2026
- Mouse Dish or Human?4 min read
An 80-year-old's blood cells were made 60 years 'younger' in a dish. A dish result is a dish result.
Researchers at the University of Bonn announced today, in Aging Cell, that they had converted blood-cell precursors from an 80-year-old donor directly into neural stem cells and watched the cells' epigenetic age — the DNA-methylation clock reading — fall to under 20 years over…
- Follow the Money · Real Food4 min read
91% of the papers criticizing the ultra-processed-food category had an industry-tied author
On Tuesday we said to watch who makes the argument against the ultra-processed-food evidence, and who paid for the making. A systematic review in the American Journal of Public Health, described this week by the Oregon Research Institute, has done the counting.
- Connection · One Chart4 min read
40% of Americans report moderate to severe loneliness. The barrier they name is time.
The second annual Social Connection in America survey, run by RAND and The Connection Institute with Julianne Holt-Lunstad — the author of the 148-study meta-analysis this site cites more than any other — as its scientific lead, was released this morning.
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
8.8 million people, 51 cohorts, one direction. And what 'associated' means in numbers you can use.
The largest pooled analysis of ultra-processed food and chronic disease to date was released today in Family Medicine and Community Health: 51 prospective cohorts, 8,819,894 adults, followed for two to thirty-two years across four continents.
- Sleep · Evidence4 min read
The sleep science honored last night took 28 years. The sleep hack took a video.
Last night in New York the Lasker Foundation presented its basic-research award, often called America's Nobel, to Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford and Masashi Yanagisawa of the University of Tsukuba for identifying orexin, the brain peptide that keeps us awake.
- Sleep · Evidence5 min read
More REM, less disease: a 95,559-person study, and why your ring's REM number is still not this
A study published today inPLOS Medicine is the largest look yet at sleep stages and disease. Researchers in Beijing took seven days of wrist-accelerometer data from 95,559 UK Biobank participants, estimated REM, deep sleep, wakefulness and irregularity with a machine-learning model…
- Movement · Evidence4 min read
Fewer steps, taken faster: a 103,684-person study says pace counts too
Last July the largest review of step counts put the point of diminishing returns around 7,000 a day. A study published today in the British Journal of Sports Medicine adds the other variable.
- Sleep · Clinical4 min read
GLP-1 drugs help sleep apnea. The machine still beats them, and most people won't wear it.
A review published today in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery does the sorting that sleep-apnea patients have needed since tirzepatide was approved for the condition in December 2024.
- Mouse Dish or Human?4 min read
Mouse, dish or human? Semaglutide extended lifespan in old female mice by 92 days.
A paper in Nature today, with a same-day release from the National Institutes of Health, reports that semaglutide — the molecule in Wegovy — given to female mice from 20 months of age extended their median lifespan from 742 days to 834, about 12%.
- Evidence · Industry4 min read
The aging clocks respond to interventions. The authors say that is not the same as being right.
Four days after a study explained why epigenetic clocks disagree, a second one — in Nature Medicine today, described by Yale — asks whether they move.
- Evidence · Industry4 min read
Two biological-age tests, two answers. A study of 3,227 people explains why.
Patients bring us two biological-age results from two companies and ask which is right. A study from the University of Southern California, published in npj Aging and described by the university last week, offers the best answer so far: they are measuring different things.
- Psychology of Optimization · Evidence4 min read
A scientist ran a longevity study on one person: himself. Read the limitations section first.
A university in Singapore announced today that one of its professors had, in a study published yesterday in PLOS ONE, reduced his estimated biological age from 47 to about 32.
- Industry · Evidence4 min read
Twenty finalists, ten million dollars, and a yardstick that hasn't moved
XPRIZE named twenty finalists today in its $101 million Healthspan competition, ten of them receiving $1 million milestone awards. When we wrote about the forty semifinalists in May of last year, we said the thing to watch was the yardstick: to win, a team has to restore muscle…
- Sleep · Evidence4 min read
A sleep drug was approved today on trial data. Note what the sleep aisle has never had to show.
The FDA approved oveporexton today, the first drug that works by switching on the brain's orexin system — the wakefulness signal that is missing in people with narcolepsy type 1, a condition affecting an estimated 120,000 Americans.
