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Most chronic disease begins on a molecular level decades before it becomes a…
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Nikolina Lauc shared thisWe measured Croatian soldiers after major combat, and their stress markers were off the charts. By standard measures, their immune function should have been suppressed. My father Gordan Lauc ran this study in the 1990s, during the war in Croatia. We measured stress markers in Croatian soldiers after the final battle during which all occupied territories of Croatia were liberated and their results were totally unexpected. Normally (as we have seen this previously during the war) their immune function, primarily NK cell activity, should have been suppressed. However, in this study we found normal, or even elevated NK cell activity (PMID: 9668646 ) That contradicted the standard model, where chronic stress suppresses NK cell activity in a fairly predictable way. His interpretation, published at the time: winning the war may have temporarily reversed the immunosuppressive cost of extreme stress. The psychological experience of the outcome mattered as much as the physiological load itself. This is just one study and something that is hard to replicate, but it planted a question my father has spent 35 contributing to. For more of the research my father built this company on, follow me at Nikolina Lauc and at GlycanAge.
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Nikolina Lauc reposted thisNikolina Lauc reposted thisYour highest-performing patients might be your most inflamed. Though, their labs will not show it. Across our data, we keep seeing a specific pattern. We see high achievers, executives, founders, and people whose BMI is normal, whose standard panel comes back clean, and whose GlycanAge is a decade or more older than their chronological age. We do not have a formal published study on this pattern yet. It is an observation from the data we work with regularly, not a peer-reviewed finding. What we consistently see in this group is a lifestyle built entirely around achievement, with very little recovery. They “overtrain” in the sense of a nervous system that is always aware of another target, another deadline, and another action item. Standard bloodwork was not built to catch this. It looks for acute dysfunction. This pattern is chronic, low-grade, and driven by sustained biological pressure rather than any single measurable input like diet or exercise. For a clinician, this patient is often the hardest one to help, because they will tell you their labs are fine and their life is going well. The GlycanAge result is frequently the first piece of evidence that something is costing them. If you work with high-performing patients and want to think through how to identify and address this pattern, message me the word COLLAB.
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Nikolina Lauc shared thisShe was on antidepressants for eight years. GlycanAge helped her assess her health while coming off them. Sara Chaves worked as a community manager for a biohacking summit, surrounded by people testing and tracking their own health. Watching their results made her curious about her own. At 29, she tested her GlycanAge for the first time. It came back at 32, three years above her chronological age. At the time, she was still working nights and had already started making small changes: reading, meditating, adjusting her diet one experiment at a time. She had no way to know if any of it was actually working. A year later, she retested. Her GlycanAge had dropped to 24. An eight-year shift in twelve months. "That made me happy because I knew I was on the right path." Nothing about her routine changed overnight. She built one habit, then another: a consistent morning and night routine, daily meditation, red light therapy, and a diet she adjusted repeatedly until she found what her body responded best to. Her case is a reminder that the biggest shifts in the data tend to follow the smallest, most unglamorous changes, sustained long enough to compound and make a difference. Her full story is in the comments. Curious what your own GlycanAge looks like? Message me TEST for a discounted link.
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Nikolina Lauc shared thisYour executive clients feel in control. Their body may say otherwise. Here's what our two-year study showed us. We ran a study expecting founders to show the highest stress profiles. We were wrong. 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗱. Our read: it comes down to control. A founder steers a company. An investor holds exposure across a portfolio they cannot steer at all. The stress is subtler, but the body keeps track of it regardless of whether the client feels in control. Two years into tracking this cohort, biological age is trending down. 92% of the women improved. 61% of the men did too. Most of what moved the needle was: more rest, less high-intensity training, and small changes that gave the nervous system more room to recover. The pattern in high achievers goes back decades. Steve Jobs died at 56. Walt Disney at 65. Others built things just as significant and are still here, and still well. The difference was what was being measured, and when. For a physician or clinic working with founders, investors, or executive clients, this is exactly the population where a standard panel misses what is accumulating under the surface. If you want to bring immune age testing into your practice for this kind of client, DM me the word PARTNER and my team at GlycanAge will be in touch.
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Nikolina Lauc shared thisYour athletic client's labs look clean. Their immune system may say otherwise. Here's what can be hiding underneath. A study led by researchers in Helsinki and Zagreb, including my father's Gordan Lauc’s lab, followed physique athletes through a prolonged period of intensive training paired with low energy availability, the calorie-restricted state most competitors enter before a show. (PMID 31134054) The gene expression data pointed toward: → immunosuppression. This happens when signals consistent with inhibited B-lymphocyte maturation and proliferation, the cells responsible for producing antibodies in the first place. Their IgG glycosylation also shifted toward a more pro-inflammatory profile, tracking with the changes seen in chronic low-grade inflammation and immune aging elsewhere in our research. So what’s the moral of the story? Moderate, sustained exercise is one of the more reliable ways we see biological age improve. It is a case for recognizing where the line sits between adaptive stress and immune cost, particularly in populations pushing extended low-energy states for competition or aesthetics. If you are working with high-performance athletes, endurance clients, or anyone cycling through extreme training phases, this is exactly the kind of shift that would not show up on a standard panel until much later, if at all. If you want to explore what tracking immune stress of exercise like in your practice, DM me the word PARTNER and my team will be in touch.
