My Biological Age Tested 49.5 at 41. At 43 It Tested 38.6. Here's What Changed.

Oct 6

9 min read

Disclosure: DoNotAge is a brand partner of mine. The DoNotAge links in this article are affiliate links and PROFSAVAGE is my affiliate code, which means I earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.

You train four or five days a week. You lift, you roll, you hit pads, you get your conditioning in. So you assume the inside matches the outside.

I assumed that too. Then at 41 I took an epigenetic age test and it came back at 49.5. Eight and a half years older than my birth certificate.

Under two years later, at 43, the same test came back at 38.6.

That's roughly an 11-year swing in the number, in the same body, with the same training. This article covers what drove it up, what I changed, what the research says about each piece, and how to run the same kind of audit on yourself without fooling yourself about the result.

Watch the full video: I Stopped Drinking and This Happened to My Biological Age

What the test measures

The test was an epigenetic age test from Muhdo. DoNotAge used to sell these kits. They no longer do, but Muhdo still runs the test if you go to them directly.

An epigenetic test reads chemical tags on your DNA called methylation marks. Those marks shift in predictable patterns as we age, so an algorithm (a "clock") can look at your pattern and estimate how old your body appears to be biologically, separate from how many birthdays you've had.

It is an estimate. Keep that in mind, because I'm coming back to it.

The part that surprises people: my training never stopped

The 49.5 didn't come from sitting on the couch. I was in the gym, on the mats, sparring, hitting bags, lifting, and climbing indoors and outside at Red Rock the entire time.

The number came from everything else.

It started right after my birthday. I'm highly sensitive to gluten, and I had far more of it than my body can handle. I drank more alcohol than I had in years. Stress had been piling up and I let it. And I wasn't eating the way I know I should. Put together, that combination put me through a rough bout of leaky gut, and my whole system was under strain.

Why it happens: the levers training doesn't cover

Most guys my age believe that if they're in the gym, they're covered. Training is one lever. Food, alcohol, stress, and recovery are levers too, and training hard doesn't cancel out the others. My first result is one data point for that. Here is what the research says about each one.

Alcohol. In the CARDIA study, cumulative liquor and total alcohol intake, along with recent binge drinking, were associated with faster epigenetic aging on the GrimAge clock [1]. A Framingham Heart Study analysis of 3,823 adults found that higher long-term alcohol intake was tied to accelerated epigenetic aging in middle-aged and older participants, but not in the 24 to 44 group [2]. That age split matters for us. The same drinking appears to cost more as you get older.

The gut. Alcohol changes the makeup of your gut bacteria, makes the intestinal lining more permeable, and drives inflammation that spreads beyond the gut [3]. Gluten adds to it if you're sensitive. In a lab study on intestinal tissue, gliadin (a gluten protein) increased permeability in every group tested, with a larger effect in people with gluten sensitivity and active celiac disease [4]. That study was small and done on biopsy tissue, so read it as mechanism, not as proof of what happens in every person.

Stress. A 2023 study in Cell Metabolism found that biological age rises quickly under severe physical stress such as major surgery, pregnancy, and severe COVID-19, and then comes back down after recovery [5]. Those are heavier stressors than a bad stretch of living, so I won't claim it maps one to one onto my situation. The principle it shows is the important part: biological age moves in both directions, and it can move fast.

That's the lesson I took from it. After 40, your habits don't just add up. They multiply. A stretch of eating, drinking, and missed sleep that you shrugged off in your 20s can cost you a lot more now. "Multiply" is my word for what I lived, not a formula from a paper, but the alcohol data above points the same way.

The good news is that the lever works in both directions.

What I changed

1. Gluten came back out. Completely.

2. Alcohol came back out.

3. I got stress under control. I treated it like a training variable instead of something to push through.

4. I rebuilt my gut health.

5. I stayed consistent with my longevity protocol. I switched to the DoNotAge longevity routine, their all-in-one daily sachet. It's the same protocol I had used before in separate products, and one sachet was easier to stay on top of. I stayed on it all the way to the retest. Fisetin isn't in the sachet, so I took their standalone Fisetin in addition to it.