- Connection · One Chart3 min read
Another country counts: half of Australians report some form of social disconnection
Ending Loneliness Together, the Australian research coalition led from the University of Sydney, released its State of the Nation report today: a nationally weighted survey of 4,001 people aged 12 to 95, fielded in January and February.
- Evidence · Mouse Dish or Human?4 min read
A model says the ceiling on human life is 146 to 194 years. A model is a model.
A paper published last month in npj Aging is making the rounds this week under headlines about living to 190. The authors built a mathematical model in which the body is a chain of critical organs, each losing cells to lethal mutations over time, and asked how long a person would…
- Purpose · Evidence4 min read
Purpose in life and dying: the largest analysis yet, 488,765 people, and the honest size of the effect
A meta-analysis published today inPsychological Medicine, open access, pools 25 samples — eight large national cohorts with individual-level data plus 17 published studies — totaling 488,765 people followed for up to 32 years, with 48,928 deaths.
- Movement · Evidence4 min read
Ninety minutes a week of strength training was the sweet spot in 147,374 people. More didn't help; none was worse.
The largest long-term study of strength training and death was published today in the British Journal of Sports Medicine: 147,374 health professionals in three American cohorts, followed for up to thirty years, with 35,798 deaths and exercise reported every two years.
- Evidence · Clinical4 min read
The first person has been dosed with a reprogramming therapy. Phase 1 means safety, not benefit.
Life Biosciences announced today that the first participant has been dosed in the Phase 1 trial of ER-100, the partial epigenetic reprogramming therapy whose trial clearance we covered in January.
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
Three scientists say the trials don't prove processing itself is the problem. Here is the argument without the spin — theirs or ours.
A Perspective in Science today, by nutrition researchers at Copenhagen, Wageningen and Liverpool (DOI 10.1126/science.aef3495), reviews the five controlled feeding trials that compare ultra-processed and minimally processed diets and concludes that they provide weak support for an…
- Follow the Money · Industry4 min read
A $1.8 billion valuation and no human efficacy data. Here is how the math works.
Retro Biosciences, the longevity company founded with roughly $180 million from the chief executive of OpenAI and with the stated goal of adding ten years to healthy human lifespan, announced today an initial close of its next financing at a pre-money valuation of $1.8 billion, led…
- Sleep · Evidence4 min read
Too little sleep and too much both age every organ system. The sweet spot is boring.
A paper in Nature today, described by Columbia University, takes the biological-age idea the consumer industry sells one number at a time and runs it properly: 23 aging clocks built from brain and body imaging, blood proteins and metabolites, spanning 17 organ systems, in UK Biobank…
- Connection · One Chart4 min read
One in five Americans was lonely 'a lot of the day yesterday.' That number belongs on every health dashboard.
Gallup's latest well-being report, published today, is headlined by depression — 19.1% of US adults say they currently have or are being treated for it, roughly 51 million people, nearly double the 2015 figure — but the line we watch is the one underneath.
- Evidence · Real Food4 min read
A preprint says ultra-processed food raises frailty risk 43%. Here is how to read a preprint.
A paper posted today on medRxiv pools ten observational studies of ultra-processed food and frailty in older adults — 105,000 participants across the United States, Spain, Italy, Australia, Singapore, Iran and China — and reports that higher intake was associated with 43% higher odds of frailty.
- Connection · Purpose4 min read
Loneliness shortens life mostly by taking your reasons. A new study puts the share at 88%.
Connection and purpose are two of the five fundamentals, and a paper in the March issue of Social Science & Medicine suggests they are closer to one fundamental wearing two hats.
- Sleep · Evidence3 min read
If you want to know whether one hour of sleep matters, look at Monday
Clocks moved forward at 2 a.m. this morning and most of the country lost an hour of sleep at once. You cannot run a randomized trial that takes an hour of sleep from three hundred million people, but twice a year a government does it for free, and researchers have been reading the…
- Follow the Money · Evidence4 min read
The first longevity drug may be for dogs. That's the honest path, and here's why.
Loyal, the company developing lifespan-extension drugs for dogs, announced a $100 million Series C today, bringing its total raised past $250 million.
- Evidence · Mouse Dish or Human?4 min read
The first reprogramming therapy is cleared for a human trial. 'Cleared to test' and 'shown to work' are different sentences.
