How We Score
How we vet the research — transparency first
Women's Alzheimer's Prevention: Lifestyle, Menopause, and Emerging Treatments
This is a credible, measured discussion by an Alzheimer's researcher emphasizing that consistent lifestyle habits (exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress management) are the proven foundation of dementia prevention for women, with …
Beta-2-Microglobulin and Neurogenesis: What's My Data?
Beta-2-microglobulin shows promise as a biomarker linked to brain health and aging, with solid mouse studies and intriguing human associations, but human causality remains unproven. Lustgarten's personal tracking is methodologically …
NAD+ Biology and Aging: Expert Insights on Boosting NAD Levels
NAD is genuinely important for cellular function, but the popular claim that "NAD declines with age" in healthy people is overstated—disease and metabolic problems are more reliable drivers of NAD …
What Blood Biomarkers Predict Living to 100? Insights from Swedish Centenarian Study
A high-quality Swedish study found that certain blood biomarker patterns in middle age—including higher cholesterol and iron, lower blood sugar and kidney markers—were associated with living to 100, but this …
How healthy diets add years to your life—even if your genes say otherwise
Multiple healthy dietary patterns—Mediterranean, plant-based, DASH, and others—consistently added 1.5–3 years of life expectancy in a large study, and these benefits occurred regardless of whether people carried genetic variants linked …
Nine Core Mechanisms Explain Why We Age
This paper is a 'greatest hits' summary that organized everything we knew about aging into nine common patterns. It didn't discover new biology, but it gave researchers a shared roadmap—think …
How Adjuvanted Vaccines Help Older Adults Build Better Immune Memory
This study reveals that adjuvanted vaccines work in older adults by activating a different immune pathway (TH17 cells) rather than the traditional one that weakens with age. While promising for …
How Air Pollution Slows Recovery from Physical Disability in Older Adults
Air pollution appears to increase the risk of developing mobility problems in older adults and slows recovery from disability—a concerning public health finding that suggests improving air quality could be …
Brain regions for effort trade-offs: where the mind weighs reward against difficulty
This preprint identifies how the brain's decision-making hub (anterior cingulate cortex) separates the 'reward signal' from the 'difficulty signal,' then combines them to decide if effort is worth it. While …
People with schizophrenia show signs of accelerated aging across brain and body
This is credible, well-replicated evidence that people with schizophrenia show signs of faster biological aging—though we don't yet know why. The finding is significant enough to motivate research into anti-aging …
Brain networks underlying impulsive financial choices may help diagnose mental health conditions
This is solid methodological research that tells neuroscientists how to reliably study brain circuits involved in impulsive choices, but it doesn't directly reveal new aging biology or interventions. It's a …
How a kidney protein drives aging after injury—and why blocking it could help
This is solid preclinical work showing that a kidney protein called TIMP2 actively drives the transition from acute to chronic kidney disease in mice by promoting cellular aging and scarring. …
How Gum Disease Ages Your Body: A Link to Earlier Death
Gum disease appears linked to earlier death, and accelerated aging (measured by blood biomarkers) may explain part of this risk—but other biological pathways likely matter more. This is promising preliminary …
A Lifetime of Learning May Protect Against Alzheimer's Disease
People who have engaged in learning and mentally stimulating activities throughout their lives show lower Alzheimer's risk and maintain better cognitive function, even if brain pathology is present—suggesting lifelong mental …
Blood Proteins of Centenarians Reveal Secrets of Extreme Longevity
This is solid discovery research that maps real molecular differences in centenarians with decent cross-study validation, but it identifies associations, not proven mechanisms. The findings are promising enough to guide …
Childhood Trauma's Long Shadow: Brain Changes Persist into Aging
This well-designed study provides solid evidence that childhood adversity correlates with both lasting mental health problems and measurable brain volume reductions in mid-to-late adulthood, but because it's a snapshot rather …
Can we measure physical resilience in older adults? Testing three different approaches
Current methods for measuring physical resilience in older adults don't agree with each other and don't reliably predict who will decline or die. This suggests we need to rethink how …
Sleep Apnea and Mental Health: A Large Canadian Study Shows Strong Links in Aging
This large, well-conducted Canadian study found that people at high risk of sleep apnea are significantly more likely to experience depression, anxiety, or other mental health problems both now and …
How plants age: DNA methylation decay as a molecular clock of aging
This elegant plant study suggests that epigenetic aging (DNA methylation decay) may be a side effect rather than a driver of aging—a finding that could reshape how we interpret epigenetic …
Building a 10,000-person aging study in Northern Italy: methods and early findings
This describes an important research infrastructure being built to study aging in Southern Europe, with promising early signs that the detailed measurement approach works. Don't expect definitive answers yet—real insights …