Telomere testing — is it actually worth tracking?
26 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?
4 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.
50 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.
115 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.
36 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.