Predicting The Future: What Can You Learn from Testing Glycans? with Gordan Lauc

‍ Boomer Anderson: [00:00:00]Welcome to decoding superhuman. This show is a deep dive into obsessions withhealth performance, and how to elevate the human experience. I explore thelatest tools, science and technology with experts. Fields of humanoptimization. This is your host. Enjoy the journey today. We're going tobeginning of the weeds on glide counts and what our glycans, well, if you'reunfamiliar with the topic, don't worry.

Most scientists and doctors, aren't that familiar? Yeah. Myguest today is Gordon louts and he is a professor of biochemistry and molecularbiology at the university of Zagreb. It's going to take me a while to read hisresume, but he's also the director of the national center of scientificexcellence in personalized healthcare.

He's an honorary professor at the university of Edinburghand the Kings college London, and the member of the Johns Hopkins society ofscholars. It's a mouthful. He's also initiated the launch of the human glyconeproject and is one of its two co-directors. So you can guess as to why I hadGordon on the show, but I'm also excited to go deep into glycans.

Why we really don't understand that much about them. Thedifference between glycans and ages, which is something I've talked to. Aubreyde grey about. And so many other topics, particularly how glycans could beuseful in studying longevity. The show notes for this one are at decodingsuperhuman.com/glycogen that's G L Y C a N.

And enjoy this conversation with professor Gordon Lau.

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Professor Gordon lats university is Zagreb in so many otherplaces. Welcome to the show.

Gordon Lauc: [00:03:41]Thank you.

Boomer Anderson: [00:03:45]So before we get into the topic of the day, which is of course, glycans, I haveto ask the question of all of the subjects to study in science of all of thethings in the world to study. How did you arrive at spending a lot of timeresearching glycans?

Gordon Lauc: [00:04:05]Black concerns. The most interesting I'm actually in the field for 30 years andsomething which is puzzling me. So when I was studying biology taught thatbacteria have 5,000 genes, well, humans can have at least a hundred thousandbecause we are so much more complete. And then we learned that humans have onlyaround 20,000 genes.

So our genes are maybe four or five times more complicatedthan the genes of a single bacteria. So it is obviously not genes and proteinsthey code, which make us so diverse. When I say us, I mean, all multicellularorganisms, all the plants, all the animals, and there has to be something more.And this are actually like.

Or all the post-translational modifications and the glycansare the most advanced post-translational modification. So when we think aboutthe gene. It gives one or several protein products and this protein can beconverted into hundreds or thousands of different glycoproteins by the processof like the isolation.

And this is what enables interstellar recognition. This iswhat is the regulating our immune system. This is actually what the enabledlife and I'm in the field for over 30 years now. And it's, it was fun. It is.

Boomer Anderson: [00:05:31]Well, all right. That's left me with a lot of areas where we can explore. And Iknow we have a little bit of time today, but, uh, let's, let's start out withjust some basics here in lane foundations, for people who may be coming acrossglycans for the first time, uh, glycans, one of the, I believe fourmacromolecules.

What exactly is a glycol? If you don't mind laying down thebasics for everybody

Gordon Lauc: [00:06:01]glide is the oligosaccharide. So several monosaccharides, like a glucose orgag, those, those commonly known sugars combine into a three-dimensionalstructure. We have an immense structural capacity information capacity becauseall main other biopolymers of life, life like, uh, DNA, like proteins that areleaner.

So it's just a sequence of units while glycans are branch.So they don't have only this leaner information. They have this structuralinformation in this branch and. Which enables a huge variety. And when you havea, but I give chemical structures, then you can develop a variety of functions.So gimme Colleen there, Molly was suffering, which are being added as blocks toproteins, but also to liquids and even, even to a DNA in some aspects and theygenerate biomolecules.

Which have specific functions. So it's, um, it's one classof biomolecules, but the, the most complex one, and this is why not so manypeople are working on them, because until recently we didn't have tools. Wedidn't have analytical methods outside the lab.

Boomer Anderson: [00:07:29]So Gordon, I'm going to break that down just a little bit, because earlier yousaid poached post-translational, uh, in terms of how a glycan, uh, Is it how aglycan originates is sort of in the post-translational world?

