides evidence of the causality between overweight and accelerated aging (telomere length decreased, frailty index increased, facial aging increased) and lower life expectancy. Accordingly, the potential significance of weight control and treatment of overweight status in combating accelerated aging need to be emphasized.
Reason, would like to hear your take on this:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/06/akg-antiaging-supplement-results-so-far.html
Even though it is likely valuable to indicate those conditions that reduce life expectancy *and* have alignment with certain damage/ dysfunction that accumulates with time (chronological age), it may be beneficial to distinguish between healthiness (or lack of it) and the mechanisms of dysfunction that are so overwhelmingly prevalent with advancing chronological age.
I suppose that this is exceedingly difficult since both health and the discrepancy between biological/chronological age (a ratio of being younger than your age would indicate with dysfunction) are far easier to define by the amount of sickness or the amount of 'age damage'.
i.e: Healthiness as a lack of illness. Youngness as a lack of oldness. Crazy.
Several institutions like to categorize or score such vague concepts, introducing a gradation to what is otherwise a spectrum that changes with time and varies widely across a population.
i.e: Level 1 health would be defined as certain levels of fitness, nutrition, lack of pathology, etc., this could carry along with each succeeding semi-decade from youth and have to be verified medically. This would create a baseline.
The Point: Chronological Age-related dysfunction could also be tracked and categorized as it progresses. But since we don't react to it until it manifests as life-affecting disability, we lose significant ability to intervene and understand during early stages, perhaps otherwise unremarkable and under-reported. Putting aside the notion that most people are reactive than pro-active - a major part of the 'problem', being able to quantify the major aging mechanisms/ results pre-20 years old, 20 - 24, 25 - 29, 30 - 34, 35+ etc., etc., would go a long way to deterring and understanding age-accelerating lifestyles and events. It may be that pre-middle age people would have the resources and interest in mitigating risk factors for accelerating age as much or more than those who are already 'feeling it' - perhaps 69+. A significant demographic is being missed by not approaching the young to invest in minimizing accelerated biological age.
Academic studies of early age-related symptoms (normally not considered significant or extreme to current chronological age) in otherwise healthy young? Can't be bothered to 'Google Scholar' it. My 2c
@mcmp For a person who is allergic to vitamin A (depression and suicide attempts after that) the dose of vitamin A in Rejuvant may be lethal. So I will never buy it. Another drawback, for someone who reacts badly to calcium, a dose of calcium in Rejuvant (which slows down the release of AKG) also causes serious side effects. Also for persons with atherosclerosis this ilness limits the amount of Calcium you could safely take. There is no use to trade Ca contained in CaAKG for pure Ca (without AKG). There are needed other ways to slow CaAKG release if frequent taking of small doses is a problem. Much better alternative would be MgAKG, but only Kirkman Labs makes it so far, and half by half with CaAKG only. And curiously, some countries prohibit new forms of Mg on the market without scientific safety studies and changing local law to include them first, and this policy is very aggressively enforced by the local medical&foods police on local sellers. I live in such one so I have to import Magtein through other EU countries because it is forbidden locally. Btw, generic CaAKG in bulk cost around $50-75 per 100 grams (6 to 9 times cheaper per gram). I don't think that less frequent taking of Rejuvant justify extra costs, even without it's drawbacks.