The Curious Case of Benjamin Button's Nutraceuticals

We’ve spent a few weeks now talking about gobbledegook in the scientific literature, and while we’re not straying too far from that today, let’s now return to what I love/hate most:

Breathless science reporting in mainstream news!

Science journalist, yellow-tracksuit-wearer and soon-to-be-book-author Rich Haridy tipped me off about a report, published by 7News online, and splashed across some TVs, on Jan 22.

The article was headlined as so:

Australian scientists prove reverse ageing is possible in groundbreaking study

Welp.

Break out the San Andreas meme, its opinionating time:

How to reverse ageing in five simple steps that definitely 100% work 100% of the time

Haridy sent along this Aussie news bulletin, which you can watch here. I wouldn’t, but you can.

The 7news host begins by suggesting that “Australian scientists have published evidence — proof, they say — that we can age in reverse” and, right then and there, my entire body starts to sweat in the same way it reacts to Dance Monkey coming on the radio during the MIX 102.3 no-repeat workday.

The news1 feature, clocking in at 1 minute and 50 seconds:

1. Tells the story of father-of-three, Iain, who says he is way faster and fitter than he was in 2018.
2. Iain joined a study and, the journalist tells us, “discovered the secrets to ageing backwards”
3. The journalist then says the study was “led by Australian scientists” and “real-time results surprised even them” with Dr Denise Furness appearing on screen.
4. An infographic flashes up:

Those five key elements?

— Eating Whole Foods & Staying Hydrated

— Daily Exercise

— Quality Sleep

— Mindset & Stress Management

— Supporting our cellular ‘batteries’

As the last graphic flashes up, the journalist refers to our batteries as “mitochondria”.

Many readers will know that the above image certainly is not an image of a mitochondrion, but of an animal cell. The report then does show a mitochondrion in some B-roll footage. But I do think this is a genuine and hilarious mixup…

If you look for Mitochondria with a reverse image search, you can find this image, of an animal cell listed under mitochondria on Freepik:

The similarities are astonishing! I mean just look at the Golgi Apparatus2 — they’re basically a perfect match — and the vacuoles or microtubules all… line up in the same positions, with a little stretching3…

5. Perhaps not content with FIVE whole keys reversing ageing, the journalist ends the report claiming “one element trumps all”. Apparently, that element is sleep.

Report, over. Back to you in the studio, Me.

Overclocked

The grand, emotive language of the bulletin and the definitive claims — “prove” and “groundbreaking” are always a cause for a deeper look. This newsletter exists for that reason.

First, I found that the journalist, Nats Levi, had posted about the study on her Instagram.4

She mentioned you could DM her for the full paper.

I was interested in where the paper was published so I emailed, because I am 100 years old. Levi directed me to a paywalled study published in a special Integrative Cancer Care Edition of the quarterly journal of the Australasian College of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine. She claimed the paper’s IP belonged to Dr Denise Furness, who had appeared in her TV bulletin and was the study’s first author. Levi said she could not send it.

I also asked Furness for the report.5 However, the Science Journalists Association of Australia and its resourceful crew were able to get me a copy of the paper.

The study6 in question was titled:

THREE-MONTH NUTRITIONAL AND LIFESTYLE INTERVENTION REDUCES BIOLOGICAL AGE: A PILOT STUDY USING DNA METHYLATION CLOCKS

The paper attempts to explore how an intervention might affect DNA methylation, and thus “biological age” after three months. In extremely brief detail that leaves out way too much information, DNA methylation is a normal process that kind of alters the way genes operate by reconfiguring their structure.

If you can measure this methylation, you can kinda predict your chronological age, the thing you celebrate each year on something called a Birthday7 . However, in some people, the methylation is a little slower or faster. Some methods allow you to measure this and estimate your “biological age”.

So, for instance, you could be 48 years old in chronological age, but DNA methylation changes suggest your body is merely 37. This is one way that definitely-not-a-lizard-in-human-skin Bryan Johnson makes headlines — he has a multi-million dollar protocol that, while completely and utterly rendering living your life meaningless, is partly aimed at altering methylation and getting his biological age down.

The research, authored by Dr Denise Furness and co-authored with Dr Paul Taylor, uses this intervention8:

• Eating six serves of vegetables daily, 1.6-2.0 g protein per kg of “ideal body weight” and elimination of ultra processed foods and added sugars.
• Exercise daily for more than 30 minutes
• Strength training three times a week and engaging in stress reduction practices using guided breathing and meditation (via an app associated with the co-author Paul Taylor)
• A standardised set of “nutraceuticals” featuring the main ingredients of Folate, Resveratrol, Ubiquinol, Broccoli extract and turmeric and Nicotinamide riboside and magnesium.

Here’s what stands out.