Or how, how would I explain that in simplified terms? So

Gordon Lauc: [00:07:48]translation is a process in which we make a protein from the DNA. Yeah. Sothere is a sequence of letters in the DNA, which would then translate it to aprotein made on a ribosome, and then you have a protein and then there is aprocess called post-translational in, after you assembled this polypeptidepart, then you add.

Are there things, this could be phosphorylation, forexample, the most elaborate buyer post-translational modification isglycosylation. So black concept added first as a precursor, which is thenfurther being modified to get the final likened structure, which will then dothe function.

Boomer Anderson: [00:08:28]Okay. Okay. So when, all right, so we have our post-translational process laidout here and then when it comes to, uh, Really why I would just love tounderstand from your end, other than the complications of assessing these, why indiscussions of things like proteomics or genomics, do you think that glycansdon't come up in general conversation?

Is it just the complexity?

Gordon Lauc: [00:08:56]So they're coming more and more so up until maybe a decade ago, if people willdo proteomics  of the glycans, to be ableto start at the protein with it was a single peptide, would diversify thedozens or maybe even hundreds of glycopeptides, which made them impossible tomake.

So predominant people tended to remove lichens. And thenjust that we judge the proteins just because they were too difficult to startit. But now there are new technologies which enable also at least part of theglycans to be included in the proton. So there are more and more predominantpeople. So working at glycans also from the genetic point of view, normallyproteins in both by a single gene.

But the glide counties do not have a genetic template. Soit's a dozens of genes working together to define a single Biocon. So it'sanother layer of complexity, which requires some time for people to startworking on it.  

Boomer Anderson: [00:09:59]all right. So when they go through this post-translational relationalmodification and become the glycoprotein.

Yeah. And please correct my language here if I, uh, if Imisspeak, but the implications of this, uh, in terms of our, how our bodyfunctions, obviously these are essential for life, but can we just go into someof the glycoproteins in terms of where they would function, uh, within ourbodies? Is it, you mentioned the immune system, for instance, um, and.

Uh, I'm assuming I know there's a correlation tocardiovascular disease, which we're going to get to in a little bit, but whatare some of the, uh, functions that glycogen serve within our body?

Gordon Lauc: [00:10:44]So practically all selves are covered with Lykens. So all the interactionbetween the, all the microorganisms, bacteria viruses and.

Generally go to BlackLine's. This is one big aspect. Anotherbig aspect is the regulation of the immune system because the immune system isour weapon main weapon. We have to fight all the pathogens and the fine tuningon the immune system is also done like, like insulation. For example,antibodies antibodies are one of the main weapons in the immune system arsenal.

They recognize every foreign object and then bind. Butthat's the binding to a foreign object. Antibodies have to decide what to dobecause the foreign object could be a bit of dust, something we eat, or itcould be a virus and the response to something which is completely irrelevant.Like something we just inhale.

It's non-dangerous this should be ignored while the virusshould they kill? And this decision, at least one part of these decisions bythe immune system on the antibodies are made by like, so you can put theblackened, which is kind of a killer Blackcomb. And then if the antibody bindsto a cell, it kills the cell.

This is for example, the way how we are fighting envelopedviruses. So things like influenza or the Corona viruses, if there is a cellwith a virus, antibody binds and kill the infected. Well, in some other things,some other aspects, for example, if the foreign object is food, then we have toignore it.

Otherwise we have a food allergist, different kinds of ,which is actually shutting down the inflammation. And when we are young, ourmostly have black towns, which are suppressing information, young people. Aremostly suppressing information that they generally have a fight with everythingbetter than that, then they don't get ill so much.

They do not develop cancers and such a thing because ourimmune system is working better as we are getting older. And remember that wewere not genetically made to live in our seventies and eighties. There is agenetic pressure to reproduce. And after you have made all your babies,genetically, it doesn't matter what happens to you.

It doesn't transfer to the next generation. So all people isan old, I mean, practically everybody above 45, probably or 50, so oldermiddle-aged, uh, their immune system starts to become much more informative.And then this inflammation is exhausting. The body it's spending huge amount ofenergy. And for example, this could even be treated by, um, infusion ofimmunoglobulin from young people.

