Why Dogs May Be Unusually Good at Teaching Us About Aging

Good Morning.

Scientists trying to understand human aging have an obvious problem.

It takes a very long time.

If researchers want to know how differences in diet, environment, metabolism or lifestyle affect someone across an entire lifespan, the experiment can take decades.

Dogs offer an intriguing alternative.

They grow old much faster than we do.

But unlike the laboratory animals commonly used in medical research, pet dogs live remarkably human lives. They share our homes. They breathe much of the same air. Their diets and activity levels vary enormously. They develop many of the same age-related diseases, receive sophisticated medical care and, increasingly, have detailed health records.

Now researchers have found another similarity.

We may age alike in ways that can be detected in our blood.

Scientists with the Dog Aging Project analyzed blood samples from 937 dogs, looking at metabolites, the small molecules produced as the body carries out its everyday chemistry.

Rather than searching for a single molecule that predicted lifespan, they looked for larger patterns.

Some were associated with dogs dying earlier. Others were associated with living longer.

Then the researchers compared those results with five large studies that had examined similar metabolic patterns and mortality in people.

The resemblance was striking.

Many of the metabolic signals associated with mortality in dogs pointed in the same direction in humans. The finding doesn't mean those molecules determine how long either species will live. They are clues, not necessarily causes. But they may reveal biological processes involved in aging that the two species share.

That could make dogs particularly valuable to longevity science.

A dog's typical lifespan is roughly 12 to 13 years. Researchers can therefore observe biological aging across an entire canine lifetime much faster than they could follow the same process in people. And because dogs live alongside us rather than in controlled laboratories, they provide something difficult to reproduce experimentally: enormous variation in genetics, environment and everyday life.

The benefit could eventually travel in both directions.

Discoveries about human aging could help dogs live healthier lives. Discoveries in dogs could point researchers toward biological mechanisms worth investigating in people.

We've spent thousands of years sharing our lives with dogs.

It turns out we may have been sharing some of the biology of growing old, too.

Source: Dog Aging Project. Research published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A.

Longevity

The Long Game
One small thing for a longer life

Try This

Sprinkle a few one-minute bursts of hard effort into your day.

Take the stairs quickly, carry the groceries in one brisk trip, pick up the pace on a hill. Researchers call these short periods of vigorous everyday activity. In a study of people who didn't formally exercise, doing about three brief bursts a day was associated with a substantially lower risk of dying over the following years.

The interesting part is how little time it took. No workout required, just a few moments when ordinary movement becomes real effort.

Movement is one of the six factors that shape how well we age. The Worthyest Longevity Index measures all six in 4 minutes. Yours, personalized. Get my score →

Source: Stamatakis et al., Nature Medicine, 2022. UK Biobank study of 25,241 non-exercisers.

The Curiosity Edit

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Modern Living:

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Health & Wellness

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The Conscious Plate:

Food, Nutrition & Elevated Living

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Final Note

This is what we leave you with. A thought to end the day, carry in your pocket, or come back to later. Nothing big. Just something to reflect on.

One Bad Hour

A bad hour can convince you you're having a bad life.

A frustrating conversation, a mistake, a piece of bad news, or something that simply didn't go as planned can change the way everything looks for a while.

In those moments, it's easy to let one part of the day become our judgment of the whole thing.

Sometimes life hasn't gone wrong.

Sometimes it's just been a bad hour.

Pass It On

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