Would you want to age backwards if it was ever made possible?
Well, this professor at the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine) might have just cracked the code to do so — and shaved 15 years off of his biological age in the process.
Professor Dean Ho, director of the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at NUS Medicine, led a study exploring the impact of various factors on longevity, the team behind the study said in a report.
Named Delta, the study, published in peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, first began in mid-August 2024 and is still ongoing, according to the research team.
The 47-year-old professor is the sole subject of the study — who has undergone various lifestyle interventions such as various levels of intermittent fasting (including fasting for about 20 hours a day and multiple 48-hour fasts), exercise and dietary adjustments.
He also does 90 minutes of strength or cardio training every morning.
Prof Dean’s diet mainly comprises leafy green vegetables, seeds, olive oil, lean protein, and other Mediterranean-style foods.
His beverages are limited to water, electrolyte drinks and black coffee and tea without milk and sugar.
Prof Dean wore three fitness trackers — a Whoop, Garmin and an Apple Watch — for about eight months, allowing the study to track changes over a longer duration than typical reports, said NUS.
The most recent report on the study found that the 47-year-old’s metabolic switching speed decreased from over 24 hours to 16.5 hours.
Metabolic switching speed refers to how quickly the body switches from burning sugar to burning fat, and someone at the professor’s age typically has a speed of about 36 to 72 hours.
The study also found improvements to his resting heart rate, which dropped from 65 beats per minute to 46 beats per minute. This is likely an indication of improved heart function and better recovery, the report suggests.
Additionally, Prof Dean enjoyed better sleep as a result of this study.
His sleep time rose from about five hours to nearly eight hours, with more deep sleep and less time awake at night. He was also able to go to bed earlier at 9pm, instead of midnight.
Moreover, according to a custom artificial intelligence copilot built by the research team, Prof Dean’s physiological age was estimated to be 32 years old, nearly 15 years younger than his actual age.
While these findings are promising, NUS emphasised that these results only show the professor’s responses to these factors. Not every individual will have the same experience should they replicate his lifestyle.
Speaking about the study, Prof Dean said: “We started this study to better understand what happens between annual health screenings, which most people rely on as their measure of health — to look beyond static markers and focus on how the body functions and changes in real time.”
“We know people are different from each other, but we are also different from ourselves over time. Everyone has their own ‘Delta’ — a unique, evolving set of data that reflects the fact that health is a story, not a snapshot.”
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bhavya.rawat@asiaone.com
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