Topic
Aging Biology
The hallmarks of aging — mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammaging, intercellular signaling, the systems-level vocabulary for why human bodies break down with time.
11 articles
Two Big Glasses of Wine a Night Is Officially “Heavy Drinking”
One or two glasses of red wine with dinner. Not a night out. The next morning my overnight heart rate was up as much as 20 percent, and my heart rate variability was cut by as much as half.
I Went Into Research to Study Aging. Then I Needed a Stent at 44.
What aging biology can tell us about the supplements, tests and habits we pay for: the 12 hallmarks of aging, plus a candidate 13th, in plain English.
Is Your Mouthwash Increasing Your Blood Pressure?
Some mouthwashes shut down the tongue bacteria your body uses to make nitric oxide. What chlorhexidine does to blood pressure, and which rinse didn't.
What Keeps Plaque in Your Heart Arteries From Rupturing?
Is soft plaque dangerous? Whether a plaque ruptures depends on its fibrous cap, which no CT report measures. What thins it, and the trials where caps thickened.
Your Angiogram Was Clean. Nobody Tested Whether Your Artery Clamps.
Coronary artery spasm is diagnosed with an acetylcholine test in the cath lab, not an angiogram. What it measures, why it is rarely run, how drugs blunt it.
Aging's Zombie Cells Have an Inflammatory Fuel Line. Mayo Just Found the Valve.
Why zombie cells fuel inflammaging: a Mayo-led Nature study traces the mitochondrial fuel line that keeps inflammation genes open, and the valve that shuts it.
I Crushed My ApoB to 38. Nobody Measured My Small Vessels.
Coronary microvascular dysfunction hides behind a clean angiogram. How it is diagnosed, why inflammation drives it, and why an ApoB of 38 was not enough.
The Heart-Attack Risk Hiding in Your Immune Cells
Clonal hematopoiesis (CHIP): a blood mutation that roughly doubles coronary risk. No cardiology society screens for it. Why, and why I stopped chasing the test.
The Gut May Be the Point: Metformin, Citrulline, and the Exercise Question
Metformin acts mainly in the gut, not muscle, per Nature Metabolism. That eases one exercise fear and raises a sharper one: less citrulline, less nitric oxide.
I Trained Hard for 25 Years. I Was Measuring the Wrong Fitness.
VO2 max carries one of the strongest survival signals in medicine, with no ceiling found. I lifted five hours a week for 25 years and never measured mine once.
Blood Pressure Isn’t a Moment. It’s a Dose Your Arteries Absorb for Decades.
132/85 is now Stage 1 hypertension, and a single reading is one sample of a dose your arteries absorb every beat, for decades. Mine sat there for twenty years.