#479 Longevity Testing 101: What Really Matters (with Siim Land and Dr. Joy Kong)

Siim Land (0:00)

I'm a big fan of just a regular comprehensive blood panel. Most of people I'm interacting with, you could call them like hobbies, longevity enthusiasts, or, you know, the people who are preventively just trying to take care of their health and are curious about it. So, you know, for most of these individuals, it just comes down to just optimization and trying to optimize all of their health and try to get as healthy as possible.

Joy Kong (0:23)

Hello, welcome back to the Dr. Joy Kong Podcast. I'm here to enhance your health, to live your best and longest life possible. So, I've invited a wonderful expert and friend, Siim Land. Welcome, Siim. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me.

Yes. So, Siim is a super expert in longevity, despite his young age, but he has been very helpful in educating the public and providing some incredible content on YouTube. And that's how I found Siim in the first place. And he also has written books, which is remarkable, very, very highly prolific. So, very admirable. And Siim, I'm so glad to have you back to share your expertise.

Siim Land (1:16)

Yeah, I'm happy to be back.

Joy Kong (1:19)

Yeah. So, you know, having been in the longevity space for quite a while, and having visited different clinics, you know, throughout different countries in the world, probably it's a little overwhelming, I think, for people who are in the biohacking space, who want to optimize their health. There's so much going on. Of course, in each biohacking conference, there's more and more technology. So, what do people do? And how do they actually work on themselves? Because the whole point is that this is individualized, right? It's not a one size fits all, and everybody is do the same thing, because we need to see where each person is at. So, what are your thoughts on all these different longevity clinics and what everyone is doing? Do you feel that they're all doing amazing things?

Do you feel that some people are on the right track? Some organizations do an incredible amount of tests, and some are a little bit more tailored and limited in how much they test. What are your thoughts? Should people just go for the whole range of tests, which can be pretty overwhelming?

Siim Land (2:32)

Well, I guess the problem with...

What I like to frame it is that we do want to be aware of as many biomarkers as reasonably possible about our health. And the more you know, the more insightful it is, and the more educated guess you can, or decisions that you can make about your health. So in one sense, it's obviously very positive to test a lot of things and measure hundreds of biomarkers, etc. The same with supplements, like yes, you could take hundreds of supplements out there. Is it always necessary? You know, in most cases, not. In most cases, you get the majority of benefits from just a handful of supplements, and you can eliminate a lot of supplements. If you have an unlimited budget, obviously, then it doesn't matter that much how much money you spend on testing or supplements, etc. So it depends a lot on the particular person's budget and what their priorities are. I do think that with testing, the biggest problem is that if people test, but they don't do anything about improving those results. So if you don't really change anything and trying to make any marker better after testing it, then you just wasted your money or you don't really, you could have even skipped the testing altogether. So I think the most important thing about any testing is that, okay, if you're going to test whatever that is, blood work, MRI, CT scan, DEXA scan, VO2 max, whatever test you're taking, that you have to be willing to also improve on that marker, whatever the result is. So let's say you get a VO2 max score that is very low. Yes, that can be insightful that even if you don't improve it, you know that you're in a slightly lower VO2 max, and that puts you at a higher risk of mortality compared to people with a higher VO2 max, for your age group, for example. But it's still more important to actually try to improve the marker, because even if you didn't test it, you just focused on improving the marker by doing cardiovascular exercise and following an otherwise healthy diet and keeping a normal body weight, et cetera, then you would have been even better off than by testing it, than not doing anything to improve it. So the foundation should be just trying to live as healthy of a lifestyle as possible and trying to take care of your body and follow a regular exercise routine, a regular healthy diet, and maintain a normal body weight. That's a baseline. And if you follow all these kind of fundamentals, then you can avoid a lot of unnecessary testing. And you can also be sure that most of these biomarkers can be in a more normal or optimal spot to begin with. But if you do test something, then be willing to also adjust your lifestyle, adjust your diet, adjust your sleep routine, whatever it is based on the results that you're getting. Because humans are kind of stubborn. We are creatures of habit, that if we follow certain habits, and if we do it for a very long time, we're unwilling to change them, or we're less eager to change. It's going to be very hard for a smoker to give up smoking, even if they get diagnosed with a very serious disease, or alcohol, or whatever vices people might have that harm their health. If they've been doing them for decades, then it's very hard for them to quit and change it. But even small things, let's say someone likes their ice cream, or let's say they stay up late too much, whatever the small thing may be, even these small changes can be very difficult to change. But if you do tests and they reach, let's say, okay, you need to change this to improve this marker, then I would highly encourage people to do to do those changes, because then otherwise the testing was a waste of money, if that makes sense.