1. This is a pilot study, first of all, which it says right there in the headline. Beige flag: Report cautiously, due diligence required.
2. It is a single-arm, self-selected study featuring 60 participants, ranging in age from 30-81 years and has no control group. 41 participants (30 female, 11 male) completed the DNA methylation testing. I’d say red flag for meaningful results: Low numbers of participants, sex bias, controls non-existent so overall how can you show changes are related to the intervention?
3. The biological age, via one DNA methylation test, seems to show that the average biological age was less than the chronological age to begin with (51.3 years vs 55.4 years). At the very least this is suggestive the cohort may be health-conscious. Beige flag: The paper doesn’t discuss this.
4. There’s no way of knowing if any of the participants adhered to the protocol at all. Red flag: How can you be sure the results reflect reductions in age because of the intervention and not a host of other factors?
5. There is no ethics approval for the intervention and no declaration in the paper. Red flag: Working with humans and providing nutraceuticals surely requires ethics approval.
6. One of the clocks used to measure biological age in this study is known as DAMAge. In three months, the intervention drops biological age by a whopping 8.8 years according to DAMAge. This seems remarkable and it is difficult to explain without seeing the raw data. Beige flag.
7. To do the DNA methylation tests, a finger prick of blood was taken. I have not been able to find any studies validating finger prick tests for specific measures, but that might not be a concern. Beigeish flag.
8. Conflicts of interest may exist: Furness has previously been listed as a Medical Advisor for Pure Encapsulations, which provided the supplements for the study. Furness is also listed as an “editor” of the ACNEM journal according to a recent YouTube video. Red flag: You gotta let your readers know your conflicts. This is not disclosed.

I’m not suggesting any wrongdoing on the part of the authors in relation to this study — it may well show exactly what is stated in the article. Some of the interventions: Exercise, eat well, sleep well — they probably do make a dramatic difference to the way you feel and maybe even to the way your cells feel. I know the 17 coffees I had this week certainly aren’t making me feel any better and the disturbed sleep feels shitty too!!!!

However, if your work is published in this way and then lands on a national news bulletin, it must stand up to scrutiny — if it’s advertised as a study, then it must adhere to the standards of scientific rigour we would expect when we report on it. This did not happen. In 1 minute and 50 seconds of TV, we are left to believe scientists proved you can reverse ageing.

We do have some insight on the study: Furness, the lead author, told me Institutional Review Board ethics approval was garnered by TruDiagnostic, which provides the kits to measure DNA Methylation and also performed the paper’s statistical analysis.

As for how this was discussed on TV:

“Regarding the Channel 7 interview — it was a very short edited from a longer discussion. During the interview I spoke quite a bit about the different types of biological age clocks and the fact that they reflect different aspects of ageing, but not all of that came through, maybe too much for the public to get their head around in a short amount of time.”

I put a further list of questions to Furness, and I also flagged the issues with the 7News piece with the journalist Levi last week. After responding to my initial requests, once I pointed out concerns with the paper, I did not receive further replies.

Why does this matter?

Furness was able to land her story and study in Men’s Health Australia, spruiking the intervention last October. This is particularly strange, given there were only 11 men in the study Furness points to — the rest of the cohort were women.

I don’t think this study is at a place where it should be informing health decisions. It might well get there. But it’s not there yet.

What grates on me more is what it means for science journalism in Australia. Because this little investigation you’re reading here took a good day’s worth of my time. Time I could use to do… an actual job like reporting on science!

The bulletin only lasted two minutes. It seems to not have thoroughly understood the study or interrogated the findings. It was not a news story that featured any independent expertise, it gave the author free rein. This is poor practice — the type of thing I’ve written about before.

Even worse? It swallows up time we could be reporting on Robust Science. On January 22nd, the same day this study appeared on the news, here are some of the other studies9 that didn’t make the cut:

1. Female scientists spend longer under peer-review: The researchers estimate that for every 50 papers published by a female author, she will have spent on average 350–750 days longer than her male counterparts waiting for reviews and/or revising manuscripts.
2. A randomised controlled trial showed that a “smart watch could help pick up an an irregular heartbeat” — an actual controlled trial, an actual health study worth platforming!
3. And the next day a study revealing Climate change made Australian heatwave five times more likely didn’t make the cut, except that 7News “covered” this, in the sense that they posted the story filed by the Australian Associated Press to their website.

And that is what is so frustrating, especially as a freelance science journalist scrapping for commissions. Any of these stories + a day in the trenches = your audience is informed about how to navigate the world. Instead, taking two minutes to discuss a pilot study without controls, and not providing any context to your audience = audience loses trust in science overall.

We need to place a bigger premium on Quality Science Journalism. And we need mainstream channels to do better. Hire a damn science journalist, FFS.

See you next week,

***

Some scribbles:

In January, we landed on $75 in tips for no bs. Thank you to Nick Ballou, Harrison Polites, Felicity Nelson, Susannah Eliot and Somebody. That’s $75 more than I expected, but it’s a useful $75. It’ll go towards making this better, but for now it remains unspent.

My tip jar is here, if you got something out of this piece, you can drop however many $ you want. Of course, you can just share this, show others, and pay zero! That’s also fine.

The other tip jar is my email. Seen anything whack you want investigated? Just respond to this email or visit my website. Email is there!