Everything Epigenetics

20/09/2023

🧬⏰ EPIGENETIC AGE STILL ABOVE YOUR CHRONOLOGICAL AGE?

I encourage you to review this list for a deeper understanding of what might have, or could contribute to, a higher biological age.

Every influence listed below has been proven to correlate with accelerated, epigenetic aging (DNA methylation) patterns.

Consider these medical factors that could be the culprit!⚕️

1️⃣ EXPOSURE TO SEVERE VIRAL INFECTIONS: Have you tested positive for COVID-19 or have you been diagnosed with HIV?

2️⃣ AUTOIMMUNE DISORDERS: Autoimmune disorders not only cause chronic inflammation… They can also cause oxidative stress, cellular damage, and immune system dysregulation which promotes increased biological aging.

3️⃣ ACUTE & CHRONIC STRESS: That infinite feeling of feeling like you have the “weight of the world” on your shoulders is making your DNA methylation markers awry!

4️⃣ PHYSIOLOGICAL DISORDERS: People with mental health disorders tend to have shorter lives, and poorer quality health, than the general population. Researchers believe this is due to having an accelerated biological age.

5️⃣ HORMONAL IMBALANCES: Shifts in stress and s*x hormones can influence DNA methylation, contributing to age-related alterations in tissues and organs.

6️⃣ METABOLIC HEALTH: Metabolic disturbances can accelerate epigenetic aging by causing inflammation and oxidative stress, insulin resistance, and an increase in adipose tissue

Recognize these? They might just be undermining the outcomes of your epigenetic biological age testing.

Remember, we can MITIGATE the effects that these medical factors have on your biological age.

💡🔬Now, LET'S FIX IT: Tell me, which one of these medical factors are you ready to attack? Comment below! Let's journey towards better aging together! 💪🏽📈

15/08/2023

Have you tested your biological age and been frustrated by the results because you feel like you're doing EVERYTHING right?

What if I told you that factors from your childhood could have impacted your score?

New research, with surprising discoveries, continue to shape our understanding of the toll life takes on our bodies.

Factors from your childhood are just one of many factors that now have research-backed connections with speeding up your biological aging processes.

And we've only scratched the surface! Epigenetics (the way we measure biological age) is a relatively new, but rapidly growing, field🧬

For context, scientists developed the very first age-quantifying clocks in 2013, years after the first generation of iPhone📱hit the market in 2007

The human genome (all 3 billion+ base pairs) wasn't fully mapped until 2022, and it wasn't even until the early 2000s that epigenetic-specific research really gained momentum in the scientific community.

This means that we are continually discovering new ways to influence our biological age, by influencing how our DNA is actually expressed throughout our bodies.

So, here are several factors from your childhood that can impact your epigenetic age:

1️⃣Receiving limited physical touch and coddling
2️⃣Internalizing symptoms of stress and psychiatric disorders like anxiety
3️⃣Experiencing or witnessing violence or other traumatic events
4️⃣Experiencing socio economics hardships
5️⃣Standard measurements of development

🔑Key Takeaways:
👉🏽If you have accelerated aging, give yourself some grace. This may be due to factors outside of your control that occurred during your childhood.

👉🏽It is important to note that there are many things that can impact your biological age either temporarily or long-term

👉🏽The good news is that you can alter your epigenetic methylation patterns and reverse your biological age through lifestyle changes, supplements, medications, and/or procedural based therapies💊

Questions about how factors from your childhood can impact your epigenetics? Let's chat below!📩

P.S. For more epigenetics news like this - sign up for my monthly Everything Epigenetics newsletter. 🔗Link in bio

25/06/2023

I woke up feeling extra thankful today🩷

26 years old today, chronologically that is😉

Biologically? I don't know! I'm waiting a couple more months to retest since I've implemented several positive lifestyle changes (more to come on this soon).

In the meantime, I want to share 10 things I'll be focusing on and reminding myself of for the next coming months.

1️⃣Quality relationships > quantity relationships
2️⃣Time is your most valuable asset
3️⃣Be vulnerable
4️⃣Slow down, life is not a race
5️⃣You can work hard and play hard
6️⃣Be patient with yourself
7️⃣It's ok to say no
8️⃣These are the "good ole days"
9️⃣Be kind to others... and yourself
🔟Stop being so serious

I think it's important to reflect on life and decide what you want to concentrate on in the future. It’s a mindset.

