What about the idea of being actually 50 years old, but only 30 years old in your DNA?!?
Our cellular age is apparently based on the length of our telomeres. Researchers are still trying to understand the inherent human aging process and how to stop it, if that is even possible. There’s no definitive anti-aging solution out there, and likely won’t be developed in the near future.
Our body is rigged from the get-go to deteriorate with time. How rapidly that happens depends on our interaction with the outside environment and lifestyle choices that we make. In today’s present pandemic state, it is now more important than ever to consider what choices are lessening our bodies’ workload and which choices are adding a considerable amount of stress and tension to our already aging body; which is also acting as our prime defense against the present Virus.
There are many beneficial things that come with age, wisdom is one good example. However, we also know that as we reach a certain point in our lives and grow older and older, our system doesn’t run quite as well as it used to, leaving us to be more susceptible to infections, viruses, and more harmful invaders. That’s why it’s important and ideal to try and keep our bodies feeling young and primed for healthy growth with the least amount of stress and tension. There’s no way to stop our body from deteriorating, but we do have a choice in how fast.
Of course, there’s a patchwork of theories that scientists are still trying to wrap their heads around: could the enhanced deterioration be because of a glucose build up?
Is oxidative stress to blame?
Or are our cells just fated to go through a biological timetable irrespective of outside factors and there’s nothing we can do about it?
There is a growing consensus that the aging process may have something to do with telomere length. Telomeres are tiny repetitive non-coding DNA sequences at the ends of our chromosomes. They act as ‘caps’ that protect the chromosomes from fraying, wear and tear, or just sticking to each other.
However, whenever our DNA makes a copy of itself, the process takes a toll on the telomeres and they decrease in length. When telomeres reach a critical length, the cell stops dividing or dies and this manifests as accelerated aging.
The Shoelace Metaphor for Telomeres One very popular metaphor commonly used to describe telomeres is the protective plastic tips at the end of shoelaces. But the research is still in its early cycle and scientists seem to be contradicting each other.
Some experts cringe at the shoelace metaphor because they don’t believe that it’s a realistic representation of how telomeres work. “Telomeres almost never get used up, and the chromosomes never unravel because cellular dysfunction reaches a tipping point long before that ever happens”, argues Dr. Michael Fossel, who co-authored the popular book ‘The Immortality Edge’.
In normal aging, your Telomeres will never get ‘knocked out’. The truth is, our chromosomes can remain in pretty good shape even if we live to be over a 100. The only time they ‘unravel’ is during decomposition.
HAVE YOU EVER HEARD ABOUT TELOMERES?
What we do know, however, is that our telomeres play a major role in protecting the DNA. Without telomeres, the genetic information in our cells would disappear each time a cell divides.
As a general rule, the absolute length of the telomere does not matter much. But your body works best if the telomeres have a certain length. If the telomeres are too short or too long, it’s considered unfavorable because the telomere length alters expressions of genes. The research is still on-going and to pin your hopes on theories that continue to stir up heated debates is naïve to say the least.
The key question, then, is to determine if there is a relationship between lifestyle factors and the aging process – because that’s what we’re here to do right?
The unanimous answer to this question almost always comes down to exercising, nutrition, and optimizing (aka biohacking) our bodies and minds. Scientists at King’s College London studied the profiles of athletes who set world records in swimming, cycling, and athletics. Their profiles were drawn up as curves that related the aging process to their physiological performance over a period of time. In the case of these highly trained individuals, the shape of their curve was physiologically optimized for their age.
On average for humans with a more sedentary lifestyle, the curve is on a rapidly declining trajectory. But this can be easily prevented with exercise and lifestyle tweaks. Now, I can understand that most individuals almost never have enough time in the day to train as vigorously as world-class athletes. But, the research goes on to hypothesize, with reasonable skepticism, that all individuals who engage in sufficient (keyword: ‘being sufficient’) physical exercise should be able to control their aging process.
Exercise has been shown to manipulate telomere length after all – although research is still ongoing. Exercising and Biohacking Can Manipulate Telomeres Elizabeth Blackburn, a Nobel Laureate and biologist, claims that it is possible to make simple lifestyle tweaks to manipulate telomeres. Blackburn argues that while telomere length is not a good indicator of when we die, they are a reasonably good indicator of how long we’ll stay healthy and when we get diseases. Because, at a certain stage when our telomeres are reasonably worn out, the aging tissue becomes vulnerable to an onset of diseases that begin to take root.
We also know that a single disease creates ripe conditions for multi-morbidities, meaning, the onslaught of co-occurring diseases. For example, people who have diabetes often also have heart disease. Blackburn identified many health behaviors that she says are linked with telomere health, these include the following:
– Body fat (which you can effectively control with calisthenics)
– Exposure to chemicals like cadmium and lead
– Levels of antioxidants in our blood (which depends on our diet)
– Our response to stressful situations in life
– Anger management in each individual
– Social support systems, especially as we age At every stage in our life, we will always have a modicum of control over the aging process. Improving our biological markers (including telomere length) requires making a few changes (or indeed radical changes) to our lifestyle choices.
Missed a day or two at the gym?
Cheated on your diet one too many times?
Or sat on your computer for extended periods of time?
Every decision we make, consciously or subconsciously, shifts our biology towards cell aging. How we respond to stress also plays a role in the aging process. The trick is to identify and anticipate your trigger moments and make simple tweaks to increase your stress resilience. Maybe going to work or being stuck in traffic initiates a stress response. There are things we can do right before or during these ‘trigger’ moments to change our response to stress and improve our health. I suggest choosing a type of mind-body exercise that suits you and your schedule. These days, there’s a ton of exercises, supplements, and meditation techniques to choose from. There is a great inter-individual variability on the biological markers of health, due to differences in exposure to chemicals, environmental stressors, and emotional support systems. Each of us has the opportunity to personalize our own telomere ‘protection’ program. Now is the time. It is never too late to begin better managing your health and aging process. With proper and healthy management, you can look COVID-19 in the face with a confident smile, knowing that you’ve made the best possible decisions for your body, your telomeres, and your life.
