Back to Blog

Immunosenescence: Why Your Immune System Is the Master Switch of Aging

In longevity medicine we often talk about the hallmarks of ageing as if they are separate targets: mitochondrial dysfunction over here, cellular senescence over there, epigenetic drift somewhere else, and chronic inflammation sitting in the background. Each one matters. But in my conversation with Dr Elizabeth Yurth, the key message was this: immune ageing may sit upstream of far more of this biology than most people realise.Her point was not that ageing has one simple cause. Biology is never th...

Unified Theory of Disease: Everything comes back to Electrons - Dr Thomas Levy

A summary of Dr Thomas Levy’s recent presentation to our practitioner education groupI’ve followed Dr Thomas Levy’s work for years, and every time I sit down to listen to him I come away with another layer of nuance. His work has profoundly shaped the way I think about vitamin C, infection, toxins, dental pathology, inflammation and the chemistry of disease.Recently, he presented to our practitioner education group on vitamin C, cortisol and the immune response. What follows is my summary ...

The Rescue Molecule: What 5 of the World's leading Vitamin C Researchers Taught me

I want to tell you about a molecule that the medical establishment treats as a quaint footnote — the thing in your orange juice, the chewable tablet your nan gave you when you had a cold — and how, over the course of a series of interviews on Pushing The Limits, I came to understand it as one of the most powerful, most under-used tools we have in critical illness. And I want to be honest with you about why this subject is not academic for me. I fought a 15-day battle in an ICU to get intrave...

How to Actually Raise NAD+

In the last post I made the case that low NAD+ in ageing tissue isn't really a supply problem — it's a consumption and diversion problem. Pour more precursor into a system that's actively draining and wasting NAD+, and you've chosen the least efficient fix available. That post named the problem. This one is about the machinery: how the pathway actually works, and what the research says about targeting each part of it. Because once you see it as real enzymes doing real things — not as an ana...

The NAD+ Problem Nobody's Solving

Here's something that took me a long time to properly understand, and once I did, I couldn't look at the NAD+ shelf the same way again.Almost every NAD+ product on the market does the same thing. It hands your body more precursor — NMN, NR, niacin, take your pick — on the assumption that if levels are dropping with age, the fix is to pour more in. More substrate, more NAD+, job done.Except that's not how the biology works. And the strange part is that the science community already knows this...

Why Physical AI in Healthcare Is the Conversation New Zealand Needs to Have Right Now

I recently had the privilege of speaking at Deloitte's Physical AI TechWeek event alongside Paulo Osorio from Deloitte New Zealand. We were there to talk about something I'm deeply passionate about — why healthcare is the sector where physical AI and robotics can make the most immediate and profound difference, and why New Zealand is uniquely positioned to lead.This isn't a theoretical conversation for me. I live this every single day.The Numbers That Should Keep Us Up at NightLet me ground th...

Why More NAD+ Isn't the Answer — and What Actually Is

Let me start by being honest about the most common pushback we get — because it's a fair question and it deserves a proper answer."Niacinamide is the slowest, least effective NAD+ precursor. NR is faster. NMN is one step closer to NAD+ in the biosynthesis pathway. Why on earth would you build a formula around niacinamide when better options exist?"This is not a fringe position. Clinicians with decades of IV NAD experience rank NR above NMN above niacinamide for speed of NAD+ elevation. The ent...

The One System That Controls How Well You Age (And What to Do About It)

The One System That Controls How Well You Age (And What to Do About It)After 15 years working in functional health and longevity, I've seen every trend come and go. But the more I learn — and the more complex cases I work with — the more I come back to one thing: your immune system is the foundation of how you age.Not your telomeres. Not your NAD+ levels. Not even your mitochondria — though they all matter. It's your immune system that interacts with and influences every single hallmark of...

Copper, Mitochondria and Autism: The Missing Link No One Is Talking About

What if the missing piece in autism, chronic fatigue, and even premature grey hair comes down to something as simple as the wrong type of copper?In this episode of Pushing the Limits, I sat down with Melissa Atchley from MitoSynergy to talk about bioavailable copper — what it is, why it matters, and how it changed her son’s life. Melissa isn’t a scientist. She’s a mum. And her story is one of the most compelling things I’ve heard in 450+ episodes of this podcast.Meeting Charlie Barker ...

Immunosenescence and the Case for Upstream Intervention

By Lisa Tamati / Co-Founder Aevum Labs / Host, Pushing the Limits Podcast   The Problem with Treating Hallmarks One at a Time Every practitioner working in longevity medicine has had the same experience. A patient arrives with a protocol that’s already twelve supplements deep. Something for mitochondrial support. Something for methylation. A senolytic. An NAD+ precursor. A gut repair stack. An anti-inflammatory. An antioxidant. Each intervention has good science behind it. And yet th...

The Post-GLP-1 Bridge:

I have a growing number of clients walking through my door with the same story.They went on a GLP-1 — semaglutide, tirzepatide, sometimes compounded versions from telehealth clinics. They lost the weight. The food noise stopped. For the first time in years, maybe ever, eating felt simple. They felt in control. They got compliments. Their clothes fit. Their inflammatory markers improved. Their fasting glucose normalised.And then, for one of a hundred reasons, they decided to stop.The cost stopp...

Kawakawa Benefits

One of the things I love most about living in New Zealand is that some of the most interesting longevity botanicals in the world are growing wild in our own backyard — most people just walk past them without realising. Kawakawa is the perfect example. And the more I dig into the kawakawa benefits being uncovered by modern research, the more convinced I am that this unassuming heart-shaped leaf is one of the most underrated tools we have for supporting healthy ageing, immune resilience, and the...