Which affirmation resonates with you the most?

Drop a comment below.

26/05/2023

This is one of my ALL TIME favorite quotes💭

Peter Drucker's quote, "You can't manage what you don't measure," is often used in the context of business and management, but it applies to any area of life where we want to improve or achieve a goal.

The quote emphasizes the importance of measurement as a tool for management and improvement📏

If you don't have a way to measure progress, it's difficult to know whether you're on track or not, and it's nearly impossible to make informed decisions about what to do next.

I think you can see where I'm going with this now...

How do you know how you're aging if you're not measuring it?

What interventions are working for you to reduce your number one risk factor of almost every single chronic disease and death?

If you implement Epigenetic Biological Age testing, you're able to gather real-time feedback from your unique DNA methylation patterns.

You can use the data in your results to guide your efforts and make informed decisions about how to improve your longevity biomarkers.

Remember, without measurement, you're essentially flying blind and making decisions based on incomplete information.

Knowledge = Power

11/05/2023

Episode 6🤗

Cancer acts as an accelerator of aging.

Furthermore, we know that cancer and cancer therapies can elicit aging-associated cognitive phenotypes and reveal or exacerbate underlying cognitive deficits, increase the risk of physical impairment, heart disease, diabetes and other chronic health conditions, and accelerate the hallmarks of aging.

Dr. Christin Burd and her team, from The Ohio State University, have been asking key questions about just that… age-acceleration in cancer.

To understand this further, they have been researching cancer therapies, T cells, senescence, and p16 and how they are related to epigenetic aging.

T cells, senescence, and p16 are all known to play important roles in cancer development and progression.

T cells are key players in the immune system‘s response to cancer, while senescence is a process that limits the proliferation of damaged cells and is implicated in aging and cancer.

P16 is a tumor suppressor gene that is often mutated in cancer cells.

By studying the relationship between epigenetic clocks and these key factors, we hope to gain a better understanding of how cancer cells develop and progress, as well as how they may be treated.

Aging biomarkers, including epigenetic clocks, may provide important answers to some of the most pressing questions in cancer research today.

In this week’s Everything Epigenetics podcast, Dr. Christin Burd speaks with me about the importance of biomarkers and epigenetic clocks for older adults with cancer, as epigenetic clocks are currently not trained on cancer populations.

We also discuss the development of a new ‘p16INK4a epi-clock’ (that I am most excited about) which may allow for the measurement of different aspects of aging using the same platform.

Being an educator at The Ohio State University, Dr. Burd is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in science.

Dr. Burd continues to focus her research on identifying mechanisms to prevent melanoma and improve clinical outcomes in older adults with cancer.

🧬🧬🧬

11/05/2023

What are the benefits of reducing your Epigenetic Age?

There are many, however, the most obvious is that you would reduce your risk for almost EVERY single chronic disease and death.

Here are 9 SIMPLE ways, according to the literature and published interventional trials, that you can reduce your Epigenetic Age:

1. Improve your Diet
2. Improve Insulin Sensitivity
3. Reduce Stress Levels
4. Exercise in Various Ways (but not too much)
5. Limit Alcohol Consumption
6. Optimize Sleep
7. Reduce Pollution Exposure
8. Avoid Smoking
9. Keep a Healthy Weight

Personally, I've always struggled with my stress levels. I'm just a naturally stressed out person - tightly wound and on "high alert".

I've found that self-care, meditation, reading, breath work, hot yoga, and having some type of creative outlet helps me lower my stress.

Prioritizing myself and my alone time also helps.

Remember, you're in control of you. It's YOUR life.

What are you doing to lower your Epigenetic Age?

01/05/2023

I was asked to be part of an excellent health and wellness magazine called the Best Holistic Life Magazine✨

It's filled with seasonal tips, tricks, recipes, and so much more. I've been reading the magazine for a while now and I cannot wait for you to read my article "The Era of Biological Age Testing is Here" on this issue.

You can access the magazine through the APP where you will always receive their monthly releases and exclusive offers first.

