Can telomeres explain aging?

Telomeres are bits of “junk DNA” at the end of chromosomes that protect your real DNA every time a cell divides. What happens is that, due to how cells divide, the very last bit of a chromosome can’t be copied 100% – a little bit gets cut off. It was thought that, as cell divide, the telomeres get shorter each time, until, they are gone. At that point, the “real DNA” cannot be copied anymore and the cell simply ages and no longer replicates.

Telomere Shortening and Aging

In population level studies, researchers have shown that older people have shorter telomeres. Eventually, the cells with shorter telomeres can no longer replicate and, taken over time and lots of cells, tissue damage and the dreaded “signs of aging” can show up. Most cells can replicate about 50 times before the telomeres are too short. Some believe that telomeres are the “secret to longevity” and there are circumstances in which the telomeres will not shorten. Cancer cells, for example, don’t die (which is the main problem) because they switch on an enzyme called telomerase, which adds to the telomeres when cells divide. Some cells in your body need to do this (stem cells and sperm cells, for example) because they need to replicate more than 50 times in your lifetime.

Does It Happen to Everyone?

No — and that’s a big surprise. Researchers in Sweden found out that some people’s telomeres do not necessarily get shorter over time. In fact, they found that some people’s telomeres even get longer. This variation at the individual level was hidden by prior studies that averaged results over large population.

What Does Non-Shortening Telomeres Mean?

In the study, 959 individuals donated blood twice, 9 to 11 years apart. On average, the second samples had shorter telomeres than the first. However, around 33% of the people had either a stable or increasing telomere length over a period of around 10 years. What does this mean? Nobody knows. It could be that those people have an amazing cellular anti-aging mechanism or it could be that they have an early sign of cancer (researchers tried to rule this out) or it could be fairly meaningless. What we do know for sure is that aging is a lot more complicated than simply looking at the shortening of telomeres.

Part II

Protecting or Firewall against Susceptibility to Telomere Shortening Firewall (source: http://www.vincegiuliano.name)
1. Lifestyle
The aim is to maintain appropriate long telomeres. This can be achieved by avoiding all types of stress: physical, environmental and psychological.

Lifestyle guides such as proper diets with a proper daily-recommended volume of vitamins and antioxidants are advised. Friendly relationship promoting positive atmosphere and mental attitudes are necessary.

Medical treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy as well as negative life experiences do also shorten the telomere. Some years of your life might be ripped-off through personal crisis as well as the medical treatment mentioned due to their negative effect on cell division and telomere shortening. Lifestyle is, hence, a prerequisite for longevity to be acquired.

2. Medical Supplement or Firewalls against Telomere Shortening Firewall

It has been found by a ‘recent study conducted on 586 women’ that daily consumers of multi-vitamins have comparatively longer telomere of leukocyte DNA. The telomere is 5.1 percent longer than average people not taking multi-vitamins.

This concludes that antioxidant plays an important role in assuring integrity in cell division through maintaining the telomere length.

Telomere shortening can be caused by oxidative damage as it forces an increase rate of duplication of new cells. Therefore, antioxidants can be effective in tackling both diseases and telomere shortening. For instance, l-carnosine can prove to alter or even avoid the telomere damage, in the culture of human diploid fibroblast. Early studies carried out in 1994, depicts that Carnosine does both retard senescence and encourage the generation of juvenile phenotype in culture of human fibroblasts. This elevates the ‘Hayflick limit’ and makes cell reproduction further possible.

Geron have the patent for TA-65 and TA used to activate telomerase. They claim that a vital substance from astragaloside IV acts as an activator of telomerase and by virtue this substance comes from the astragalus root. It is thought that the substance is cycloastragenol, according to the patent, as the substance has not been mentioned. Astragalus pills have many benefits to our biological system such as improving our immune system. Yet Chinese ginger roots are also being claimed to activate telomerase and hence part of the firewall.

RevGenetics’ Astral Fruit is a supplement that contains astragaloside IV. There is 33 mg in every capsule of it and two per day can be consumed. Astragaloside IV is actually being scrutinized for its anti-fibrotic, anti-inflammatory cardioprotective and vasodiliation properties. Eventually, its neuro-protective features acts as a defense against ischemia. Yet, there are not any known side effects of the substance but it has not been in the market for long. Little publications have been made about its impact on inducing telomerase.

Cycloastragenol according Geron, 5 mg of cycloastragenol results in equal activation in telomerase as 100 mg of astragaloside IV. However, apart from patent information cycloastragenol there are no published sources about the substance available. Geron patent recommends that at around 50 to 100 mg of astragaloside IV is consumed. However, two capsules of 33 mg are adequate as potential hazard effects are still not yet known.

Other more versatile firewalls are Green Tea, Allicin, curcumin and resveratrol which tend to restrain the inducement of telomerase for cancer cells. These substances have strong anti-cancer benefits as well as other benefits.

The activation of telomerase can ‘cause proliferation of hair follicle stem cells’. This implies that people who have grey hair can properly experience a transition in colour to their original state. The consumption of RevGenetics’ will however not give direct results and change in hair colour is not yet a totally confirmed phenomena of telomerase activation.