Withings on Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair

If you've listened to this show or heard me on stage, you've probably heard me say that you can't optimize what you don't measure. That's what we do as scientists, and it's true also when it comes to body metrics. Many people only measure their total body weight, if anything, but this only tells a small part of the story. You don't know if you're losing fat or muscle, or even where the fat is being lost from. For instance, let's talk about visceral fat, the evil fat that sits around your organs, and is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and death. Getting rid of visceral fat, or at least minimizing it, can have a strong impact on your long -term health and longevity. So how can you measure it? Widdings, one of life spans partners, make some of the coolest devices that you can measure yourself with. Watchers, a blood pressure monitor, and advanced bathroom scales. I've actually been using Widdings' devices for over 13 years, since they first came out with their Wi -Fi scale. I've got all the valuable data on my scale, and also on my phone, along with actually those of my kids as they were growing up. The Widdings' body scan scale can help estimate muscle mass, fat mass, visceral fat, among other things. Let me show you what my body looks like in 3D, my digital twin on the Widdings app. So here it is. You can see at the bottom here, changes in lean mass, visceral fat, bone mass, and if you click on that, that up comes my digital twin spinning around here. The numbers speak for themselves. We've got 11 .3 % fat on my arms, which is low, 14 % torso, low, and visceral fat, which we mentioned is the evil fat, 2 .7, which is good. So you can look at muscle, you can look at a lot of different things. So what the app is telling me is that I'm doing well, and I'm on the lower end compared to other people in my age range. And of course you can do this as well. I've actually watched my muscle percent grow as I've changed my diet and exercise, and that's important. You want to know what's happening as you change your lifestyle. So this is a motivational and fun thing to have on your phone, and in the past couple of months, by changing my diet and exercise regimens, I've lost over 12 pounds. And importantly, I was able to ensure that I didn't also lose any of my muscle mass, which is a common problem when you're eating less. And though I didn't use a gel P1 drug to lose weight, if you do take one, and that's increasingly common, a within scale can really help ensure that you lose only fat, not muscle. It's the only smart scale that also comes with an FDA -cleared ECG that can analyze your heart rhythm, and even detect atrial fibrillation, which is a heart condition that can cause stroke and even heart failure. So we at Lifespan here are partnering with withings because we share a common commitment to preventive health and also supporting medical research. As a Lifespan listener, we invite you to join us. Learn more about withings, or get a scale, or just one of their other really cool smart devices, at withings .com, forward slash Lifespan. Or for 10 % off, use the code Lifespan.