You're taking a global information. People put it in olderpeople and then the inflammatory diseases suppress it's actually, it's a, it'sa regular therapy for many inflammatory diseases called IB. Trevino's even aglobalist, but this process of translating from. Even a global Institute, whichsuppresses inflammation to immunoglobulins, which promote inflammation issomething which is very individual.

There are some young people who can have very broadinflammatory immunoglobulins, and there are some older people who still havethese young people have globalists. And this is what makes, this is one of theaspects. What make us different and make us respond differently to differentchallenges. Make us less or more sensitive to different diseases and so on.

Boomer Anderson: [00:14:48]Okay. So again, a lot, a lot of things I can go down there court and, uh, but,uh, perhaps before we get into the whole longevity discussion and the, um, the,the perhaps active tasks that people can take in order to reduce, uh, thepro-inflammatory glycans. Yeah. I've had a conversation before with Aubrey degrey and he obviously talks about advanced glycation end products.

And if you don't mind, I would love to just kind ofunderstand the differences here between ages and, and glycans as you analyzethem or at what stage is he analyzing advanced glycation end process.

Gordon Lauc: [00:15:32]This is very important to emphasize that these are two completely different.So, um, advanced glycation end products are a result of a chemical reactionbetween the glucose.

And protein. So glucose, which  reacts to the amino groups in proteins, andthen it's being converted. And then these are these advanced glycation endproducts, which are kind of, um, indicator of, uh, glucose overload. Thishappens with when people have glucose spikes when they're losing glucosecontrol. And this is one of the measures of the damage.

And have a metabolic damage, which is leading to diabetes,but beside the fact that this is the glucose, which is the monosaccharides andthat the name is black with like consolation, there's nothing in common betweenthe twins glycation. And for that. And glide tons of time talking about flightplans, I'm talking about are the product of a very regulated biosyntheticpathway with a hundreds of enzymes.

And if there is a different light, this is a decision of theimmune system based on some kind of a signal in some kind of a signal networkand then, and semantic reaction. So, although in some aspect they showed asimilar thing. Aging of an organism man listicle and biologic qualities are twocompletely different things.

Boomer Anderson: [00:17:00]No, thank you for clarifying that. For me, that was a somewhat confusing, uh,what I was doing a little bit of research here, uh, the information capacity ofglycans, uh, actually seems quite endless. And so when we're looking at thingslike genomes and epigenomes. All of this appears to be encompassed in a glycan.

Do I have that right? In terms of how we look at things?

Gordon Lauc: [00:17:28]So lichen is a product of dozens of genes. So every polymorphism in each ofthese genes will affect the glycogen, but also in addition to polymorphism,which are differences in a sequence of, for gene Marion's there's epigeneticregulation. Of the same genes.

So some of these genes can be silenced, epigenetically andepigenetics is a kind of a memory of our past environment. So what's happenedin the past, gets written in the epigenetic. But then it gets raised before itgoes to the next generation. So genetics goes from two generations. Epigeneticsis generally within an individual, also theirs, but there is a bit of transferof epigenetic information through generations, but that, and the third aspectis environment because glycosylation is also metabolic.

Process, which requires building blocks and energy andeverything else. So genetics, epigenetics, and metabolism integrate into thefinal blight. So the, all these aspects of our life, our genes, our pastenvironment, or our past the lifestyle and our current lifestyle integratestogether to make a glide.

And this is why. Glycans are so responsive to interventions.For example, people can lose weight and the glide has changed. We've been canchange diet and the glycans change. People can even change the sleep better andglycans can change. This is what makes them. Very important, um, indicator or abiomarker of what is actually going on.

So

Boomer Anderson: [00:19:18]on, on that point of, uh, sleep changing glycans, or, uh, let's say nutritionalpatterns, changing glycans. How fast is that shift typically, and perhaps thisis sort of the transition over into the longevity aspect of the discussion.Meaning is it one night and your glycans change or is it, uh, over a period of,let's say three months, do the glycan shift in particular?

Gordon Lauc: [00:19:44]Here we should not be generalizing because the black ones is extremely widelet's focus. For example, my research is now most learning in a globalenvironment. So lifetimes, which regulate antibodies and these fly cans inprinciple takes weeks to months to change. Because even a global in itself hasa half-life of several weeks.