Here's how I think about what's in the sachet, with the amounts from the label:

Cell energy and repair: NMN (1,000 mg), trans-resveratrol (500 mg), TMG (1,000 mg), Ca-AKG (800 mg), and SIRT6Activator (1,600 mg)
Clearing out old, damaged (senescent) cells: quercetin (400 mg) and spermidine (8 mg), plus the fisetin I took separately
Support: glycine (2,000 mg), SulforaBoost (230 mg), vitamin D3 (50 µg), vitamin K2 as MK-7 (120 µg), magnesium bisglycinate (250 mg), CoQ10 (200 mg), hyaluronic acid (200 mg), and Nitralis (400 mg), a nitric oxide booster

The groupings are mine. They're how I organize the protocol in my head, not claims from the label.

What the evidence says about the supplement side

I'd rather you hear this from me than find out later.

NMN reliably raises blood NAD+ levels in human trials, in a dose-dependent way [6]. Whether that turns into meaningful health outcomes is less settled. A 2024 meta-analysis of randomized trials found no significant benefit of NMN on glucose and lipid markers [7].

Fisetin is the most potent senolytic of the flavonoids tested in mice, and giving it to old mice extended their lifespan [8]. Human data is thin. In the one small pilot I could find that tracked epigenetic clocks during senolytic treatment, a dasatinib and quercetin combination was followed by increases in some first-generation epigenetic clocks, and adding fisetin made those increases non-significant [9]. Nobody has shown in a controlled human trial that fisetin lowers epigenetic age.

So I can tell you what I took. I can't tell you how much of my result it was responsible for, and neither can anyone else. I changed five things at once.

What does have human trial support is the combined approach. In a pilot randomized trial, an eight-week program of diet, sleep, exercise, relaxation guidance, and targeted supplements was associated with epigenetic age about 3.2 years lower than controls [10]. It was a small study of 43 men, and the within-group change fell just short of statistical significance, so it's a promising signal and not settled science. It does match what I experienced: the result came when everything lined up.

How it felt, and what my tracker showed

Before I ever saw the retest, I could feel the difference. Energy was high and level all day. The usual aches and pains were gone. My pace in training was outstanding.

I also had daily data from my Morpheus recovery tracking:

Resting heart rate: 54 down to 47, a drop of 7 beats per minute
HRV: 86 up to 89
Sleep: up about 20 minutes
Recovery score: held steady in the mid-80s

Not every number moved, and that's fine. That mid-80s recovery range is where I want to be. It means I'm applying enough training stress to adapt, and not so much that I can't recover for the next day.

The resting heart rate change is the one I care about most. In a meta-analysis of prospective studies, each 10 beats per minute of higher resting heart rate was associated with about 9 percent higher all-cause mortality [11]. That's a population-level association, not a promise about my own lifespan, but it's a direction I'll take.

The retest

The second Muhdo test came in when I was 43.

Biological age: 38.6.

I went from 8.5 years older than my real age to 4.4 years younger. The raw number dropped about 11 years. Measured against my birthday, the gap moved almost 13.

Two separate sources pointed the same way: the epigenetic test, and a full year of daily training and recovery data.

Let's be straight about what this proves

Myth 1: "One test tells you your true biological age." These tests carry noise. Researchers at Yale found that six widely used epigenetic clocks could differ by up to 9 years between repeat measurements of the same sample, purely from technical variation [12]. I don't know how much noise is in my two readings. Some of my 11 years could be measurement error in either direction.

Myth 2: "A big drop proves the intervention worked." One retest on one person isn't a controlled experiment. The authors of a paper on false positives in aging interventions make the same point about clock changes in general [13]. What makes me more confident in my result is that my resting heart rate, HRV, sleep, and how I felt all moved the same direction over the same period.

