The Telomere Effect by Blackburn & Epel

Ref: Elizabeth Blackburn & Elissa Epel (2017). The Telomere Effect: the new science of living younger. NY: Grand Central Publishing.

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Summary

• One current, predominant, scientific view of human aging is that the DNA of our cells becomes progressively damaged, causing cells to become irreversibly aged and dysfunctional.

• Telomeres (tee-lo-meres): Repeating segments of noncoding DNA that live at the ends of your chromosomes. Telomeres, which shorten with each cell division, help determine how fast your cells age and when they die, depending on how quickly they wear down.

• Telomerase: The enzyme responsible for restoring the DNA lost during cell divisions; makes and replenishes telomeres.

• Hayflick Limit: The natural limit that human cells have for dividing; the limit is most likely to be telomeres that have become critically short (Hayflick).

• When too many of your cells are senescent, your body’s tissues start to age.

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Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) 

• Cell’s nuclei send signals to mitochondria that are needed to maintain their normal operation. SIRT1 helps ensure the signals get through. When NAD levels drop, as they do with aging, SIRT1 activity falls off, which in turn makes these crucial signals fade, leading to mitochondrial dysfunction and all the ill effects that go with it.

• NAD boosters might work synergistically with supplements like resveratrol to help reinvigorate mitochondria and ward off diseases of aging.

• Pterostilbene: An extra-potent version of resveratrol (an NAD booster).

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Stress & Depression

• Depression: Partly a dysfunctional response to stress.

  • Short telomeres may precede depression, and depression may speed up telomere shortening.

  • Depressed people try to suppress bad feelings so that they can’t be deeply felt, or they keep their problems alive by ruminating about them over and over and over. They criticize themselves. They feel irritable and angry, not just at whatever circumstances have caused their sorrow and stress, but at the fact of feeling sorrow and stress.  

• Stress: Shortens telomeres.

  • Challenge Response (to stress): Creates the psychological and physiological conditions for you to engage fully, perform at your best, and win.

  • Threat Response (to stress): Characterized by withdrawal and defeat, as you slump in your seat or freeze, your body preparing for wounding and shame as you anticipate a bad outcome.

  • When you notice the stress response in our muscle tension, heart rate, and breathing, we can relabel it by saying, “This is good stress, energizing me so I can perform well!”

• Metacognition: Changing how we see and respond to stressful events.

• Overtraining Syndrome: An unofficial diagnosis that is characterized by sleep changes, fatigue, moodiness, vulnerability to illness, and physical pain.

  • Progenitor cells (aka satellite cells): Repair muscle tissue that has been damaged—but it is thought that overtraining damages those crucial cells, leaving them less able to do their repair work.

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Antioxidants

• Free Radical: A molecule missing an electron.

• Antioxidants: Molecules that can donate an electron to a free radical but still remain stable.

  • CoQ: A natural antioxidant that is found mostly in our mitochondria, which play a role in energy production.

• Oxidative Stress: An abundance of free radicals and not enough antioxidants in your cells; a dangerous condition that can damage DNA sequences, especially in GGG segments.

  • Most of those O molecules are used to create energy from special chemical reactions in the mitochondria.

  • People with higher blood levels of vitamins C and E have longer telomeres, but only when they also have lower levels of a molecule known as F2-isoprostane, which is an indicator of oxidative stress. The higher the ratio between blood antioxidants and F2-isoprostane, the less oxidative stress there is in the body.

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Metabolic Health

• Metabolic Health: Ideal levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, blood pressure, and waste circumference; the most important metric of health. Eating and drinking low-sugar, low-glycemic-index food and beverages boosts your inner metabolic health.

  • Poor Metabolic Health: Risk factors including belly fat, abnormal cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and insulin resistance.

• Subcutaneous Fat: Fat stored in the limbs, under the skin but not in the muscle; possibly protective fat.

• Fat stored deep inside, in the belly, liver, or muscles, is the real underlying threat.

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Health & Aging

• Healthy Habits: Stress management, exercise, good nutrition, and good sleep, will steadily increase your telomerase efficiency increases over time. Most of the effects of aging can be diminished with exercise and a healthy diet.

• Exercise

  • Aerobic and HIIT exercise increase telomerase activity twofold.

  • Strength (Resistance) training had no significant effect on telomerase activity. Researchers concluded that “resistance exercise should be complementary to endurance training rather than a substitute”).

  • One remarkable study of ultrarunners found that their cells were the equivalent of 16 years younger than those of their sedentary counterparts.

• Parenting

  • Be curious; rather than tell your teen what to do, ask him or her questions.

  • Teach children how to cope well with stress as opposed to protecting them from all disappointments.

  • Improve prenatal care.

  • Provide children quality attention and the right amount of “good stress.”

  • Protect children from violence and other traumas that damage telomeres.

• Environment         

  • Toxins: Plastic PVC shower curtains, perfumes, and other fragrance-containing items such as scented candles may be a significant source of toxins.

  • Clean up local and global toxins.