So immunoglobulins, which are circulating in my blood nowwere made a couple of weeks

Boomer Anderson: [00:20:14]ago. And just as an example of immunoglobulins, can we use like foodsensitivities, for instance, here? Would that be okay or something else?

Gordon Lauc: [00:20:22]So a food sensitivity is a term, which means that there are antibodies tospecific foods in your blood.

So you take a. Types of food and test your blood. Andthey've, if antibodies bind, then people say it's a food sensitivity. But forexample, what we know that most of us will have these antibodies to a varietyof. So most of us, because we meet food, we eat the food and then theantibodies develop. But these antibodies are mostly silenced.

I'd like constellation. So most of us, even if they havesomething which is called food sensitivity. Yeah. Actually do not haveproblems. If we eat that food, only a small subgroup of people who haveantibodies against a specific food actually developed food allergies. But yes,these are the antibodies. We just do the food allergy.

They do, uh, any other type of allergy. They kill all thebacteria viruses. If you get vaccinated, you develop antibodies against thevaccine. So these are those antibodies, these molecules, which are the. I thinkreally the key weapon of our immune system.

Boomer Anderson: [00:21:33]And so now going back to what you were saying earlier about immuno goblins,cause I, I kind of cut you off, um, immunoglobulins as it relates to whatyou're studying at the moment.

Gordon Lauc: [00:21:44]Yeah. So  so the same things just use adifferent lens. So yes, my research like and funding the global Institute onantibiotics, they change. In weeks, not two days, although sometime if there isa very radical change, like some drugs or some, uh, infections, this can happenmaybe in a week or two weeks, but normally if we just do a lifestyle change, ifyou go on a diet.

If you change an exercise pattern, normally we would see adifference in two to three months, but

Boomer Anderson: [00:22:19]before this is fascinating to me because I know one of the companies you'reaffiliated with of course is glycan age, and we'll come to that towards theend. Uh, but I want to get now into glide cans, uh, as a predictor of eitherrisk or let's say longevity opportunities.

When you think about, and I know you've spoken at rad and afew other places, when you think about glide cans in terms of, uh, how to usethem for anti-ageing, for instance, what can we. Glean from glycans in terms ofpredictive prediction ability. Because I know when I was talking to Nikolina,for instance, there's something around cardiovascular disease.

Uh, but I'm curious what other things as well, we can learnfrom glycans or potentially predict for.

Gordon Lauc: [00:23:12]So, so far we have analyzed over 150,000 different people from bowls, trying tounderstand. When our glycans changed, why do they change and what happens afterthey change? So, first thing, what we learned is that glycans in people withthe disease are different than like us and the health people.

So generally people with many different diseases, includingthe, the cardiovascular inflammatory, they will have this older blood from theglycans. Look, if they were older, When we did more studies, we learned thatthese glide sexually change before people become ill. So even if somebody isnot ill yet, but he or she will have, for example, cardiovascular disease inthe future, glycans may already be altered and through a series of otherstudies, which were mostly collaborate with other people.

We also found that in some experimental models, like forexample, in mice, you can actually use the disease by changing the plaque. Sogiven a wrong, even a global in glycans to my eyes, you can develop insulinresistance. You can develop hypertension just by giving them the wrong sugarsand antibiotics.

And by. Fixing disorders. There are ways in mice that youcan feed them with some kind of a precursors and then the glycans improve. Thenfor example, you can protect mice for developing hypertension. You can have abeast mouse, which will not develop hypertension. This is what we published thisin circulation last year in circulation is the best cardiovascular.

So what we know is that these glycans are not onlybiomarker. They're are actually molecules, which contribute to diseasedevelopment because they are regulating low grade chronic inflammation. So ifyour immunoglobulins are suppressing the flow, great chronic inflammation.Yeah. And for example, you will have less of those blacks formed in yourarteries.

You will have, uh, less inflammatory processes everywhere,wrong because you will suppress inflammation. Inflammation is good. If you haveto repair the damage, but too much information is not good because everybodypear leaves a scar. There is too much of a detraction and then repair. Thenthere are too many scars and eventually this is one of the mechanisms whichleads to aging.

