The Six Root Reasons of Aging
If you can slow your aging, can you delay disease? If you delay disease, can you can delay death?
“The loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old, but not when we are young.”
-Dr. David Sinclair, Harvard Medical School, Lifespan
It’s the supposed, inevitable decline that will swallow each and every one of us. Or will it?
Have you ever noticed that some people display vastly different health statuses, sometimes even in the same family?
Prominent researchers in the last few decades have come to cautiously agree to a rough consensus of aging hallmarks. While it is very debatable how many hallmarks there are, I believe that these six are the primary hallmarks of aging as the others can be traced back to these six core hallmarks in one form or another.
The six core reasons of aging are as follows:
1. NAD and Other Micronutrient Deficiencies
Since NAD arguably acts as the most important enzyme in your body and is such a foundational building block of nearly every cellular process, it’s vital to keep your NAD levels optimal to slow the tides of aging. Unfortunately, the average adult is heading towards a significant NAD deficiency by their early 40s. But thankfully, with our patent-pending Vitality boost, the most effective NAD-optimizing supplement ever developed, you can boost your NAD levels to optimal as fast as a couple weeks (did you see Doc Jen’s results?).
2. Oxidative Stress and DNA Damage
When human cells experience oxidative stress, it’s the equivalent of a Roman army putting down its shields and turning their backs on the attackers as they attack. Since your cells always have attackers swimming around in the bloodstream, when they let their guard down due to fatigue (hint: NAD deficiency is the primary cause of this) the DNA goes under attack. When your cells are too tired to fight the invaders, they lose their DNA and aging accelerates, plus, cells with broken DNA that continue to multiply can form tumors.
3. Glycation and Blood Sugar
When your levels of insulin resistance increase, it’s because your cells have experienced an overwhelming amount of glucose and fructose pulsating through your bloodstream. And when that happens, your cells begin to brown, like the sugar crumbles on top of creme brûlée. This is a process called glycation. In other words, you don’t want his happening to your cells. I don’t know about you, but burnt cells don’t sound very enticing to me.
4. Chronic Inflammation
Foreign invaders (e.g., viruses and bacteria) damage cells directly, so our bodies have developed an inflammatory response, which recruits white blood cells to release toxins like oxygen radicals and cytokines (peptides with killing activity) to destroy the invaders.
Inflammatory responses are meant to be temporary, but unfortunately there are complications when you’re perpetually living in an inflamed state, like one the average American lives in. Normal tissues can experience long term damage from an inflammatory response; your tissues can also be mistaken for a foreign invader (e.g. kidney disease), and a prolonged bad bacterial overgrowth in the gut can lead to breaks in the intestinal barrier (e.g. leaky gut). Inflammation is good in the short run, but awful for you in the long run.
5. Cellular Senescence
When your cells don’t function properly, some of them have the potential to turn into what we like to call zombie cells. Zombie cells are old cells that refuse to die; but not only that, they also travel in your blood and damage healthy cells, spreading toxicity and inflammatory proteins. If your body is functioning properly, it’s designed to get rid of zombie cells. If not, your disease chances and illness symptoms will only increase as you age.
6. Metabolic Dysfunction
NAD is central to the regulation of cellular energy production, but inadequate NAD levels can impede energy-producing pathways and result in reduced cellular energy production, contributing to conditions like metabolic syndrome. And what is metabolic syndrome? Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions stemming from metabolic dysfunction and leading to heart disease.
NAD deficiency can also disrupt the balance between anabolic and catabolic processes in the body, which leads to disturbances in body weight, insulin sensitivity and overall metabolic health.
Lastly, NAD is intricately involved in maintaining mitochondrial function and cellular repair mechanisms. Reduced NAD levels can impair mitochondrial respiration and increase oxidative stress, and oxidative damage and DNA mutations can further exacerbate metabolic dysfunction and increase the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity.
If you, like us, are astounded at how interconnected all six of these causes of aging are, we strongly advocate for testing not just your NAD, but up to 23 biomarkers with our advanced panel, one of the most advanced biomarker tests available in the world.
Lastly, if you’re interested in going deeper on health-related content, here are a few of our recent posts that you may want to read:
- 9 Powerful Benefits of Optimizing Your NAD
- Andrew Huberman is Wrong About NAD, NMN & Longevity
- What Does Peak Performance Look Like?
- Why Optimized, Precision Medicine is the Future
P.S. Want to boost your intracellular NAD levels? Try a 2 week trial of our Jinfiniti Vitality Boost (do 2 scoops per day), use the discount code welcome20 if you’re a new customer for 20% off your 1st order).
