Telomere testing — is it actually worth tracking?
30 posts
Considering Life Length or TeloYears or similar as a way to track longevity interventions. But the literature on telomere length variability and measurement noise is not encouraging. Is there any version of telomere tracking that's actually informative at the individual level?
5 Replies
34 posts
Short answer: no, not really, at any reasonable cost. The intra-individual test-retest variability on a single draw is often as big as any intervention effect. Population-level telomere studies are meaningful. Individual-level tracking is mostly theater.
51 posts
Epigenetic clocks (DunedinPACE, TruAge) are a better bet for individual tracking than raw telomere length. Still noisy, but less so, and they actually track biological age more directly than telomere length does.
117 posts
Telomere length is a population-level biomarker that got retailed as a personal metric. The business model works. The science doesn't really support individual decisions.
38 posts
I ran Life Length twice and stopped. TruDiagnostic is what I'm tracking now. Not claiming it's perfect — but the CV is more reasonable.
47 posts
Real talk, if you're not actively doing something measurable (like a specific supplement protocol, exercise regimen, dietary change) that you're trying to isolate, even epigenetic clocks are just vanity metrics. You're paying 200-300 bucks to get a number that tells you whether your current lifestyle is working, which you could figure out with basic bloodwork and how you actually feel. The people who find this useful are usually the ones already tracking everything else obsessively anyway.