A Blood Test for Aging

Dr. Jim Applegate joins us to discuss a simple blood test that might be able to tell you how long you might live. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What if a simple bloodcast indicate just how long you
might live? I mean, I have questions about that too.
This is West Michigan's Morning News, Steve Kelly. That is
Laurence Smith, Tony Brooks in for Brett Pakeatter, who's back
in a couple of days, Doctor Applegate, former Family Physician
of the Year in the State of Michigan. Officially is
doctor Jim Applegate. Thank you so much for doing this today.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good morning. So is this.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Intrinsic capacity? Is this a strange term? And how did
they come up with this in the first place?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, so, I think sort of the headline on the
article is a little bit disingenuous, and this term intrinsic
capacity is something I never heard of. I've been doing
this since, you know what, since nineteen seventy six. I've
been involved in medicine. So, but I've never heard this term,
you know, the intrinsic capacity. It's a definition that the

(00:56):
Wildhealth Organization uses that looks at functions that people have.
You know, they looked at cognition the way that you think.
They look at locomotion. You know, can you walk or
not walk? They look at your centory, can you hear, well,
can you have good vision? They look at your psychological

(01:17):
and they look at what they call vitality. So those
are the factors in this, you know, this intrinsic capacity.
So what they did in this study they looked at
a thousand people and they judge their intrinsic capacity, which
I thought was interesting. Then they compared it to another
blood tests that can be done called the DNA methylization. Okay,

(01:42):
so this is the way to think about. Your DNA
gets damaged over time and it sort of measures that.
And so they compared these two things. Because most people,
you know, don't stop thinking, they don't stop walking, they
don't lose their sight or they're hearing, you know, because
of something other than their DNA. I mean, yeah, you

(02:04):
can get lazy, maybe not walk as much, but the
true capacity that you have is sort of driven by
your genetics. So what they do is look at your capacity,
and they looked at your genetics and they came up
with the scale that may predict number one, sort of
how much the DNA in your body has affected your capacity,

(02:26):
and then given where you are, how long you might
live when you get these numbers. It's a weird concept.
That's something I've never known about. But the people who
are anti aging experts are like all over it. They
think this is the greatest thing since slice bread or
a scalpol.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
I think, well, but how I mean, can it be
helpful to madisone? I guess that's the bigger question. And
what if you're like four or five and it says, man,
you're not going to make it the thirty that's what.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
So first of all, the data we need to make
this concept of intrinsic capacity more more well known in medicine.
And after we do that, we need to understand better
how changes in your DNA, this DNA methylization affects you.
And then in practice we might be able to correlate

(03:19):
the two. But right now it's just purely a research thing.
It's sort of purely something that the anti aging people
would go with you, you know, go to one of
those anti aging clinics. This is some tests they might
do for you. But as a family doc, this is
probably not going to happen in my lifetime. But it's
an interesting way to look at what's happened previously, how

(03:41):
you've damaged your DNA because of whatever factors. And given
that how much is it going to affect your ability
to do stuff, your intrinsic.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Capacity and outside of that, if you're pouring a little
black velvet over your biscuits and gravy while you have
a cigarette this morning, what's the blood test going to
tell you? Right?

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, that's the one thing is it's like we all
you know right now, we don't have any anti real
good anti aging drugs. We know that we want you
to have a healthy diet. That's anti aging. We want
you to be as physically active as you can be,
that's anti aging. We want you to be and you know,
cognitively engaged. We want you to think a lot, use
your brain. We want you to be socially engaged. That

(04:27):
one's really important to have friends, family, church, some organization
where you can go and talk to other human beings.
All of those things are anti aging. And all of
those things that family docs will talk about, you know,
if we ever get a chance to in our office.
We're not filling out that stupid computer, but these are
things that we know are anti aging. We'll see how

(04:50):
this test develops and it might be something that you know,
our children might get tested, but probably not going to
happen at least in my practice lifetime.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
I like how you always end on a positive doctor,
Jim Applegate, always great stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Thank you, my pleasure,