#494 Longevity Experts Discuss Bloodwork - Panel with Dr. Brad Stanfield, Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, and Dr. Michael Lustgarten

Matt Kaeberlein (0:00)

This idea that if you live a healthy lifestyle, everything is going to be hunky dory and nothing is ever going to go wrong, like that's just not the way it works in the real world.

Michael Lustgarten (0:07)

For me, the top tier is leanness, low visceral fat, optimizing physical cognitive function, all that stuff. And then the question is though, that only goes so far, right? Because everyone that's ever lived has died, functional decline comes for us all, almost. Nobody's escaping functional decline. So then the question becomes what's under the hood?

Brad Stanfield (0:27)

If you try and target these biomarkers too much, you can actually do unintended harm.

Siim Land (0:33)

Gentlemen, welcome to the podcast, and we're very excited to talk with you. It was a bit of a hassle to organize all of us on the same podcast, but I think it's going to be worth it. We'll have a very interesting discussion. So the topic of today's panel is blood work, especially in the context of health and longevity and anti-aging.

So maybe we can start with first of you introducing yourself and then giving your framework of what is your perspective or framework on blood work. And we can start with Matt.

Matt Kaeberlein (1:11)

Sure. Hey, everyone. My name is Matt Kaeberlein. I am the CEO of a healthcare technology company called Optispan. And before I started Optispan, I spent about 25 years studying the biology of aging or longevity, really focused on the basic science. So I kind of approach this space through the lens of a scientist, but over the last few years, have really started thinking a lot more about what we can do in the real world with people trying to have an impact on their health.

Siim Land (1:47)

Gotcha. Yeah. Brad?

Brad Stanfield (1:50)

Yes. I'm a GP in Auckland, New Zealand. So I'm still practicing. And the way that I sort of see blood work is ideally, you want to be doing something where you want to be measuring something where you might potentially change the inputs. And so the framework that I rely on is my training and also the clinical guidelines. So the one that I typically follow here is called uptodate.com. And there's also Auckland-specific ones called Health Pathways. So I'm interested to hear the different perspectives here because I think there's going to be some healthy disagreement.

Siim Land (2:24)

Yeah, that's the goal here to have each everyone's different views on it because you all have slightly different angles to longevity or like you have different backgrounds and experiences. So it's going to be very valuable to hear all the different perspectives on it. Michael.

Michael Lustgarten (2:42)

Yeah, I don't know what we're going to disagree about, but it'll be interesting to see. So I too was a research scientist like Matt, not as long, 15 years after post-PhD. I recently left in 2025 to pursue conquer aging or diet trying on YouTube and all of the things that come under that umbrella last year. So yeah, my specialty is basically biomarkers, but not just what's optimal in terms of potentially optimal in terms of health and potentially longevity, but how do you actually move the needle, right?

It's easy for most people to get one test or two tests and then they kind of guess and don't really have a clue of what they can do to move the biomarker needle and what differentiates me or maybe what's unique about my approach is multiple testing over a very long period of time, tracking diets, supplements, et cetera, looking at correlations. And granted, there's a lot of noise in that approach, but you collect enough of your own data and the signal starts to separate from the noise.

Siim Land (3:43)

Generally, longevity has become quite popular over the last few years.

And recently, let's say over the last two, three years, I've noticed that there's a lot more talk about blood markers and different biomarkers and blood testing and et cetera. So what do you think is the biggest misconceptions about the topic, like what can blood work tell you about your health and longevity, future health risks, and what can it not tell you? So there's obviously blood work is more like a snapshot in time about your blood work, but it has some correlations and associations with future health risks. But there's also some misconceptions about that kind of relationship. So what do you think is this, let's say, misconceptions and what are some truths about it? And Brad has a lot of everyday work related to blood work with his patients. So maybe we can start with him.

Brad Stanfield (4:40)