Inside Re:juvenate Pro: The Immunel® Fraction

Colostrum is the first milk produced by mammals in the 24–72 hours after birth. It's not really milk in the conventional sense — it's a concentrated biological starter kit, designed to switch on a newborn's immune system, seal the gut lining, and deliver the growth factors that set the trajectory for early development.Bovine colostrum has been one of the most extensively researched natural immune compounds of the last several decades. There are now over 9,000 published studies on colostrum a...

Robots Must Save Heatlhcare : A conversation with Cern Basher CFA

I recently sat down with Cern Basher for a conversation that cut through the AI hype to something far more urgent: the crisis in caregiving that's already here — and the robots that might be our only way through it.Cern opened with a question that lands differently when you've lived it: "Do you know someone caring for a disabled child… or sitting beside an aging parent, watching them fade a little more each day? Do you know what that kind of love costs — in time, in sleep, in pieces of you...

Rapamycin Gets Real: What the PEARL Trial Means for Rejuvenate Pro and the Future of Longevity

For years, Rapamycin has occupied a fascinating—and controversial—position in longevity medicine.On one side, the preclinical data has been extraordinary: lifespan extension across multiple species, improvements in cardiovascular function, reduced cancer incidence, and enhanced resilience in ageing systems.On the other side, human evidence has remained limited—until now.The release of the PEARL trial marks a turning point. But its real significance isn’t just about rapamycin itself.It’...

Your're Ageing Faster at Night Than You Realise

You're Ageing Faster at Night Than You Realise — Here's the Physiology Nobody Is Talking About There's a question I now ask every single client in my first session with them. Not about their diet. Not about their exercise. Not about their supplements. I ask: What is your nervous system doing while you sleep? Most people have never been asked this question. Most don't know the answer. And for a significant number of them — people who are genuinely trying to do everything right — the answer ...

The Hidden Immune Markers in Your Blood Test

The Blood Test Ratios Your Doctor Isn't Checking — But Should BeYour standard blood test contains powerful information about your immune system that almost nobody's looking at. While your doctor checks whether individual values fall within normal ranges, researchers have discovered that ratios between different blood cells reveal far more about your inflammatory state and immune function.These markers — NLR, PLR, LMR, and SII — are linked to everything from cardiovascular disease risk to c...

The Science of Ageing Just Changed:

The science of ageing is moving faster than most people realize. In the first two months of 2026 alone, three landmark studies have come out of world-leading institutions that fundamentally change how we understand why we age and what we might be able to do about it. These aren't theoretical papers buried in academic journals. These are findings with direct, practical implications for how you train, recover, supplement, and plan for the decades ahead.Why Your Muscles Age Badly — And It's Not W...

Why Your Immune System Is the Real Key to Ageing Well

I spent years as an elite ultra-endurance athlete pushing my body to its absolute limits. I thought I understood health. But it wasn't until I started digging into the science of what actually drives how we age — and why some people seem to do it so much better than others — that I realised we've been looking in the wrong place.We talk a lot about longevity these days. NAD+, mitochondria, telomeres, senolytics — there's an entire industry built around these concepts. And they matter. But t...

Why Your Diet Isn't working - And Why It Might Be Your DNA

What if the reason you can't lose weight, your energy is inconsistent, and your blood sugar won't budge has nothing to do with discipline — and everything to do with your DNA?I want to tell you about a client of mine. I'll call her Anna. She's a woman in her late forties — intelligent, health-conscious, motivated. She came to me having gained eight kilograms over the previous year despite, by her own account, eating better than she ever had in her life.She'd gone keto. Properly keto. She'd d...

The Silver Digital Wave:

Here is a scary fact: People aged 45 to 64 are spending 40% more time looking at screens than they did three years ago. By the year 2030, about one out of every six people in the world will be approaching age 65 or older. This group is called the "Silver Surfers." They are using tablets and phones more than ever, but their bodies are paying a high price for it.The Main Problem: Light from screens at night can stop the body from making Melatonin. In older adults, this "sleep hormone" can drop by ...

Osteoporosis Risk Assessment: The IOF Screening Tool and Protecting Your Bone Health

The Silent Disease: Why Osteoporosis Screening Matters Osteoporosis is often called the "silent disease" because bone loss occurs without symptoms until a fracture happens. By the time many individuals learn they have osteoporosis, they have already experienced a vertebral compression fracture, hip fracture, or other debilitating skeletal event.The statistics are sobering: one in three women and one in five men over age 50 will experience an osteoporotic fracture during their remaining lifetime...

Understanding Your Breast Cancer Risk: The Science Behind the Gail Model Assessment

The Importance of Personalised Risk AssessmentBreast cancer remains the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women worldwide, yet individual risk varies enormously. While population-level statistics tell us that approximately 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime, this average obscures tremendous individual variation—some women face significantly higher risk, while others have substantially lower probability.Understanding your personal risk profile enables more informed...

Quantifying Anxiety: How the GAD-7 Assessment Measures What You're Feeling

he Challenge of Measuring Mental Health Anxiety is among the most common mental health experiences globally, yet it often goes unrecognised, undiagnosed, and untreated. One fundamental challenge has been the subjective nature of anxiety—how do you reliably measure an internal experience? The development of validated psychometric instruments has transformed our ability to screen for and monitor anxiety disorders. Among these tools, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7) stands as...

Predicting Type 2 Diabetes Risk: The FINDRISC Assessment and What Your Score Reveals

The Growing Imperative for Diabetes Risk Assessment Type 2 diabetes represents one of the most significant and preventable health challenges of our era. What makes this condition particularly insidious is its typically silent progression. By the time symptoms emerge, metabolic dysfunction has often been present for years, and microvascular complications may already be developing. The scientific evidence is unequivocal: identifying individuals at elevated risk before glucose metabolism becomes ov...