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Nikolina Lauc shared thisAn escaped rat in the lab on a Friday evening became the first clue in 35 years of research. Back when he was finishing his PhD in Germany, my father Gordan Lauc struck a deal with his boss. Three weeks of twelve-hour days, in exchange for a week off to drive home and see his one-year-old daughter. That daughter was me. So the weeks in the lab mattered. Which is probably why, on one Friday, it stung when an experiment failed. A column broke, and days of setup ended up on the floor. He walked into his boss's office with nothing left to run. His boss had just gotten a new kit, built to study how sugars attach to proteins, and wanted to look into glycosylation. Then he left to grab a rat from the animal facility. When my father ran the analysis on the rat, the results didn’t make sense. That rat's glycosylation looked unlike anything he saw in the hundreds of other rats. He asked what was different. His boss just smiled and changed the subject. For almost a year, he assumed it was a fluke. Then, over wine at dinner, his boss told him the truth. The rat had escaped, and his boss spent an hour chasing it through the halls. What my father had captured was an hour of pure stress, written onto the rat’s protein signatures. That accident became the foundation of what he later called the glycobiology of stress. Thirty-five years later, we are still reading some version of that signal. It took a rat, a patient professor, and one hectic Friday to find it. Follow me at Nikolina Lauc for more of the science my father built almost by accident.
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Nikolina Lauc shared thisRecovery is measurable now. So is what it does to your biology. GlycanAge x Vidavii is now live in London. We have taken our partnership with Vidavii further, giving you a way to see whether the work you are putting into recovery is actually changing your biology, not just how you feel that day. The Vidavii Circuit is a 30-minute sequence: a 3D body scan, infrared and ionised oxygen therapy, a touchless lymphatic flow system, three minutes of whole-body cryotherapy at minus 85 degrees Celsius, and a closing dry water massage. Pair it with GlycanAge testing before and after, and you get a biological age and inflammation marker to track alongside it. Not just whether you feel recovered, but whether your immune system's inflammatory signature is actually changing over months of consistent use. If you are based in London or visit regularly, you can start with a single bundle session or commit to a 3 or 6-month subscription at Vidavii Mayfair, each including a baseline and follow-up GlycanAge test. This is exactly the kind of pairing I want to see more of in the recovery and longevity space: a modality paired with a way to measure its effects. Full details are in the comments.
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Nikolina Lauc reposted thisHe ran marathons for years with an undiagnosed heart condition. He was faced with a choice at 43.. Sebastien Badault spent his career inside data-driven companies, from an early startup through Amazon, Google, and eventually running operations at Alibaba. He brought that same instinct for measurement into his own training when he took up running in his mid-thirties, tracking every session on a Garmin. Training for a half Ironman years later, a routine test uncovered a heart condition he had carried since birth, undiagnosed through years of soccer, tennis, and a full marathon. His doctors gave him two options. Stop pushing his body hard, or repair it surgically. He chose surgery, scheduled it within a month, and was back on a bike within four weeks of open heart surgery. That experience changed how seriously he treats his own health data. Years later, needing to compare a decade of cardiac stress tests, he discovered his doctor had left the clinic and took every record with him. He tracked the doctor down himself to reclaim years of his own history. "I think for me the first step in biohacking is to measure and understand what is specific to your body." At 51, his GlycanAge came back at 28. His approach: consistent zone 2 cardio over high-intensity training, intermittent fasting, targeted supplementation, and a habit of measuring everything, from heart rate to biological age. His full story is in the comments. Curious what your own GlycanAge looks like? Message me TEST for a discounted link.
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Nikolina Lauc shared thisHe ran marathons for years with an undiagnosed heart condition. He was faced with a choice at 43.. Sebastien Badault spent his career inside data-driven companies, from an early startup through Amazon, Google, and eventually running operations at Alibaba. He brought that same instinct for measurement into his own training when he took up running in his mid-thirties, tracking every session on a Garmin. Training for a half Ironman years later, a routine test uncovered a heart condition he had carried since birth, undiagnosed through years of soccer, tennis, and a full marathon. His doctors gave him two options. Stop pushing his body hard, or repair it surgically. He chose surgery, scheduled it within a month, and was back on a bike within four weeks of open heart surgery. That experience changed how seriously he treats his own health data. Years later, needing to compare a decade of cardiac stress tests, he discovered his doctor had left the clinic and took every record with him. He tracked the doctor down himself to reclaim years of his own history. "I think for me the first step in biohacking is to measure and understand what is specific to your body." At 51, his GlycanAge came back at 28. His approach: consistent zone 2 cardio over high-intensity training, intermittent fasting, targeted supplementation, and a habit of measuring everything, from heart rate to biological age. His full story is in the comments. Curious what your own GlycanAge looks like? Message me TEST for a discounted link.
