Tests, Fixes, and Ideas That Are Shaping My Longevity Strategy

Is your gut spiking cortisol at 3 a.m?

Hormones & Sleep /

Sleep and the gut.

Two areas of longevity science I keep coming back to — both in my own work and in my own health. I think the gut-sleep connection is one of the more underappreciated intersections in health, and it’s something I’ve wanted to explore in a focused conversation for a while.

Today I get to do that — through a written Q&A with Scott C. Anderson.

Scott is a science journalist and co-author of The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection — a National Geographic bestseller he wrote alongside John F. Cryan and Ted Dinan, the researchers who coined the term psychobiotics. He also writes on Substack about the gut-brain connection.

I asked Scott six questions about the gut-brain axis, cortisol, probiotics, and what the research says about improving sleep through the microbiome.

Here’s what he had to say:

Is your gut spiking cortisol at 3 a.m? Read Post »

“My LDL-C is 186—I eat whole foods & exercise: what else is left to do?”

Accelerated Aging Risks /

An LDL-C of 186 and ApoB of 128 in someone eating whole foods, exercising regularly, and carrying roughly 10% body fat raises a question that goes beyond food quality: what is keeping particle levels this high, and what is the smartest next step? Cardiovascular risk accumulates over time. Autopsy-based research from the Pathobiological Determinants of

“My LDL-C is 186—I eat whole foods & exercise: what else is left to do?” Read Post »

The first question I ask every client about their sleep

Sleep & 3AM Wakeups /

Feeling rested on waking is not a loose impression of sleep quality—it is a measure of whether overnight recovery completed. A large U.S. study of 5,268 adults age 50+ found that those who woke without feeling rested had approximately 6% shorter telomeres compared to the cohort average, independent of age, chronic disease, body weight, and

The first question I ask every client about their sleep Read Post »

Is sleeping < 7 hours really worse for biological aging?

Sleep & 3AM Wakeups /

A study of 434 participants from the Whitehall II cohort found that shorter sleep duration was associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length — a marker of biological aging. Telomeres were on average 6% shorter in those sleeping fewer than 5 hours compared with those sleeping more than 7 hours per night. Telomeres are protective DNA

Is sleeping < 7 hours really worse for biological aging? Read Post »

Everybody talks about growth hormone. Almost nobody talks about what controls it.

Hormones & Sleep /

Physiological studies show that total daily GH output begins to fall in our 30s largely because the bursts of GH released become smaller.

In longevity circles, that observation is often interpreted in a linear way: GH decreases with age, so perhaps the solution is to increase GH again.

Yet major endocrine reviews and guideline statements have not endorsed raising GH as an anti-aging approach in otherwise healthy adults. Trials in older adults without GH deficiency have produced modest improvements in body composition but also higher rates of adverse effects, and there is no GH-raising therapy approved specifically for anti-aging.

The reason is that GH is not a single dial that can be turned up.

GH output emerges from a regulatory network in the brain involving multiple interacting inputs:

growth hormone–releasing hormone (GHRH), which stimulates GH release

somatostatin, which suppresses GH release

ghrelin, which amplifies GH release

These inputs interact continuously with sleep depth, metabolic state, and reproductive hormones such as testosterone and estrogen.

So when GH changes across the lifespan, the more complete explanation lies in the upstream regulators.

In this article we will look at:

what growth hormone–releasing hormone (GHRH) is and how it stimulates GH production

the lesser-known role of GHRH as a sleep-promoting neuropeptide tied to deep sleep

what tends to change after midlife in the sleep–GHRH–GH axis

whether aging itself is the primary driver of those changes — or whether age is partly a proxy for modifiable factors

Let’s get started.

Everybody talks about growth hormone. Almost nobody talks about what controls it. Read Post »

Why You Really Wake Up to Pee at 3am

Sleep & 3AM Wakeups /

Peeing at night is often misunderstood, and the specific pattern of nighttime urination points to different potential causes and different solutions. For the generally healthy individual, nighttime peeing falls into sleep-related and non-sleep-related categories, each with distinct drivers. Changes in antidiuretic hormone regulation, reproductive hormones, and sleep disruption all play a role in why this

Why You Really Wake Up to Pee at 3am Read Post »

Is dietary cholesterol required for good human health?

Longevity Labs & Biomarkers /

A deep-dive on how dietary cholesterol might or might not affect your LDL-C

Cholesterol is one of the body’s most tightly regulated and energetically expensive molecules; however, it is still widely portrayed as something to restrict or minimize.

Every nucleated cell can synthesize it, and several organs use substantial metabolic resources for its local production. In some tissues, most notably the brain, dietary cholesterol does not materially influence cholesterol content under normal physiological conditions because lipoprotein-bound cholesterol does not cross the intact blood–brain barrier.

This raises a central biological question: if cholesterol can simply be obtained from food, why did evolution invest in such an elaborate and tightly regulated system to manufacture it internally?

The answer lies in the indispensable structural, metabolic, and signalling roles of cholesterol and the biological necessity of local, on-demand synthesis.

Cholesterol is not only useful but also essential for multicellular life.

Is dietary cholesterol required for good human health? Read Post »

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