Slow or reverse aging 3 ways and new information....

Today's Post: Friday, 4-1-2011

1. People are like cars and other machinery. If you fail to maintain their basic systems, they wear out or stop working long before they should or could have.

We know two ways to do that and new research on the method already known to work suggests strongly that the second one works also despite it having been less tested.

2. The processes in your cells work best when the cellular components are not clumped up and tangled. A recent study found a chemical that increased the longevity of a fast living worm by 50%. We have no clue if this will work or is safe to take in humans. BUT, we do have a safe alternative that has been proven to work in humans.

3. Telomeres are like shoe lace caps on the ends of your DNA. When they are relatively long, your cells can make perfect copies when you grow new cells. But the telomeres tend do get shorter and when they get too short, your body makes imperfect copies or none at all. We now know several ways to keep them from getting shorter as fast. And, Dr Al Sears has tested a way to actually make them longer. His tests show that it works.

Here are the details.

1. People are like cars and other machinery. If you fail to maintain their basic systems they wear out or stop working long before they should or could have.

We know two ways to do that and new research on the method already known to work suggests strongly that the second one works also despite it having been less tested.

Regular physical activity such as walking, gardening, and tai chi plus regular and vigorous exercises such as strength training and interval cardio each have multiple health benefits.

It’s been proven that people who do vigorous exercise and stay active every week live longer and live longer parts of their years in good health than people who are completely sedentary.

Their lungs are stronger, their hearts are stronger, their blood vessels are less blocked and they experience extra blood circulation many times each week. Their bodies are triggered to make growth hormone and a special kind, BDNF, of growth hormone that grows new brain and nerve cells.

But a recent and rather spectacular experiment in mice found something even beyond those things.

The mice who were run on a treadmill for 45 minutes, three times each week looked and acted young and active at ages where their littermates who did not do this moved less, looked far more aged, and began to have systems failures of various kinds.

The researchers also found that exercise allowed the mitochondria in each cell of the mice to stay as healthy and capable as they were when the mice were younger. Since the mitochondria are the power centers of each cell and provide the energy for cellular repair and movement, that’s quite significant.

But, there was a similar experiment done that Dr Al Sears reports on. The compound CoQ10 is specifically known to keep mitochondria healthy and to even restore them to good health to some degree. When the form of CoQ10, ubiquinol, was developed in a way people could take as a supplement, the researchers who knew that the far less effective version CoQ10 had some age slowing effects and some mitochondria strengthening effects, they decided to test with mice if ubiquinol would slow aging better than C0Q10.

Their results were very similar to those of the researchers who tested exercise. The mice that were given neither CoQ10 nor ubiquinol aged as they normally do. The mice given CoQ10 aged more slowly and moved better but were clearly slowing down. The mice given ubiquinol showed virtually no signs of aging at all in the same time period!

Since your body provides you with this substance while you are younger but begins not to do so when you pass age 40 and to almost stop once you pass about 65, taking ubiquinol clearly makes sense at least once you are over 40.

Based on what I’ve read in Dr Sears emails, it sounds like taking 50 mg of ubiquinol at breakfast once a day once you pass 40; 50 mg at breakfast and at lunch after age 50; & 100 mg at breakfast and 50 mg at lunch once you pass age 60 is about right.

(Taking ubiquinol in this way also lowers high blood pressure about as much as one of the more effective blood pressure drugs but with no side effects. And, it tends to prevent heart failure; and larger doses have even tended to reverse heart failure or its symptoms.)

2. The processes in your cells work best when the cellular components and proteins are not clumped up and tangled. A recent study found a chemical that increased the longevity of a fast living worm by 50%. We have no clue if this will work or is safe to take in humans. BUT, we do have a safe alternative that has been proven to work in humans.

The researchers were able to show that this effect was due to this chemical preventing cellular components and proteins from getting clumped up and tangled.

But the write up I saw of that research said that, in people, there was evidence that those who ate turmeric as a spice or took turmeric or its main ingredient curcumin as a supplement tended to age more slowly and that this anti clumping effect provided both that benefit and the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease that turmeric is better known for!

Since eating turmeric as a spice or taking turmeric or its main ingredient curcumin as a supplement also helps prevent chronic inflammation, heart disease, and cancer, that makes these practices a very useful way to slow aging and stay in good health during your longer lifespan!

Eating sugar tends to cause glycation in your cells which is a kind of breakdown that results in such tangles and clumps. So eating sugar a few times a week and usually in relatively small amounts is far safer for your health and ability to live a long time than eating a lot of it several times a day as a majority of Americans now do.

There are three ways to minimize this effect of the sugar you do eat. Get the exercise in the first method and/or take 200 or 400 mcg a day of chromium polynicotinate since these two things help your body process the sugar and minimize glycation.

I’ve also read that the supplements DMAE and carnosine tend prevent glycation. Since DMAE is inexpensive and carnosine is quite pricey and DMAE also helps make the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and boost your HDL, I take DMAE.

3. Telomeres are like shoe lace caps on the ends of your DNA. When they are relatively long, your cells can make perfect copies when you grow new cells. But the telomeres tend do get shorter and when they get too short, your body makes imperfect copies or none at all. We now know several ways to keep them from getting shorter as fast. And, Dr Al Sears has tested a way to actually make them longer. His tests show that it works.

Virtually every way you effectively keep yourself healthy keeps your telomeres from shortening or shortening as fast.

So, work every way you can to stay healthy.

But in addition to that these have been found extra effective:

a) Take antioxidant supplements such as vitamin C, natural vitamin E complex, selenium, vitamin A, and alpha lipoic acid.

And eat foods and drink drinks high in these or other antioxidants. Blueberries, coffee, tea, green tea, dark chocolate, and most spices are quite effective antioxidants. Nuts and avocados are high in all parts of the vitamin E complex. Vegetables with carotenes or high levels of vitamin C and fruits with lots of vitamin C all have effective antioxidants and other health protective chemicals. And virtually all fruits and vegetables have some of these antioxidants.

These practices keep your telomeres long.

b) Avoid or escape severe stress when you can and get effective rest breaks when you can from more moderate but chronic stress.

Be prudent enough and careful enough to not get into avoidable severe stress when you can and escape it as soon as possible if you get into severely stressful situations.

Use exercise or tai chi or meditation or a drink or two of red wine at the end of the day to give yourself a stress break when you need it. Most people need this several days a week.

c) Be reasonable, kind, forgiving most of the time, and easy to live with, and nice to people. Develop good social skills such as saying things that make people feel noticed and appreciated; asking good questions; and negotiating fairly with people. Keep a sane sense of humor and laugh with people when you can. (People you treat this way will relieve your stress; people you treat the reverse way will CAUSE you stress.)

These practices help avoid the shortening effects of excessive stress on your telomeres.

Your body has an enzyme that protects your telomeres or even makes them longer called telomerase. When I last checked, the substance that Dr Sears has been testing and now sells, TA65, that causes your body to increase telomerase enough for antiaging effects, runs $4,000 a year.

That’s out of my price range. I do most of the other things in this post.

But, if you might want to try it, Dr Sears’ website is www.alsearsmd.com .