Your Selfie Just Became a Blood Test (And Other Signals from the Future of Health)
Plus: COPERNI's probiotic athleisure bet, Oura's blood work play, and why the 117-year-old's cholesterol changes everything
COPERNI - the cult fashion brand - just announced their entrance into beauty. But not the way you’d expect. No perfumes, no skincare, no makeup. Instead: probiotic-infused athleisure.
Clearly, the job-to-be-done for activewear is shifting. Yesterday was all about material feel and fit (think ALO) or performance (Arc’teryx). Tomorrow’s consumer still wants fashion, still demands performance, but now expects materials that won’t hormonally damage them mid-workout. (No plastic in my leggings, thanks.)
The real winners will treat clean materials as table stakes and extend the job-to-be-done of the product itself: infusing you with the good stuff.
As for the science behind COPERNI’s probiotic claim? I have no idea how those are supposed to reach you through fabric and into your bloodstream. But a world where your leggings measure hydration levels in real time and adjust accordingly? Not a crazy concept. What do you think?
🤳🤳🤳 Your Selfie Is Now a Biomarker
David Furman and his team just published a model where facial photography acts as a pretty accurate proxy for body inflammation. Revolutionary on multiple levels.
First: we know inflammation drives aging (it even has its own term, inflammaging). Until now, measuring it meant blood work with markers like CRP or IL-6. Invasive. Cost-prohibitive.
Now imagine your phone camera collecting that data. Skin and appearance are no longer just vanity metrics - they’re the cleanest view into your internal system balance. (Same with grey hair, btw. These changes are reversible with diet interventions.)
🩸🩸🩸 Everyone’s Jumping on the Blood Test Wagon
Last week: Whoop. This week: Oura - which also just dropped a beautiful campaign featuring their new ceramic rings and a pop-up at Harrods. (See it here.)
It’s cool to see biomarker testing spreading like wildfire, though I still find the Quest Diagnostics experience suboptimal. But regular, preventative testing is quickly becoming “normal” thanks to moves like this.
I’m watching this one cautiously. Not all biomarkers can be affected by lifestyle, so the winners will be the ones who turn data into thoughtful coaching - not information overload. Can Oura pull it off?
PS. Congrats Oura team Doug Sweeny, Dorothy Killroy, Sanya, Tom Hale on this and the latest valuation!!
🔬🔬🔬 The 117-Year-Old Woman Had High Cholesterol
Scientists just published the metabolic workup of Maria Morera, who lived to 117. Her LDL cholesterol? High - buried in the supplemental figures like an inconvenient footnote covered by one of my favorites Substack’s here.
But her HDL was stellar. Triglycerides near zero. Inflammatory markers (GlycA, GlycB) lower than most 30-year-olds. Mitochondria functioning like someone decades younger. Gut microbiome packed with beneficial bacteria.
Her telomeres - those chromosome caps scientists obsess over as aging markers? Tiny. Yet she was sharp and metabolically efficient past 110.
Also, if you want to dive in, the report shared her exact diet, which included 3 yogurts with variety of probiotics a day - I guess dairy isn’t that bad after all? ;)
The insight: resilience beats perfection. As Mark Hyman discussed in that podcast I wrote about, it’s not about every metric being flawless, it’s your body’s ability to rebound. Maria’s system could clean up, regenerate, and keep inflammation in check. That’s what mattered.
Stop chasing perfect numbers and focus on your ability to rebound and recover -That’s the real game.
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Fascinating