Life Biosciences announced today that the FDA has cleared its investigational new drug application for ER-100, which the company describes as the first cellular rejuvenation therapy using epigenetic reprogramming to be allowed into human trials.
- Evidence · The Fundamentals5 min read
Two papers in a week priced the fundamentals in years. Here is the receipt.
Two large studies from a University of Sydney team landed this week, and together they are the closest thing we have to a price list for the fundamentals.
- Real Food5 min read
The new Dietary Guidelines say 'eat real food.' Here is what is in the ten pages, and what isn't.
The Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture released the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans today. The document is ten pages long; the previous edition ran 164.
2025
- Follow the Money · Industry4 min read
An AI drug company that promises 'productive longevity' listed today. Its lead drug is for lungs, not aging.
Insilico Medicine began trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this morning under the code 3696, raising about HK$2.28 billion — roughly US$290 million — in what the company calls the largest Hong Kong biotech IPO of the year.
- Clinical · Evidence4 min read
A weight-loss pill with trial data. The longevity aisle should take notes.
The FDA approved today a once-daily pill form of semaglutide, the GLP-1 drug sold as Wegovy, for chronic weight management. In the trial that supported it, 307 adults took the pill or a placebo for 64 weeks; those on the drug lost on average 13.6% of body weight against 2.4% on…
- Evidence · Connection4 min read
The Blue Zones researchers answered. Here is what the reply settles, and what it can't.
Fifteen months ago we wrote about the Ig Nobel Prize awarded to a demographer whose work argues that many of the world's claimed oldest people are the product of missing birth certificates and pension fraud, and that the Blue Zones might be artifacts of bad records.
- Follow the Money4 min read
160 biomarkers for $365. The reference range is where the money is.
Function Health, the direct-to-consumer lab-testing company, announced today a $298 million Series B at a $2.5 billion valuation, bringing its total raised to about $350 million.
- Clinical · Sex Differences4 min read
The black box came off hormone therapy today. A 22-year label, built on 63-year-old participants.
The FDA announced today that it will remove the boxed warnings on menopausal hormone therapies for cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and probable dementia.
- Sleep · Evidence4 min read
Melatonin, heart failure, and the number the headline won't give you
The American Heart Association released a study today that will be summarized tomorrow as "melatonin linked to heart failure," and the summary will be both accurate and misleading.
- Follow the Money · Mouse Dish or Human?4 min read
One of the world's largest drugmakers just bought into cellular reprogramming. Read what 'clinical' means here.
NewLimit, the San Francisco company working on epigenetic reprogramming — resetting the chemical marks that tell a cell how old to act — announced today an additional $45 million from Eli Lilly, Duke University's endowment, Section 32 and existing investors, at a $1.62 billion…
- Industry4 min read
Apple's watch got cleared for what WHOOP got a warning letter for. The difference is the paperwork, and the design.
The FDA cleared Apple's hypertension notifications last night, three days after the company announced them. The feature runs passively on the watch's optical heart sensor, looks for patterns consistent with chronic high blood pressure over thirty-day windows, and sends a notification…
- Supplements · Evidence3 min read
The second shoe drops on taurine: no link to age, muscle, strength or function in people
In June, Science reported that circulating taurine does not decline with age in humans, monkeys or mice, undercutting the premise of a supplement boom that started with a 2023 mouse paper.
- Real Food · Evidence4 min read
The American Heart Association drew the line on ultra-processed food. Here is where it is.
The American Heart Association published a science advisory today in Circulation on ultra-processed foods — industrial formulations built from refined ingredients and additives, the category the Nova classification calls group four.
- Movement · Evidence4 min read
10,000 steps was a marketing number. 7,000 is the data.
The 10,000-step target began life as the name of a Japanese pedometer in the 1960s — manpo-kei, the ten-thousand-step meter — and has survived sixty years on the strength of being a round number.
- Clinical · Sex Differences4 min read
An FDA panel wants the scariest warning on hormone therapy gone. The 2002 study behind it was about different women.
An expert panel convened by the FDA commissioner urged the agency today to remove the boxed warning — the agency's most severe label — from menopausal hormone therapies, beginning with low-dose vaginal estrogen.
