The longer the telomeres, the longer we live. Is it as simple as that?

Jeanne Calment was one of the longest living women on record. When she was 85, she took up the sport of fencing. She was still riding a bike into her 90s. When she turned 100, she walked around her hometown of Arles, France. She survived until age 122. What made her special is the fact that she lived a healthy life right up to the very end.

Aging and death are a fact of life, but how we live until our last day, is not. It’s up to us how we live out our days, and today I am going to explain something that few of you may have heard of that may help us achieve our goal of living a long and healthy life, if that is your quest.

So, what makes us live longer or less?

Attitude is an important factor. You must have the will to live. At the same time, we need to examine the scientific view of human aging. How do our cells become progressively damaged? Why does our DNA (the carrier of our genetic information) become damaged? These are the sorts of questions that the best scientific brains in the world attempt to find the answers every day.

However, one part of science that points towards how we can control our own destiny is the study of Telomeres. It’s a relatively new science, but some scientists are beginning to understand the importance, and are, at last, giving their time to it. The problem as always is that there is no money in it for Big Pharma. There no magic pill in this science. Nothing they can sell to us. Rather, it’s just good old-fashioned common-sense. Hence the reason why funding for studies has been to now, few and far between.

What are Telomeres?

In a few words, A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome. They protect the ends of chromosomes from becoming worn or twisted. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres become slightly shorter. Eventually, they become so short that the cell can no longer divide successfully, and the cell dies.

Thus then fact is that telomeres shorten throughout the body as we age; and they contribute to most of the diseases of old age. But research that we have found by the Nobel prize winning authors Elizabeth Blackburn PhD and Elissa Epel PhD, give us hope that maybe we can reverse this procedure. Give longer life to our telomeres. The question is -0 how do we do this?

Until recently, scientific articles about telomeres were few and far between. Then a number of scientific teams began studying how aged cells can cause the diseases that can eventually kill us. Articles on their findings can be found in respected journals in such as the magazine Nature, and at the Johns Hopkins medicine website where they explain how they wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine about “Long Telomeres, the Endcaps on DNA, Not the Fountain of Youth Once Thought — Scientists May Now Know Why.” But the numbers in these studies were few, and select, and the results of what they found unconvincing in my opinion. But as with anything I write on these pages, I must give two sides of the story. So, the articles mentioned above, are there for you to read by yourself. However, on the other side of the coin, I would like to introduce you to the encouraging research by the wonderful ladies, Blackburn and Epel.

I can remember my mother telling me many years ago that “as we age, each of us gets the face we deserve.” In those days she was giving me a warning about the kind of life that I had then as a teenager, burning the candle at both ends. Personally speaking, I have been knocked down (metaphorically) more times in life than I care to remember. Some of the things that have done to me banks and other large institutions have been cruel. But, despite all of this, I survive. Indeed, I had a friend who used to refer to me as the Weeble.  These were range of children’s popular roly-poly toys that was introduced in 1971 by the US toy company Playschool. You may remember them? They were designed with a weighted bottom such that when tilted, the centre of gravity returned the toy to its original upright position. In other words, no matter how many times you knocked it over, it immediately sprang up again. Similarly when adversity has hit me in the face, I wipe myself down and go on with life. I have been hard to knock over. I am, I suppose a Weeble.

And what about living longer?

These days I realise that the real differences in how long, or not, we may live, are a complex interaction between genes, social relationships and environments; lifestyles, and twists of fate. Twists of fate are especially important in how we respond to them. Its it all doom and gloom, or are we the sort of people who will stop, think and realise that “well the situation could be worse. So, what am I going to do about it? I’m just going to somehow find a way out of the difficulty – and, with a cheery face, get on with life.

Telomeres. A simple explanation. 

Perhaps the plainest way that I can describe them is to explain the aglet’s, the plastic portions on the end of shoelaces.

As we use them, the plastic wears away until such time as all we were left with is the frayed end of the shoelace that becomes impossible to feed through the eyelet on the shoe. Telomeres are the same as the aglets, but this time they are on the ends of our chromosomes. This is where they make up less than one-ten-thousandth of the total DNA of our cells. They are small, but a vitally important part of the chromosome.

The more we abuse them, the more they erode. And, according to Blackburn and Epels, the shorter they are, the less life we have here on this planet.

But is there any way that we can change this? Can we make them longer? The answer according to Blackburn and Epel, is yes.

In reading all that they write, it is clear to me that one of the keys to a long and healthy life is by doing your part to foster healthy cell renewal. These include immune cells, bone cells, gut, lung, and liver cells; skin and hair cells; pancreatic cells; and the cells that line our cardiovascular system systems, to mention a few. They divide over and over to keep our bodies healthy; and if kept healthy, they will have enough to enable them to keep dividing throughout our lifespan. But if we abuse them, they become senescent (deterioration with age), and they die.

There are around 600,000 centenarians worldwide, and the numbers are rapidly increasing. Even more so are the numbers of people living into the 90s. So what did they do to protect the plastic tips at the end of their shoelaces, because from what I read, research from around the globe is indicating that we can all take some control of how short or how long or how robust our telomeres are.

Here are some examples of what you can do to help yourself:

Some of us respond to difficult situations by feeling highly threatened, a response linked to shorter telomeres. But mind body meditation techniques such as Qigong, have been shown to reduce stress and to increase the telomeres. Exercise that promotes cardiovascular fitness is great for telomeres, and it certainly makes me remember my lovely daddy who survived to age 97, and walked every day of his life.

Telomeres hate processed food, but love all fresh foods. Children who are exposed to adverse life events have shorter telomeres. But moving them away from dire circumstances can reverse some of the damage. If your parents had a hard life, they could’ve passed those shortened telomeres onto you, but this is not the end, because your own life choices can result in reversing this; and leaving a positive cellular legacy for the next generation.

Cutting out tobacco, sugar and fizzy drinks has a positive effect on telomeres. Gratitude is something that will extend the telomeres immensely.

The list of this is endless, but can you get the drift of where we are heading? Being good to yourself. Being honest. Decent to others. Having good sleep habits. Eliminating toxic stress. Changing your customs to include good nutrition that includes entirely eliminating processed food, makes all the difference.

The combination of all of this makes the difference between driving in the fast lane or the slow lane of life.

But I am going to stop here with this article because it’s a huge subject that demands more consideration. So, the plan from here is to write again about what we can do to help our telomeres, in future newsletters.

The question for you for now, is to ask yourself:

Do I look younger than my age? Do I look about my age? Do I look older than my age?

Am I in better health than most people of my age or am I about the same as most people or less healthy?

Do I feel younger than my age, about my age, or older than my age.

In the next newsletter, I will give some answers on how you can perhaps improve your outcomes.

In the meantime, it’s food for thought!

And please remember to have a look  at Essence of Egypt.  Our lovely, clean products are the telomeres of the skincare world. They are here to help you live a longer and better life, if that is you give them the chance to.