Yesterday was my final in-person visit to Project Baseline, just over 4 years since my first visit. They have really reduced the ambition of the project since then—they took the same urine sample, 25 vials of blood (about 200 ml), and swabs for oral, nasal, and skin microbiomes, but the rest of the assessment was just vital signs and a few low-cost fitness tests (balance, grip strength, sit-stand, walking test). All the expensive stuff they started with (stress echocardiogram, chest CAT scan, ankle-brachial index, pulmonary function) has been discontinued—I think that the heart (pun intended) went out of the project when the original PI (Dr. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir) died in July 2020. Also COVID messed up their ability to do detailed in-person studies for a couple of years, and I think that Verily lost interest in doing the project, so has just been keeping it ticking at minimal levels.
The one interesting result from this visit was that my 6-minute fast walk was 729 meters, substantially more than the 630 m of my first visit and something like 660 m on my second visit. I did push myself a bit more this time, getting a little out of breath by the end of 6 minutes. The 2.025 m/s pace is about 4.53 mph or 13:17 per mile. That is a pretty good pace for someone of my age, though I had difficulty finding any large studies that establish reasonable guidelines for healthy adults. I found one small study for people 20–50 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rmed.2006.01.001] and lots of studies for people who were unhealthy in various ways. The linear regression from that study suggests that “normal” for men of my height and age is around 551m, but that is extrapolating the linear regression well out of the age range. A somewhat larger study [https://doi.org/10.1183/09031936.00194909] set age- and sex-based standards for an older population—but even my original distance was above the 75%ile for my age, and the latest measurement was above the 75%ile even for men 20–30 years younger than me.
I’ve returned the Verily Study Watch and the hub for uploading data from it—I don’t think I’ll miss the watch, as it was not a very useful piece of equipment from a consumer standpoint—all the processing was done in the cloud after data was uploaded, and almost nothing was shared with the person wearing the watch.
I might get myself a consumer-level fitness monitor—they range in price from $40 to $400 (though I’m sure you can find more expensive ones). I’ll probably want one that I can download data from without needing an expensive subscription plan. It might be nice to have one that I can wear on my ankle for tracking bicycling as well as walking, but I don’t know whether any are designed for that obvious use (nor whether pulse monitoring at the ankle works as well as it does at the wrist). I’ll have to look into what’s available.