Medicosnext
Longevity is what we all look for. At the same time, quality of life is important to lead a fun filled life. All the innovations and advancements in diagnostics, advanced technology in treatment, consistent R&D in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and supplements, and all those vaccines have made the miracle of a long life possible for human beings. Nevertheless, fast life, adulterated food, stress, and pollution have had a reverse effect and caused massive damage, leading to a very poor quality of life during old age.
Medical science has identified a direct proportionate relationship between cellular aging and the length of telomeres. There are more than 20,000 scientific publications on telomere research findings. In 2009, the Nobel Prize was awarded to three scientists for their discovery of how an enzyme called telomerase can influence the length of telomeres. Quite a few scientific trials on humans show that telomeres are getting longer in humans, and so is life expectancy.
Telomeres are the cap of each DNA at both the ends, just like the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces. The most important role of telomeres is to ensure proper copying of DNA during the cell division process, and this is a regular phenomenon in a living body. Prevention of loss of genes is thus secured by the telomere-capped ends.
We are talking about cellular aging that results in the organs and the body getting old. The average cell division of a particular cell is about 60 times before it dies, and the cap gets shortened every time the cell divides. There is a hypothesis, or a concept, called Hayflick Limit, which states that a normal human cell can only replicate and divide 40 to 60 times, and then goes to nature programmed cell death, physiologically called ‘apoptosis’. That is why human life is not immortal.
Since the length of the telomeres is so important for a long lifespan, research has been intensified to understand how to slow down, stop, or reverse the shortening process of telomeres. The primary reason, for sure, is natural biological age, where the cells are divided up to the Hayflick Limit and naturally shorten the telomeres and apoptosis occurs. There are so many other reasons linked to the early shortening of telomeres.
1. Stress: Quite a large number of studies have already established that stress is the primary responsible factor for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and so many other non-communicable diseases, which eventually means cellular aging and shorter telomeres.
2. Refined foods, junk foods
3. Red meat, fried food, different kinds of oil and fat
4. Smoking, pollution
5. Obesity
The aging clock—the shortening of telomeres—is on action all the time, and there is strong hypothesis backed up by studies that suggests we can lengthen and protect the telomeres by adapting a healthy lifestyle.
1. Active lifestyle, meditation, and physical activities
2. Healthy food habit: whole grains, nuts or seeds, fruit, vegetables, fish
3. Limit exposure and protection from pollution
4. Maintain healthy weight
5. Maintain NAD*+ levels by intermittent fasting, low-carb diet (Keto diet), or by using NAD supplements.
* NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), a coenzyme vital to the basic reactions in cells, helps you get energy from food, protects cells from stress, maintains healthy sleep cycle, and facilitates cells to repair damaged DNA.
DNA is an indispensible genetic material that makes up all the cells. Old cells gets replaced by copying cells, and the process carries on and on throughout life. Telomeres get shorter, but DNA stays intact during this process. The major concern is to reverse or slow down the shortening of telomeres, so that it is not too short to function properly, else the cell age clock stops right there.
Measuring telomeres
One of the earliest tools to measure the length of telomeres is terminal restriction fragmentation. A new technology—quantitative PCR—has evolved that is very handy, as very small amount of DNA sample is required, and a large number of samples can be run at a time. For chromosome-specific telomere length, as well for mean telomere length quantification, fluorescent probes method has also been introduced.
The Nobel Prize winning research identified the responsible enzyme, telomerase, which can positively impact the shortening of telomeres, especially lifestyle-related shortening. But, the issue here is that the natural enzyme cannot be replaced with a supplement, as it is produced only inside the functioning cells. However, scientific research has shown that nutritional supplement to activate the telomerase inside the cell is possible. There are plant-based compounds available that are believed to help activate the natural production of telomerase, so that older cells begin replicating again.