DM me for the link🔗

26/04/2023

Episode 5🥵

Maintaining muscle mass is crucial for healthy aging, as it is closely linked to overall physical function and quality of life💪🏽

As we age, our bodies naturally experience a decline in muscle mass and strength, known as sarcopenia.

This loss of muscle mass can lead to a range of negative health outcomes, including decreased mobility, increased risk of falls and fractures, and decreased metabolic rate.

Additionally, loss of muscle mass can contribute to chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

By developing an epigenetic clock for skeletal muscle, Dr. Voisin and her colleagues have identified specific methylation patterns that are associated with muscle aging.

This research not only sheds light on the biological mechanisms behind sarcopenia, but may also provide new targets for interventions aimed at preserving muscle mass and function in older adults.

In this week’s Everything Epigenetics podcast, Dr. Sarah Voisin and I focus on her 2020 paper which describes her development of a human muscle-specific epigenetic clock that predicts age with better accuracy than the pan-tissue clock.

Yes - you heard that right… better accuracy than Dr. Steve Horvath’s 2013 clock.

Dr. Voisin and I also chat about the importance of skeletal muscle and how this relates to epigenetics and aging, the power of machine learning, and how identifying which methylation positions change as we age may give us insight into the underlying reason as to WHY we age rather than just HOW.

She is now focused on creating an atas of epigenetics for all human tissues at the cellular level by combining 75,000 DNA methylation profiles across 18 tissues.

🧬 🧬 🧬

25/04/2023

DNA🧬

It's who I am, what I am, and what makes me... well me🤪

Happy DNA Day🥳

DNA Day is celebrated on April 25th every year and commemorates two landmark events in the field of genetics:

👉🏽The discovery of DNA's double helix structure by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953

👉🏽The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003.

The discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was a groundbreaking moment in the history of science and revolutionized our understanding of genetics.

This discovery provided the foundation for the development of modern molecular biology and paved the way for significant advances in medical research, including the diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases.

The completion of the Human Genome Project was an equally important milestone in the history of genetics. This international research effort aimed to map the entire human genome, which is the complete set of DNA in humans.

The project began in 1990 and was completed in 2003, producing a high-quality reference sequence of the human genome. This achievement opened up new possibilities for understanding the genetic basis of human health and disease.

Take time today to celebrate the advances made in the field of genetics and genomics and their impact on science, medicine, and society.

Without these advances, I wouldn't be able to study Epigenetics today! 

05/04/2023

Meme drop //

You’re welcome :~)

Which one is your favorite?

30/03/2023

Episode 3🤓
See links in the comments for access.

The proteome is the collection of proteins that are present within a specific cell, tissue, or system within the body. Our circulating proteome refers to the proteins circulating in our bloodstream and is made up of proteins that are either produced in the circulatory system, or proteins that enter the bloodstream from other organs and tissues in the body.

Why do we care about this?

As we know, proteins are extremely important! They are influencer molecules that maintain our health, and they’re also often the mediators of disease. Furthermore, protein biomarkers have been identified across many age-related morbidities. As proteins are the primary effectors of disease, connecting the epigenome, proteome, and time to disease onset may help to create new, predictive biological signatures.

DNA methylation (DNAm) has been linked to the levels of proteins in our blood and the risk people have of developing chronic diseases. DNAm reflects the body’s exposure to chronic stress and inflammation and while this process is dynamic, DNAm may be more stable than protein measures, which can be variable across multiple time points. DNAm scores for proteins could therefore be used to identify individuals with high-risk biological signatures, many years prior to disease diagnosis.

In this week’s Everything Epigenetics podcast, Danni and I chat about the circulating proteome, how machine learning can be used to create epigenetic scores, and how information from the blood can be used to stratify risk of disease. We focus on the results from a study Danni published last year that integrated epigenetic and protein measures from the blood to develop new biomarkers for disease prediction. Danni’s work integrates these blood-based markers with the medical records of thousands of individuals to model disease onset.

Danni is in the final year of her PhD, on the Wellcome Trust Translational Neuroscience programme at the University of Edinburgh.

🧬🧬🧬

08/03/2023

Happy International Women's Day to all of the badass women out there and in my life🫶🏽

Thank you for continuing to challenge the norm.

Thank you for pushing me to become the best version of myself✨

08/10/2022