• Stress

  • Evaluate sources of persistent, intense stress. What can you change?

  • Transform threats to challenge appraisals.

  • Disconnect from screens for part of the day.

  • Spend time in nature.

  • Take up restorative activities.

  • Practice thought awareness and mindful attention. Awareness opens doors to wellbeing.

• Relationships

  • Become more self-compassionate and compassionate to others.

  • Cultivate a few good, close relationships.

  • Cultivate your neighborhood social capital.

  • Help strangers.

  • Mindful attention to other people allows connections to bloom.

  • Attention is your gift to give.

• Sleep

  • Develop a sleep ritual for more restorative and longer sleep.

  • Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN): A structure of a mere 50K cells, the SCN is found in the brain’s hypothalamus and drives your body’s central internal clock. It tells you when to feel tired, when to feel alert, and when to get hungry. It also drives the nightly task of cellular housekeeping, when damaged parts are swept away and DNA is repaired. When your SCN is working well, you’ll have more energy when you need it, deeper rest at night, and cells that are functioning more efficiently. The SCN is highly sensitive. It needs information from you to keep itself well tuned. Light signals, which are transmitted directly to the SCN through the optic nerve, allow the SCN to set itself to a proper day/night cycle. By getting light exposure during the day, and by dimming the lights at night, you keep your SCN on schedule.

• Nutrition

  • Eat mindfully to reduce overeating and ride out cravings.

  • Inflammation, insulin resistance, and oxidative stress are your enemies. To fight them, choose telomere-healthy foods—whole foods, nuts, seeds, fiber (whole grains), vegetables, legumes, seaweed, fruits, Omega-3’s.

  • Reduce consumption of fried foods, crackers, cookies, chips, and snacks, which often contain oils made with high amounts of omega-6s, as well as saturated fats, which are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

    • When you drink soda, almost instantaneously, the pancreas releases more insulin, to help the glucose (sugar) enter cells. Within 20min, glucose has built up in the bloodstream and you have high blood sugar. The liver starts to turn sugar into fat. In about 60min, your blood sugar falls, and you start thinking about having more sugar to pick you back up after the “crash.” When this happens often enough, you can end up with insulin resistance.

  • Improve food policies so that everyone has access to fresh, healthy, affordable food.

  • Fish Oil: A general consensus seem to be a daily dosage of at least 1,000mg of a mixture of EPA and DHA.

    • Fish have omega-3s because they eat algae. We can eat algae, too, sustainably farmed algae that contains DHA.

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Terminology

• Biological Embedding: Effects of childhood adversity that lodge themselves in the body.

• Chromosomes: Reside in the cell, of which each has 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 total).

• Genes: Comprised of DNA and reside in the chromosomes; forms your body’s blueprint. Its paired letters create complicated “sentences” that send instructions for building the proteins that make up your body.

• Hydrocephalus: A disorder in which the skull expands to accommodate excess fluid.

• Ironic Error: The more forcefully you push thoughts away, the louder they will call out for your attention (Wegener).

• Metabolic Adaptation: When we lose weight, our bodies slow our metabolism in an effort to regain the weight.

• Overtraining syndrome: An unofficial diagnosis that is characterized by sleep changes, fatigue, moodiness, vulnerability to illness, and physical pain.

• Spina Bifida: A defect of the spinal cord and the bones along the spine.

• T-cells: Stored in the thymus gland.

• Voluntary Sleep Curtailment: Sleep procrastination, the primary cause of sleep loss.

• Weight cycling (or “yo-yo dieting”): Dieters gain pounds and lose them, and gain and lose, and so on; <5% of people who are trying to lose weight can stick to a diet and maintain the weight loss for five years. Weight cycling is so unhealthy, and also so common.

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Misc Quotes

• Recognizing the impermanence of an event helps you get over it faster.

• The most efficient use of time is to do one thing and to pay full attention to it. This “unitasking,” sometimes termed “flow,” is also the most satisfying way to spend moments.

• Write down the epitaph you’d like to see on your tombstone, the few words that you’d like the world to remember you by.

• Conscientiousness is the personality trait that is the most consistent predictor of longevity.

• “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”-Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

• “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.”-Helen Keller.

• In a study that painted a disturbing portrait of childhood in the United States, seventeen thousand people were asked to answer a list of ten questions. Around half the sample had experienced at least one such adverse event or situation in childhood, and 25 percent had experienced two or more. Six percent experienced at least four. Substance abuse in the family was most common, then sexual abuse and mental illness. Adverse childhood events happen across all levels of incomes and education. Worse, the more events that a person ticked off on the list, particularly if the person had four or more, the more likely the person was to have health problems in adulthood: obesity, asthma, heart disease, depression, and others. Those with four or more adverse events were twelve times more likely to have attempted suicide.

• The top four causes of death by disease: Heart Disease, Cancer, Respiratory Disease, Stroke and other Cerebrovascular Diseases.

• Educational level is one of the most consistent predictors of early disease.

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