It’s always a pleasure to tap into Dr. Raffaele’s brain, and in this podcast he doesn’t disappoint. In fact, his practical contextualization of where we are with anti-aging medicine might just be one of the smartest you’ve heard yet. What is truly remarkable about Dr. Raffaele is not just his grasp of the field both scientifically and clinically, but his ability to apply a nuanced approach that is tailored to each individual patient. After all, as he eloquently points out, we must first figure out which of the many components of aging needs improvement or correction, then target our approach accordingly. The simplicity of that statement belies his firm grasp of the complex landscape of anti-aging assessments and interventions, as you’ll see.

One of the important topics that surfaced in our conversation is the role of telomere length. Dr. Raffaele has been measuring telomeres in study cohorts and in his patient population for well over a decade. Has looked at well over 2,000 telomere length measurements, many of them longitudinally. Not only that, but he has also integrated telomeres alongside other biomarkers of aging, including DNA methylation clocks, and tried-and-true metabolic markers such as lipids. So, if you thought newer approaches to biological age assessment were making telomeres and other assessments redundant, think again. We’re entering a time where we must wrestle with how to incorporate and act on all these important measures. ~DrKF