There's actually entire, um, theory of aging calledinflammation. Yeah. She says that inflammation is one of the main drivers ofaging and IgG glycosylation is one of the main, um, kind of, um, it's not thedriver information inflammation. It's actually, it's, it's the braking, it'sthe stopping information.

It's the attenuator of information. So when you have thesegood, like good glycans, they suppress inflammation by suppressing low gradechronic inflammation. They actually. Kind of help not to develop diseaseslinked with chronic inflammation, which are more or less all, uh, Complexchronic diseases. We have like a diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and

Boomer Anderson: [00:26:34]stuff.

So if I were to liking glycans is sort of the front line ofdefense, if you will. And so if I'm looking at a good analysis to do on myself,potentially having my glycans and my inflammatory markers, all mapped at onceand with glycans, I may be able to see ahead of time. What is going on withinmy system so that I can get ahead of, let's say high sensitivity C-reactiveprotein or whatever that marker is.

Um, and really just kind of bite it in the ass, so to speakand address it much before it becomes an issue of systemic inflammation. Do Ihave that right? So have you spent any time following me on Instagram? Youknow, that I recently ran an experiment where I took six different biologicalage tests and ran them all at the same time.

One of the biological age tests that I was fascinated withwas around glycans and specifically the company was called glycan H and theyuse what we're talking about here in this episode to determine your biological.We get into some of the reasons why I'm so fascinated about glide, Cannes as apredictive measure in this episode.

But if you want to try out glycan age for yourself, orperhaps for your clients, you can go to glycan age.com and just order a testwe'll link to everything in the show notes. And if we have a discountavailable, you got it. So let's get back to them.

Gordon Lauc: [00:28:03]Yeah. So the problem with that at the moment, Is that if you want to have aproper diagnostic essay, which you will do regularly with your physician.

Yeah. His essays have to be it's called CE IVD validated. Sothere has to be C mark for, for in vitro diagnostics for glycans instrumentsand reagents to do analysis or not IBD. Certified because they're still not onthe market. That's a regular routine biomarkers. So you still cannot go to yourphysician.

Shannon asked for a glycan profile. This will probablyhappen in maybe five to 10 years, but because we have something called thehuman black component where we talk to the major instrument producers tovalidate their instruments for glycan diagnostic. So so far you can do the testonly as the, for research only.

It's not a diagnostic test at the moment. And interpretationof that text, that test has to be done. By somebody who is medically certified,you cannot just go to the lab in order to test, but you can do the test andthen ask your physician to interpret it, which again is a bit complicatedbecause most of the physicians don't know enough about glycans because theynever learned about it during their

Boomer Anderson: [00:29:25]medical degree.

Yeah. How many physicians in med school actually tackledglycol?

Gordon Lauc: [00:29:30]They don't. Unfortunately, even, even in, in the, during the PhD, they don'twork on glycans most of the time, but this is growing. There are more and morepeople, even the, um, the routine physicians were involved in the research thatwe do, as I said, we analyzed 150,000 people, all these people where somebodiespatients.

So this data is coming into the public domain now, andpeople learn more about.

Boomer Anderson: [00:29:58]In terms of just other interesting stuff you've learned from your researchcardiovascular disease, obviously just because my personal history with it andsort of family history with it is very interesting, but, uh, First, let's talkabout cardiovascular disease in terms as a predictor of risk.

Have you been able to map out just sort of how accurate is,is sort of getting ahead of the curve versus let's say, uh, I mean the mostpopular one out there, I guess, would be something like, uh, an LDL orsomething. LDL

Gordon Lauc: [00:30:29]particle number. We, we did, we published one paper last year in diabetes carewhere we analyzed a cohort of people.

Which were collected close to 30 years ago, around 30,000people were sampled it's so-called epic cohort. 30,000 people were sampled.This was German part in, um, 30 years ago, they would follow that for 10 years.And then we had, I think it was around 500 people who had either the heartattack or stroke in the follow-up period.

So we analyze them and we analyze the mentioned controls.And only glide comes plus eight. Had more information about predicting, uh,future cardiovascular events than the entire so-called score score is anAmerican heart association score used for the prediction of cardiovascularevents. So the only glycans and age of person is actually containing all thepredictive information of everything else you can measure at the moment.