Myth 3: "Take the sachet, get 11 years back." No. This is what happened when diet, alcohol, stress, gut health, and the protocol all lined up at once.

Myth 4: "If I train hard, I'm covered." My 49.5 says otherwise.

Run your own lever audit

If you want to do this yourself, here's the approach I'd give a client.

Get a baseline. Use one epigenetic test provider and stick with them for the retest. Different companies use different clocks, and the numbers aren't interchangeable. Test under similar conditions each time: not sick, not straight off a brutal training block or a rough week of travel.
Track something daily. A lab test gives you one snapshot. Resting heart rate, HRV, and sleep give you a trend line you can check every morning.
Score your five levers honestly. Training, food, alcohol, stress, recovery. Most high performers are a 9 on training and won't look at the other four. Find the one you've let slip.
Fix the broken lever before you add anything. Supplements sit on top of the foundation. Taking alcohol and my trigger food out cost me nothing.
Give it months. Hold the changes for at least several months before you retest, and judge the result alongside your daily data, not on its own.

The lever goes both ways

Falling off can cost you fast. I watched it happen in my own results while I was still training hard.

Getting locked in can give those years back. It took me under two years, and I'm 43.

If your number, your energy, or your recovery isn't where you want it, you are not stuck with it. Find the lever you've been ignoring and start there.

If you want to try what I use, here are the links again: the DoNotAge longevity routine and their Fisetin. My code is PROFSAVAGE.

And watch the full breakdown here: I Stopped Drinking and This Happened to My Biological Age

Stay savage, my friends.

This article shares my personal experience and published research for educational purposes. It is not medical advice. Talk to your doctor before changing your diet, alcohol intake, or supplements, especially if you take medication or have a health condition.

Sources

Alcohol consumption and epigenetic age acceleration in young adults. Aging (Albany NY). 2023;15(2):371-395. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9925681
Alcohol consumption and epigenetic age acceleration across human adulthood (Framingham Heart Study). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10637803/
Bishehsari F, et al. Alcohol and Gut-Derived Inflammation. Alcohol Research: Current Reviews. 2017;38(2):163-171. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5513683/
Hollon J, et al. Effect of Gliadin on Permeability of Intestinal Biopsy Explants from Celiac Disease Patients and Patients with Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity. Nutrients. 2015;7(3):1565-1576. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25734566/
Poganik JR, et al. Biological age is increased by stress and restored upon recovery. Cell Metabolism. 2023;35(5):807-820. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2023.03.015
The efficacy and safety of β-nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) supplementation in healthy middle-aged adults: a randomized, multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, dose-dependent clinical trial. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9735188
Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials of NMN on glucose and lipid metabolism in adults. Current Diabetes Reports. 2024. doi:10.1007/s11892-024-01557-z
Yousefzadeh MJ, et al. Fisetin is a senotherapeutic that extends health and lifespan. EBioMedicine. 2018;36:18-28. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6197652
Lee E, et al. Exploring the effects of Dasatinib, Quercetin, and Fisetin on DNA methylation clocks: a longitudinal study on senolytic interventions. Aging (Albany NY). 2024;16(4):3088-3106. https://www.aging-us.com/article/205581
Fitzgerald KN, et al. Potential reversal of epigenetic age using a diet and lifestyle intervention: a pilot randomized clinical trial. Aging (Albany NY). 2021;13(7):9419-9432. https://aging-us.com/article/202913
Zhang D, et al. Resting heart rate and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in the general population: a meta-analysis. CMAJ. 2016;188(3):E53-E63. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26598376/
Higgins-Chen AT, et al. A computational solution for bolstering reliability of epigenetic clocks: implications for clinical trials and longitudinal tracking. Nature Aging. 2022;2:644-661. doi:10.1038/s43587-022-00248-2
Borrus DS, et al. When to Trust Epigenetic Clocks: Avoiding False Positives in Aging Interventions. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11526921/