Atlas, Analysis, and Aims: July
Subtitles are lame (BUT INFORMATIVE!). Just kidding! Hope you have fun reading this :).
Hey!
It was a bit sad when my pony couldn’t sing me a lullaby. Then I realized it was because she was a little horse.
Welcome back to my newsletter. Hope you had a wonderful and relaxing August.
For those who don't know, I'm Nina Khera. You may have met me during a meeting, or at the latest networking event in Boston. I'm a 16-year-old human longevity researcher who's working on projects from topics spanning cellular senescence (zombie cells) to epidermolysis bullosa (skin disease)!
This month I’ve worked on Biotein, worked on college essays, gone on vacation, worked on my internship at the Boyden lab, and researched into brain aging!
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Biotein
We’ve finished troubleshooting and are now in the middle of recruiting and starting to collect data (obtaining IRB approval first of course) for our upcoming mega-validation study. If you want to sign up to donate saliva, we’d love to have you fill out the form (this is an official ‘yes’ to giving saliva): https://forms.gle/A7hzyNSo2mC3B6Pu5. We’re also working on statistical ways to turn our health index score into an actionable and useful metric - we’re hoping to speak to biostatisticians about this, so if you know anyone and would like to intro us, let us know :)!
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Mindsets and Philosophy
Here are some thoughts I’ve been having!
In my opinion, to change any habit or to intentionally do anything, the mental and physical have to line up. Your brain needs to be totally convinced that this would be a good idea and on board with the idea of accomplishing it, and you need to stop doing the thing you want to change. If you want to stop skipping the 6:30 workout, yes, you need to convince yourself it would be a good idea and make it mentally easier to do, but you also need to get out of bed at 6:15 and have all your equipment/outfit ready so you can workout. Most people do one part of it. They either try to change their habit without convincing their brain/figuring out why they did the habit they disliked in the first place, or they convince themselves but resort to the earlier habit because of being used to it/not thinking it through.
I find that many things seem hard in theory because you feel like you’re committing to this big thing and you must do amazing at it and if not you fail as a human. When I used to go running to train for cross-country, I would be stressed if I didn’t make X distance or Y pace and consider it a personal failing. Soon, I was nervous about running because I found that I went way too fast/pushed myself too much and also I didn’t want to fail. But now I consider it exploratory. I’m collecting data. X pace doesn’t work for me? No biggie, I’ll go at Z pace and work up to X. Y distance was too difficult one day? Why? Elevation, humidity, heat, etc? Or was it just too hard? Good to know, I’ll work up to it. Most of the time, it isn’t a personal failing. Even if it’s mental and you just went back in because your brain got scared, now you know the issue and you know that you need to turn your brain off for a bit and convince it to trust you/not get scared.
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Knowledge Bytes
Here are some (substack-themed!) recommendations from the month!
- Interesting newsletter #1: https://substack.com/profile/5646098-ava. It is thoughtful and well-written - one of my favorite newsletters to get a random email from.
- Interesting newsletter #2: https://substack.com/profile/85176544-avan-jogia. I love the poetry and the thoughtfulness in each post!
- Interesting newsletter #3:
I like this one because it focuses on thinking + a lot of interesting phenomena that happen to us all, like Imposter Syndrome and goes through these topics in a thoughtful way.
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Shoutouts
Here are some fun shoutouts:
Thank you to Ichor Therapeutics for your help with our mega-validation experiments and all the countless hours of advice you’ve given us!
Thank you to the Biotein team for some great calls, meetups, and moments of excitement as we gear up for the next studies!
Thank you to Jasmeen for your support and useful insights regarding Biotein!
Thank you to everyone reading this. Even if I didn't mention you this month. you probably helped me a lot. Thank you!
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Next Month
In September, I’ll be working more on Biotein, starting school, working on college-related tasks, and finishing up my internship!
Reach out to me if you want to talk about human longevity (or just life sciences in general) or anything else honestly!
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-khera-115b5a175/
Personal Website: https://ninakhera.com/
Email: kheranina@gmail.com (or just reply to this email)