This was just one study. We are currently replicating.There's two other cohorts. We are doing this together with the Harvard medicalschool. We've got also a couple of thousand people, which were collected longtime ago. And they were followed up to see who will develop heart attack or astroke. So we'll have a additional papers coming up.

Boomer Anderson: [00:31:55]Is this for Sinclair's lab or somebody

Gordon Lauc: [00:31:57]else at heart did this was not simpler. It was with the epidemiologist. We docollaborate with David, but mostly on mice, not on hybrids.

Boomer Anderson: [00:32:07]Um, in terms of, I know you mentioned earlier hypertension and the publicationand circulation, uh, what other things can we use glycans to predict for it?

And I guess it is a little bit hard now with thecommercially available tests, but hopefully that comes soon in the future. Uh,what other kind of areas, uh, perhaps, uh, you mentioned diabetes a few times,for instance, is it all areas of potential chronic inflammatory diseases or isit some, some other aspects.

Gordon Lauc: [00:32:35]Well, I have to be a bit

Boomer Anderson: [00:32:36]careful with, of course, of course, I don't want to get you in trouble garden.

Gordon Lauc: [00:32:42]We have this black and age test, which is a registered and approved by theEuropean medicine agency as a test of biological age, which is not that mastictest. So it's kind of a measuring age of a person.

And age correlates with many different diseases. So we knowthat the glycan age today correlates with the future cardiovascular events,future inflammatory diseases, future diabetes, that this is something we shouldcorrelates with increased like an inch, not use this test to diagnose, leavethe thesis.

Of course, because it's not a diagnostic test. We did, um,We're just writing a paper. I'm trying to remember the exact number, but it'sdefinitely 20 plus different diseases where we see that glycans arecontributing or responding to disease. So change in Blackcomb. Associate withthese different diseases like inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn, aromatasearthritis, um, lupus, uh, diabetes, uh, cardiovascular events.

So, you know, young people are generally healthy.Simplistically older people are generally not as healthy, and this isindividual trajectory. Some people are healthy in their eighties. Some peopleget ill in their forties even earlier. And this glycan age is one of the wayshow one can track his own trajectory and contrary to other tests of biologicalage, like, um, mutilation or telomeres, or even some kind of a geneticpredictors of disease risk glycans is something you can change.

You can do an intervention and then your glycans change andlichens or something, which is not only a biomarker, but the functionaleffector. So if you just change, um, the biomarker, maybe it will not decreaseyour risk. For example. Uh, cholesterol biomarker. There are many drugs whichwere developed, which lower cholesterol, but they do not decrease the diseaserisk.

Obviously cholesterol is not the driver of the disease. It'sa biomarker while if you change it, like at least in some others where we haveshown that, and at least in experimental animals, you can actually preventdisease because we know that glycans actually promote inflammation. And if youcan suppress inflammation, this is good.

And we know that they feel fix your life in a way that theylook younger. They're actually suppressing inflammation.

Boomer Anderson: [00:35:40]I suppose this data may not exist yet, but I'm, I'm curious, uh,hypothetically, let's say if one were to have one of these diseases, theglycans could be the first signal. If you will, that you are doing the rightthings to either or, uh, halted or reverse it, has that been studied or is thatsort of

Gordon Lauc: [00:36:00]hypothetically.

We are part of several large studies where we try to useblack hands to predict therapy response. But one of the big problems with themodern medicine is that we use traditional names for disease. For example,diabetes is not one disease. Even if you go for the type two diabetes, this isnot one disease.

There are many molecular pathways leading to that disease.When you go to your physician, they don't know which pathway you have. And forexample, at the moment we are three large Rogan projects, which are focusingon, um, uh, chronic inflammatory diseases, like inflammatory bowel disease, thearthritis, the, the

Boomer Anderson: [00:36:46]multiple sclerosis condition.

So I guess.

Gordon Lauc: [00:36:49]Inflammatory conditions with a stronger and, uh, or less strong autumn on outimmune component. Cause not all inflammatory diseases are directly out to youwill be just the law because out immunity means you have antibodies that attackyourselves. Yeah. There are other inflammatory conditions where there are notso many antibodies.