- Supplements · Evidence4 min read
Taurine doesn't decline with age after all. Two years, one supplement boom, one correction.
In June 2023, Science published a paper reporting that circulating taurine — an amino acid, best known as an energy-drink ingredient — falls with age, and that supplementing it extended lifespan in worms and mice and improved health markers in monkeys.
- Evidence4 min read
A federal health report cited studies that don't exist. Here is how to check a citation in ninety seconds.
On May 22 the federal Make America Healthy Again Commission released a 78-page report on childhood chronic disease, attributing rising rates to ultra-processed food, chemical exposures, lifestyle and over-prescribing.
- Sleep · Evidence3 min read
Mouth taping got its review: ten studies, 213 people and a warning
Taping your mouth shut at night is a social-media sleep hack with millions of views and, as of today, a systematic review in PLOS ONE. Ear, nose and throat researchers at Western University in Ontario found ten studies with a combined 213 patients.
- Industry · Evidence4 min read
A $101 million prize for restoring ten years of function. Watch the yardstick, not the money.
XPRIZE named forty semifinalists today in its $101 million Healthspan competition, chosen from more than 600 teams in 58 countries. Each gets $250,000 to run a trial.
- Real Food · Evidence4 min read
Fasting beat calorie counting by 2.9 kilograms. Look at what both groups actually did.
A randomized trial published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine will be reported as a win for intermittent fasting, and in a narrow sense it is.
- Follow the Money4 min read
Whole-body MRI raised $120 million. The radiologists' own college says don't.
Prenuvo, the whole-body MRI company, announced today a $120 million Series B co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Left Lane Capital, with investors including Cindy Crawford, Anne Wojcicki and Eric Schmidt.
- Evidence4 min read
The cold plunge got its meta-analysis. The benefits last about twelve hours.
Researchers at the University of South Australia published this week in PLOS ONE the first systematic review and meta-analysis of cold-water immersion in healthy adults: eleven studies, 3,177 participants, cold showers, ice baths and plunges with water at chest level or higher for at…
- Real Food · Evidence4 min read
The FDA banned a red dye today. The reason is in the fine print.
The FDA announced today that it is revoking the authorization for FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs. The dye is the bright cherry red in candy, frosting, maraschino cherries and some medicines.
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
Two reports, seventeen days apart, two answers on alcohol. Both are right.
The US Surgeon General issued an advisory today calling alcohol a leading preventable cause of cancer — about 100,000 cases and 20,000 deaths a year in the United States, across at least seven cancer types — and asked Congress to put a cancer warning on the label.
2024
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
The National Academies says moderate drinkers live longer. Read that sentence slowly.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released today a congressionally requested review of moderate drinking — up to two drinks a day for men, one for women — and eight health outcomes.
- Evidence4 min read
12.4 years: the number the longevity industry should be measured against
Two Mayo Clinic researchers, Armin Garmany and Andre Terzic, published today in JAMA Network Open an analysis of World Health Organization data for 183 countries from 2000 to 2019, measuring the distance between how long people live and how long they live in good health.
- Access4 min read
Ten Americas, a twenty-year gap, and the longevity industry's quietest problem
The Lancet published "Ten Americas" today, an analysis by Laura Dwyer-Lindgren and colleagues at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that sorts the entire US population into ten groups by race, geography, income and related factors, and tracks their life expectancy from 2000 to 2021.
- Follow the Money4 min read
Two nonprofits merged today. Here is the part of longevity that does not scale.
The SENS Research Foundation — a Mountain View nonprofit founded in 2009 around the idea that aging is accumulated damage that can be repaired — and Lifespan.io, a New York advocacy and crowdfunding group founded in 2014, announced today that they have completed a merger into a new…
- Movement4 min read
Two days a week counted the same as seven. Read the fine print anyway.
A study published today in Circulation followed nearly 90,000 UK Biobank participants who wore a wrist accelerometer for one week and were then tracked through their health records.
- Evidence4 min read
A Blue Zones critic won an Ig Nobel today. What changes for you?
The Blue Zones are five regions — Sardinia, Okinawa, Ikaria, Nicoya in Costa Rica and Loma Linda, California — reported to have unusual numbers of very old people, and one of the best-known stories about simple living and long life.