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Nikolina Lauc liked thisNikolina Lauc liked thisThis weekend in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to be part of PEPMED 2026, the first Regenerative Health World Congress. We talked about peptides, longevity, healthspan, access, and how these tools can be used responsibly. We didn’t agree on everything. That’s a good thing. Progress comes from asking better questions, examining the evidence, and staying open to perspectives that challenge our own. What brought everyone together was a shared goal: restoring America’s healthspan and helping people live not just longer, but stronger and more fully. Grateful to have been part of the conversation.
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Nikolina Lauc liked thisNikolina Lauc liked thisCan we move from discovering Blue Zones to creating Measurable Blue Zones? I'm heading to Madrid this week for the International Longevity Summit 2026 organised by José Luis Cordeiro — in a city the organisers are describing as a potential “Blue Zone 2.0.” It's an intriguing idea. Madrid has one of Europe's highest life expectancies, and the Summit will bring together scientists and innovators looking at everything from biomarkers and regenerative medicine to AI and the biology of ageing. But my question in Madrid will be slightly different: What actually makes a Blue Zone “blue” — and can we measure it? We've become extraordinarily good at measuring ageing: biological age, organ age, inflammation, multi-omics and disease risk. But we're much less sophisticated at measuring the life that impacts our biology — our relationships, communities, sense of purpose, belonging, joy, culture and the places in which we live. That's where the human exposome becomes fascinating. On 30 September, I'll explore this in “From Aging Biomarkers to Human Flourishing: Making Longevity Science Mainstream”, including our work on the Positive Psychosocial Exposome Initiative and JoyScore. The proposition is simple but ambitious: Blue Zones taught us to observe where people live longer. Could #exposome science help us understand why — and eventually make the conditions for flourishing measurable? And on 1 October — International Longevity Day — we're going to live some of that thinking. During the day, hundreds of people will take to the streets for the Madrid Longevity March, walking together through the heart of the city with a shared purpose. That night, some of us will keep moving at Longevity Rave playing at Club Arana, with Yukari T. and me — Tina Technotic — behind the decks. A march and a rave may seem worlds apart. But through an exposome lens they share some interesting ingredients: movement, participation, shared experience, community and connection. Add music, synchrony, belonging and joy on the dancefloor, and you have a fascinating real-world environment in which to explore positive psychosocial exposures. And in my second Madrid talk, on 2 October, “A Global Review of the Longevity Industry: Where We Are and Where We Are Going,” I'll zoom back out. I believe longevity is moving beyond an industry centred primarily on treatments and clinics towards healthy longevity environments that encompass homes, workplaces, hospitality, culture, communities and cities. #Longevity #HumanExposome #JoyScore #HumanFlourishing #BlueZones #LongevityRave #HealthyLongevity #Madrid #Exposome
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Nikolina Lauc liked thisNikolina Lauc liked thistoo much pondering and consuming and not enough “doing” … you can’t get good at cooking without cooking. Go do
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Nikolina Lauc liked thisNikolina Lauc liked thisYour breathing has a fascinating “sweet spot”—and it may be around 5.5 breaths per minute. That number isn’t arbitrary. At roughly 5–6 breaths per minute, breathing approaches a frequency of 0.1 Hz—one complete breath about every 10–11 seconds. This is close to the natural rhythm of the body’s baroreflex, the feedback system that helps regulate blood pressure and heart rate. When breathing and this cardiovascular rhythm begin to synchronize, each breath can create larger, more orderly variations in heart rate. Researchers measure these variations as heart-rate variability, or HRV. Higher HRV during paced breathing reflects greater flexibility and coordination in the body’s autonomic regulation. Slow breathing may also help us move away from high arousal and toward feeling calmer, more focused and more present. One study comparing several breathing patterns found that 5.5 breaths per minute—with equal-length inhales and exhales—produced the greatest HRV of the patterns tested. A broader systematic review also associated slow breathing with changes in autonomic activity, increased HRV and feelings of relaxation and comfort. That’s why I built this simple breathing app: -Follow the expanding and contracting sphere -Adjust the breathing rate to suit you -Experiment with the inhale-to-exhale ratio -Use it before a meeting, after a stressful moment or whenever you need to reset Try it here—no account or setup required: https://lnkd.in/drBEGgyh Start with 5.5 breaths per minute: approximately 5.5 seconds in and 5.5 seconds out. Breathe gently rather than deeply, and stop if you feel light-headed. Our ideal breathing rhythm varies from person to person, so 5.5 isn’t a magic number—but it is a safe place to begin. https://lnkd.in/dDYFWKhW https://lnkd.in/dXXyaCnH #Breathwork #Mindfulness #HeartRateVariability #NervousSystem #StressManagement #Wellbeing #DigitalWellness
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Nikolina Lauc liked thisNikolina Lauc liked thisYou cannot build muscle and bone without abundance. If you are in a calorie deficit or stressed under fasting conditions, your body is going to conserve fat and increase visceral fat. I want you to eat MORE. More protein, more higher quality foods and a wide variety of fruit and vegetables to fuel your body for doing it's job to build muscle and bone.
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