Yeah. And, uh, what we are trying to see there, if, ifchanges, things like counts will predict response to specific therapy. And forexample, we did some large studies with different biological drugs, themonoclonal antibodies. And then we see the, for example, these drugs do changelike us. And sometimes they also predict this therapy response.

So there's a lot of research in that direction, but I don'tthink that at the moment. This is something which people shouldn't be doing tothemselves. If somebody is ill. It's their physician who should be helping themall the details. Don't go and read the papers and say, you know, my PG likeconstellation is something, and then you should change my therapy.

This is, this is a little bit too early for that we're goinginto that direction. We are doing research in that

Boomer Anderson: [00:38:01]direction. Uh, that would be a very cavalier approach to things. Uh, Gordon, Iwant to come back to just sort of the idea of GlyCAM modification, because mostof the people listening to this are probably saying like, Hey.

That's great. I have a really good bio-marker that thatmoves with not a biomarker. Sorry. I used that term. I shouldn't, I have abiological age test that actually moves with my lifestyle modifications and Ican track that over time. Uh, what are some of the. You're privy to thisinformation, or I'm sure you've spoken to a lot of these people.

What are some of the more, um, potent lifestylemodifications when it comes to moving one's glycans and hence glycan age.

Gordon Lauc: [00:38:45]So something which works in most people is losing weight. So if we areoverweight, our glide cancels generally more pro-inflammatory and we hadseveral cohorts of people undergoing the bariatric surgery.

If you do a bariatric surgery, people usually lose 10, 15,20 kilos, and then their like age can improve for 10 or 20 years within acouple of months. So this is really working for some people, not for everybody.We also did a large cohort of, uh, we had 2000 twins, which were sampled threetimes across 15 years.

And the twins who were gaining weight as their age wereaging faster in glycans than the twins who were losing weight or not gainingweight. If you get fat, your glycans become more pro-inflammatory. If you loseexcess weight, then your glycans become better. For example, in me, personally,this is the strongest.

Affect her. So when I'm losing weight, my glycogen age goesdown when I'm gaining weight, it goes up again. Uh, other there is strong, uh,um, effectors for glycan age is for example, excess. But too much exercise canactually be bad. I was going to

Boomer Anderson: [00:40:02]ask that like, there's sort of a curve if you will.

Gordon Lauc: [00:40:04]Right? So based on, we don't have enough study to be completely confident, butfrom our preliminary data, it seems that these high intensity intervaltrainings are the least damaging for this pro-inflammatory component.

Because now when you think about professionalism, They willbe considered all in their late thirties in anywhere else. Somebody in latethirties is still young. Yeah. So doing, asking too much from your body comeswith a price. So, uh, I think that it is important to be physically active, butit's also important to have a period of relaxation, which can enable all the metabolicsystem to calm down, to stop all this inflammatory processes.

Because, you know, if you exercise too much, it hurts. Andwhen something hurts, it's usually a signal that there is something wrong. Ofcourse it has to hurt if you want to build up the muscles. But if you do it toomuch, And we often see that people who do over-training get, get worse on theirglide canapes, but good thing is they usually they can improve rapidly adjust,adding a little bit more of relaxation.

So don't kill yourself in a gym, at least your bike. So, uh,stress is very important parameter. It's very hard to distinguish from a foodfrom, um, other habits sleep.

Boomer Anderson: [00:41:33]So can come in many different forms, right.

Gordon Lauc: [00:41:37]It usually links. So you're under stress and then you eat. And then so, butthis is one of the important components.

So if you kind of fix your mental state usually, or likeimprove, uh, there are some. Biohacking approaches, which seem to be veryefficient. I will not name anything specific because we are still not sure whatis really working and what is not, because usually people will do biohacking

Boomer Anderson: [00:42:04]a shit load of stuff at once.

Right. We have

Gordon Lauc: [00:42:07]a collaboration with the agent medical in New York and practically all clientsor patients who go there are 20 to 40 years younger. So obviously some ofthese. Therapists work call ones are very potent, but one has to be carefulwith the hormones.

Boomer Anderson: [00:42:26]There was something in your presentation that I watched about estrogen.

