Although you may not have seen anything about telomeres and telomerase on your nightly news, they have become a pretty hot topic among anti-aging researchers. Telomeres are often described as being like the plastic caps on your shoelaces. They keep your chromosomes from unraveling. Every time a cell divides its telomeres get a little bit shorter. When telomeres get too short, the chromosomes can no longer make good copies, so the cell stops dividing. Telomere length is an accurate measure of a person's biological age. After years of research and testing, scientists have found a way to stop telomeres from shortening. The enzyme that can preserve and/or rebuild telomeres is called telomerase. Telomerase is in all cells, but it is usually inactive. The key to slowing or even reversing the aging process is activating it. Telomerase makes a blueprint so the telomeres can rebuild themselves when the DNA makes copies. When telomerase is active, telomeres don't get shorter and sometimes they even get longer.
Shortened telomeres on immune system cells increase the risk for infection and make it more difficult for the patient to fight off the infection. One study looked at about 150 people from 60-75 years old. Those who had shorter telomeres were three times more likely to die from heart disease and eight times more likely to die from an infectious disease.
Shortened telomeres may also contribute to many chronic diseases such as diabetes, atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's.
Supplement Users Have Longer Telomeres
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently looked at telomere length in about 600 women. Those who took vitamins had telomeres that were on average 5 percent longer than those who didn't.
Several other studies have shown cross-sectional associations between longer telomeres and nutritional supplements including folic acid, multivitamins and vitamins C, D and E.
Omega-3 fatty acids, abundant in krill oil, fish oil and flax seed oil, are excellent supplements for maintaining telomere length. According to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, heart disease patients who have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids experience a lower rate of reduction in telomere length over time.
The 5-year study included 608 men and women with stable coronary artery disease. Blood samples were analyzed for levels of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), in addition to other factors. White blood cell telomere length was measured at the beginning of the study and after 5 years. Patients whose levels of EPA and DHA were in the top 25% had the slowest rate of telomere shortening, while those with the lowest levels had the fastest.
A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at more than 2,000 women of all ages. The more vitamin D they had in their bodies, the longer their telomeres were. On top of that, people who supplemented with vitamin D had longer telomeres than those who didn't.
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.
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