The New Dunedin Pace of Aging Test
This month will be the start of series of VitaLifeMD blogs focusing on health span and anti-aging.
The word “anti-aging” is a little bit presumptuous as we all know that it is impossible to turn off the chronological clock. The questions are: what can we do to slow down the biological changes that occur in our body overtime, and how can we optimize our health and improve our vitality as we get older?
Introducing the new Dunedin test
So far we were testing our biological age versus our chronological age with the TruAge Test™ from TruDiagnostic. Some patients were a bit disappointed with their results. The test was measuring everything that happened in the past and could have impacted our current age; it did not focus on what we are doing now to help with the aging process. As an example, several patients had scores that were not optimal despite having a heathy lifestyle now—I discovered that they were smokers or had used drugs in their young years and did not mentioned it to me before. A few had Covid a few months before doing the test which certainly had an impact on their results. Some had huge levels of mercury in their blood at the time of the test acting as toxin on the DNA; this could have also changed the results. Therefore TruDiagnostic, always at the top of progress, worked with scientists to figure out how we could measure the “pace of aging,” and to identify independently from previous environmental factors how our body is performing now.
Let’s review:
Chronological Age: how many years you’ve been alive.
Biological Age: tracks how well your body has handled those years - how you’ve aged at a cellular level, over a lifetime.
Pace of Aging: checks how fast you’re aging right now, like a speedometer for aging
DunedinPACE is far more sensitive to short-term changes than regular Biological Age measurements. It is a useful tool to track your personal reactions to aging interventions.The DunedinPACE algorithm offers real-time feedback on how your body’s aging process is reacting to lifestyle, nutrition, medications, and more.
Changes to Pace of Aging are more effective when you start sooner. Diseases like Diabetes, Stroke, Heart Disease, and COPD don’t appear without warning. Many can be predicted years ahead of time, by tracking epigenetic markers of accelerated aging. Which means you can step in to prevent those diseases by reducing the Pace of Aging markers years ahead of time
The Dunedin Study
The DunedinPACE algorithm is a one-of-a-kind algorithm created by researchers from Duke, Columbia, and the University of Otago. Duke professors Terrie Moffitt Ph.D. and Avshalom Caspi Ph.D. led an international team who finished developing the DunedinPoAm tool in 2021. Building the database took the international team five decades; they tracked biological changes in the bodies of 1037 New Zealanders as part of the
Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development study, a project that began with their birth in 1972.
The study quantified how much accelerated aging affected every part of the body.
People with a slower pace of aging generally did better on memory and intelligence tests, and had better measures of brain health. But accelerated aging created both a notable loss of cortical thickness and reduced surface area of the brain.
Conclusions:
Exposures begin accumulating early in life.
Changes to physiology and aging biomarkers appeared many years before disease diagnosis.
Organ damage is difficult to reverse fully
Preventive interventions are more effective, the earlier you begin.
We will continue offering the initial complete TruAge Test™ for new patients, but will focus on the Dunedin test for the people who want to retest. The aging process is one of the most studied fields of medicine right now and more and more ways to identify the biological phenomenon that occurs in aging are in evaluation. At Harvard University, a new test even more complete is being developed to help us work on different aspects of the aging process; it should be available soon.
This new PaceTest will also include the Telomeres length measurement which ads even more to it to evaluate aging. Track real-time changes as your body responds to aging interventions and lifestyle changes, with just a quick blood draw. To schedule your Dunedin Test, contact our office to schedule your appointment. Telehealth appointments are also available with our Nurse Practitioner, Carley.