Stress is one of the biggest threats to longevity. It doesn’t matter if you have impeccable genes or you tick off every box on the healthy lifestyle checklist. Sometimes, you’re going to be exposed to stressors, both internal and external, and they’re going to take their toll on your body. Imagine if we could better analyze the causes and impact of stress and use that to develop better longevity therapies (https://longevity.technology/news/new-panel-set-to-aid-detection-of-inflammation-and-biological-stress-biomarkers/).
That seems to be the thinking that underlies Metabolon Inc.’s newest product. Metabolon is a company that focuses on metabolomics, or the study of small molecules and how they function in biology. It’s a way for scientists to perform large-scale, in-depth looks at the complex combinations of genetics and environment that interact in so many different ways to influence our own biological processes.
There are thousands of chemical signals that can be measured and analyzed as part of metabolomics. Each of these has its own distinct pathway, which may be formed or changed by stressors ranging from diet and drug use to the microbiome. Every injury or illness, everything that causes inflammation or oxidative stress, and all that natural buildup and deterioration that results from age is part of the process.
For the body to respond effectively to stress, it needs to involve pretty much all its systems. Inflammation is triggered by the immune system, changes to hormones by the endocrine system, and adjustments to your heart rate and blood pressure by the circulatory system… not to mention the nerve system. That requires a lot of complex coordination of the type researchers are barely beginning to understand.
Metabolon has developed a new set of visualization tools that don’t just provide better insight into 114 specific metabolites that are particularly associated with the long-term impact of stress, but also allow more efficient comparisons between data sets and across different biological pathways. This should make it easier to identify the most statistically significant changes in metabolite levels and what they mean.
The more we understand the impact of different stressors and the variations in individual reactions, the easier it will be to identify the health problems associated with stress earlier in their progression and to develop more targeted interventions and therapies to try to mitigate the effects. The Biological Stress Discovery Panel is a significant step toward this goal.
