Slow or partly reverse aging by making your telomeres longer....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 5-27-2014                                                                         

I.  As you very well may know if you are a regular reader, regular and vigorous exercise most days of every week, has already been shown to produce several kinds of prevention of many diseases more common in older people.

A study found regular and vigorous exercise delivers powerful heart protection and increases your HDL and lowers LDL and triglycerides.  The great news in that study was that in the people in the exercise class they studied, all these improvements and protections kept getting better every year the people kept doing this!

This double confirms the separate research showing that exercise directly lowers the amount of the dangerous small particle LDL that is a key cause of heart disease.  (When exercise does this, you can see it in the higher HDL and lower triglycerides without going to the expense of getting the detailed exam of your blood particles used in that study.  Research at Harvard found the cheaper and more used lipid panel with HDL and triglycerides and the ratio between them tracks small particle LDL almost exactly. 

You want high HDL and quite low triglycerides.  Exercise helps deliver that!)

Another study at Stanford found such regular exercisers were far less impacted by diseases and had more years of healthy life AND lived significantly longer.  Moreover this was true when comparing them to other professional and economically advantaged peers who did NOT exercise!

Yet another study showed that in the muscles directly exercised the genetic messages and muscle fibers and capacity reverted to a youthful state even when the person was older.

As you may know, one of the biggest causes of aging if not the number one cause is when the telomeres at the end of your DNA strands that protect the insides get short enough the copies begin to have imperfections.  If you keep your telomeres longer, the copies are accurate and fully functional which avoids that.

In addition, people who have shorter telomeres at any age tend to get more heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and other diseases.

Given all this, it looks as if one of the ways to keep your telomeres long and enjoy all these health protections and more years of healthy life, is to exercise!

The news that sparked this post is that last month Dr Al Sears emailed me this:  "....recently a study of 2,401 twins found that physical activity was related to telomere length.

The researchers found that vigorous exercise that didn’t last too long or too short a time helps people have much longer telomeres than people who get no exercise or who exercise for too long.

The people in the study got to choose the kind of exercise they liked to do, like I do .... They did things like running, swimming, or tennis.

Those who exercised vigorously had telomeres that acted 9 years younger."

2.  Are there other things that you can do to keep your telomeres long or make them longer?

Yes.

a)Taking the supplements alpha lipoic acid or r-lipoic acid does this. 

So does taking NAC, n-acetyl-cysteine which causes glutathione release.  (Like vigorous exercise, lipoic acid lower insulin resistance and helps keep your nerves in good repair.  And, glutathione is a powerful antioxidant that enables you to exercise without oxidative damage.)

These are effective and easy to get at this time.

b) Avoiding or escaping from severe stress; effectively solving the problems that would otherwise cause it; having good relationships with people and frequent contacts; and using effective stress release techniques such as Massage, Yoga, and Tai Chi each help prevent short telomeres and even make them longer. 

Each of these is big topic and there are good books on each of them. 

My solution which I recommend to you is to exercise and take the supplements and do my best at the last set of things.

Even though my efforts at the last set of things fall short sometimes, I’ve done far better by making an effort to do each one than I did when I was younger at didn’t know to do that.