Cancer Risk and Telomere Length
For those of us in the field, the recent slew of articles that show an age-independent link between telomere length and cancer comes as no surprise.
When I say age-independent, I mean your age, not the age of your individual cells.
That is probably the first thing we should talk about.
The age of your cells is called your "biologic age".
That is totally independent of your actual age in years.
For instance, you could be 50 years old and have the cells of a 40-year-old or a 60-year-old, depending mostly on how you take care of yourself.
In most cases, your genetics are less important than how you behave! Also, within your body, cells of different organ systems age differently.
For instance, if you are a heavy drinker, your liver may be "older" than some other areas in your body.
The actual biologic age of your cells can be measured by telomere length.
The oldest cells have the shortest telomeres and are at the greatest risk of cancerous transformation.
When I spoke about cancer and telomere length to the doctors at the two major anti-aging conferences in 2009, I raised more than a few eyebrows when I said, "Cancer is a disease of short telomeres!" A year or so later, several major medical journals published data that proved exactly that! So, for this and many other reasons, you will want to keep your telomeres as long as possible.
Telomere shortening is, however, considered "normal", since every time a cell divides, the telomere gets shorter.
This leads to another thing you should know.
Pretty much everything good you do for yourself will slow down the loss of the telomeres, effectively slowing down the aging process.
But, if we are to live truly longer and healthier lives, we have to lengthen the telomere segment, or at least keep it the same length as we get chronologically older.
This means we could slow down, stop, or even reverse the aging process, since the telomere segments have a huge impact on all of the processes of aging and "anti-aging".
You can slow down the loss of your telomere segments with a good healthy diet, antioxidant supplements, proper sleep, moderate exercise and stress relief, such as meditation.
All of these things have been shown to slow down the loss of the telomere as we age.
The only way we know to lengthen them at this point is TA-65, a telomerase activator derived from the Astragalus root.
This compound has shown great promise in people and in lab animals, and has actually stopped and reversed certain aspects of the aging process.
It will take much longer to see if those effects show up in people as they take TA-65 and the years go by.
A short-term study using "surrogate" markers of aging, like immune system response, bone density, the amount of inflammation in the body and of course the amount of short telomeres all showed positive results at one year's time.
As more research is done, more and more disease will be linked to short telomeres.
Keep in mind, the shortest telomere is the weakest link and that is exactly where TA-65 seems to work.
As of this moment, TA-65 remains the "telomere lengthener" with human data.
No doubt there will be more, as this area of research is gigantic, but for many people now is the time to start fighting Father Time, especially those concerned with cancer.
When I say age-independent, I mean your age, not the age of your individual cells.
That is probably the first thing we should talk about.
The age of your cells is called your "biologic age".
That is totally independent of your actual age in years.
For instance, you could be 50 years old and have the cells of a 40-year-old or a 60-year-old, depending mostly on how you take care of yourself.
In most cases, your genetics are less important than how you behave! Also, within your body, cells of different organ systems age differently.
For instance, if you are a heavy drinker, your liver may be "older" than some other areas in your body.
The actual biologic age of your cells can be measured by telomere length.
The oldest cells have the shortest telomeres and are at the greatest risk of cancerous transformation.
When I spoke about cancer and telomere length to the doctors at the two major anti-aging conferences in 2009, I raised more than a few eyebrows when I said, "Cancer is a disease of short telomeres!" A year or so later, several major medical journals published data that proved exactly that! So, for this and many other reasons, you will want to keep your telomeres as long as possible.
Telomere shortening is, however, considered "normal", since every time a cell divides, the telomere gets shorter.
This leads to another thing you should know.
Pretty much everything good you do for yourself will slow down the loss of the telomeres, effectively slowing down the aging process.
But, if we are to live truly longer and healthier lives, we have to lengthen the telomere segment, or at least keep it the same length as we get chronologically older.
This means we could slow down, stop, or even reverse the aging process, since the telomere segments have a huge impact on all of the processes of aging and "anti-aging".
You can slow down the loss of your telomere segments with a good healthy diet, antioxidant supplements, proper sleep, moderate exercise and stress relief, such as meditation.
All of these things have been shown to slow down the loss of the telomere as we age.
The only way we know to lengthen them at this point is TA-65, a telomerase activator derived from the Astragalus root.
This compound has shown great promise in people and in lab animals, and has actually stopped and reversed certain aspects of the aging process.
It will take much longer to see if those effects show up in people as they take TA-65 and the years go by.
A short-term study using "surrogate" markers of aging, like immune system response, bone density, the amount of inflammation in the body and of course the amount of short telomeres all showed positive results at one year's time.
As more research is done, more and more disease will be linked to short telomeres.
Keep in mind, the shortest telomere is the weakest link and that is exactly where TA-65 seems to work.
As of this moment, TA-65 remains the "telomere lengthener" with human data.
No doubt there will be more, as this area of research is gigantic, but for many people now is the time to start fighting Father Time, especially those concerned with cancer.
Source...