Um, and the correlation there. Is that specifically withwomen or is it so, uh,

Gordon Lauc: [00:42:36]I, the problem is with most of these standards, if you just do correlations.Then

Boomer Anderson: [00:42:42]many things of course

Gordon Lauc: [00:42:44]are to know what is it called so far? Only for estrogen. We did a properrandomized placebo controlled trial. So we had that cohort of females.

This was done at one American university, nearly 10 yearsago. They had, I think, 36 females. They enjoy the menopause chemical. So itgave them the chemical to stop production with one of the foreman. And theneither gave them the estrogen patch, the supplement hormones, or gave them theplacebo and the placebo group.

But on average, 10 years older, within a couple of months,obviously, if you take estrogen from a, from a young female, the glycogen agegoes up rapidly. And then when you stop this, uh, intervention, When theestrogen is not only produced in the glycan, it goes down again. So Jen isdefinitely causative in young woman.

Uh, we are currently doing the study of, um, older womenwhen they enter menopause. So there is this perimenopause period when they arechanging, but the hormones go up and down like crazy. So it's very hard to knowwhere it is. And we're just drafting a paper. We haven't published it yet,which shows that also this happens with the onset of menopause.

So it's not only with the young woman. It's also with thenature of onset of menopause. The loss of estrogen leads to the higher, like anage for men. We don't know. Uh, there are some data suggesting there's thistoaster. As an effect, but testosterone can also be converted to estrogen. Somaybe it's actually, this does turn moving into estrogen and then changing.

So, um, I would like to have a nice placebo controlledrandomized trial to see whether it's estrogen, maybe the small doses ofestrogen work in men. I don't know. We have to, this is something we still haveto.

Boomer Anderson: [00:44:44]Wow, this is absolutely fascinating Gordon. And I know it's probably the firstof many conversations that you and I will have because, uh, my mind is blownand I am really excited.

I know, uh, you know, I've been in touch with Nicholinaabout doing a glycan age, test myself, uh, but. I just want to thank you fortaking the time today to come on the show and educate my audience really, uh,about this, this development that's been around for so long and you know, is nowfinally coming to the fore, so to speak, at least in the commercial sense.

So I hope, uh, hope we can continue this conversation. Thankyou so much.

Gordon Lauc: [00:45:24]Thank you for identification. It was a pleasure and I do hope we'll repeat thisand I do hope that more people will start. Learning about their glycans and seewhat they can actually do to improve. Because one of the approaches like canage as a company has, is that we tried to collaborate with people, organize theclinical trials, also with individuals to collect information and actuallylearn what works in person a and does not work in person B and so on becausethere is no standard human.

Each of us is different and we have to learn how differentwe are. And this is something we cannot see in the mirror. You know, when youlook at stuff in the mirror, we are more or less the same, because the lasttime you looked was yesterday and you didn't change these molecules, which youcan quantify, give you some information, which you cannot see just by looking.

And I think this is why all these, um, measuring, uh,everything, not only like hands, but all other things is so.

Boomer Anderson: [00:46:30]Gordon before we go, where can people find out more about you, your work, etcetera.

Gordon Lauc: [00:46:37]So I am very active on social networks, LinkedIn Twitter. I post most of thethings we publish. There's also things called, um, knowledge up on the glideCanadian website where we try to, um, Kind of tell the story in a simpler waywithout too much hard scientific words.

So maybe starting from the black nh.com and then look intothe knowledge hub or my social networks. I tried to communicate science to thepublic as much as I can.

Boomer Anderson: [00:47:10]And I sincerely appreciate you for doing so, and your dedication and rigorreally comes through and how you converse about it. So thank you so much again,Gordon, for coming on the shirts

Gordon Lauc: [00:47:21]with my budget,

Boomer Anderson: [00:47:24]as you can see, I got a little bit vulnerable in that conversation.

In fact, there's a lot that I did not know about glycansthat I really took away from this episode. And I hope you did too. Again, theshow notes for this one are decoding superhuman.com/glycam. And if you enjoy.Head on over to apple podcasts or wherever you listen to the show and pleaseleave a five-star review.

All of those reviews help really, really appreciate it.