A Look Under the Hood

I thought I knew how old I was — until a series of tests told me something different.

This past summer, I interviewed Doug Vaughan, MD, a longevity expert who runs the Potocsnak Longevity Institute at Northwestern University. I was writing an article on the possibility of extending the human lifespan.

Vaughan measures people’s epigenetic age — an estimate of their body’s age based on measurable signs of aging, rather than how many years they’ve been alive. His work is part of an ongoing longevity study.

Not all body systems age at the same rate; for example, a 30-year-old could have a 40-year-old liver, perhaps from attending too many parties, but that same person could have the eyes of a 27-year-old.

Vaughn also measures a person’s calculated age, which is a more general estimate based on several factors, including blood biomarkers and other health indicators such as:

• Cholesterol
• Glucose
• Inflammation markers
• BMI or waist circumference
• Blood pressure
• Lifestyle factors such as sleep patterns, smoking, and general fitness and activity levels

After our interview, Vaughan invited me to take part in the study.

I agreed and spent three hours undergoing a series of tests: body composition measurement, a heart test, retina scans, bloodwork, and a few other tests.

The Longevity Institute partners with researchers from around the world to analyze data. For some of these tests, they use large language models to analyze the data, comparing it to thousands of others who have participated in the study.

A few months later, Vaughan called me with surprising results.

My epigenetic age turned out to be 44.8, and my calculated age is 47 — both within range of my chronological age, 45. My eye age, which looks at how healthy my body’s microvasculature is, is 41.

But the real shocker was my heart age: 56.

Normally, the ranges of epigenetic and calculated ages are within a few years of a person’s chronological age, and Vaughan admitted my heart age was an outlier. Plus, I’ve been an athlete my entire life, eat healthy, and stay active. Why the discrepancy?

Vaughan suspected the chemotherapy I received when I was 23 for a stage IV non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was the main culprit.

It didn’t feel great to see the ghost of cancer past, but it prompted me to make some changes aimed at improving my heart health. I started taking a statin to tame my cholesterol (thanks, genes), and I’m learning how to swim. I’m not comfortable underwater, and I’m still in the novice stage of putting the different parts of a front crawl together. But I’m getting better. In a few weeks, my coach tells me, I’ll be swimming laps.

Though my heart age was a shock, I’m glad I took part in Vaughan’s study, and I’m not afraid of the data. Data will help me make informed choices about my health. To neglect the data would mean hiding from the truth; there’s no undoing the side effects from the chemo I received as a 23-year old. But to hide my head in the sand and not do anything to strengthen my heart would betray my survivorship.

Too often, men ignore their health; they don’t want to know the information. It’s easier to carry the illusion of invincibility and strength than to proactively address symptoms before they turn into full-blown problems. That’s why men avoid the doctor for just about any health issue, not only cancer, in higher rates than women.

One set of data from Kaiser Permanente showed that only about 62 % of men reported seeing a doctor or other health professional in the past six months, compared with 74% of women. The study also showed that women are more likely to keep up with preventive visits in general. Sometimes I feel like men must think they have to walk barefoot over broken glass before they agree to go to their annual physical.

Learning about my own heart age was a jolt but not a death sentence. It pushed me to act, and it made me realize just how much data informs. If someone is serious about living long and prospering, they have to be willing to look.