What’s a Telomere?

A number of tests have been introduced or will soon become available to give us a heads up about telomere length. A Spanish company called Life Length sells a telomere test in Europe, and a US company, Telome Health of Menlo Park, California plans to offer a test later this year in the US. Telome was cofounded by Elizabeth Blackburn, who won a Nobel prize in 2009 for telomere discoveries. All these tests can tell us right now is whether our telomeres are long or short. Researchers haven’t figured out yet how long telomeres should be for a healthy person at any given age.
So what’s the point of being tested? Eli Puterman, Ph.D., a psychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco, is working on a study that includes 260 women ages 50 to 65 who agreed to telomere tests. The object of the study is to see how women react to learning that their telomeres are short and whether or not the knowledge will spur them to make lifestyle changes that might improve their health and lengthen their telomeres.
Dr. Puterman and his team are now analyzing their data and are about a year away from presenting their findings, but based on the reactions he’s heard so far, women in the study who learned that their telomeres were short indicated that they would make healthy changes such as getting more exercise, losing weight, giving up smoking or reducing stress.
“A few studies have shown that over a five-year period, in a good percent of people tested, telomeres stayed the same or got longer, but we need to know more from studies that include thousands of people that we can tap into every five years to see how telomere length changes,” says Dr. Puterman.
So should you be tested? Learning your telomere length could be a cool new way to confirm that you’re as healthy (or not) as you think. On the other hand, we already know what to do to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and other age-related disorders. Do we really need to know how long our telomeres are to get started?

To read the full article, visit
healthymagination.com

US National Library of MedicineNational Institutes of Health
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
 

A Man Who Would Stop Time

Bill Andrews has spent two decades unlocking the molecular mechanisms of aging. His mission: to extend the human life span to 150 years–or die trying

This week, Popular Science magazine published an 11-page article entitled, “The Man Who Would Stop Time,” featuring Dr. William H. Andrews and his quest to “Cure Aging”.  Dr. Andrews is one of the pioneers in telomere biology and one of the very first people to take TA-65®MD for personal use.

“Telomerase activation in aged or chronically stressed normal cells has been shown to slow or reverse telomere shortening, increase replicative capacity and restore or improve cellular function”.

Bill Andrews’s feet are so large, he tells me, that back when he was 20 he was able to break the Southern California barefoot-waterskiing distance record the first time he put skin to water. Then he got ambitious and went for the world speed record. When the towrope broke at 80 mph, he says, “they pulled me out of the water on a stretcher.”

The soles of the size-15 New Balances that today shelter those impressive feet strike a steady clap-clap on the macadam as Andrews and I lope down a path along the Truckee River that takes us away from the clutter of cut-rate casino hotels, strip malls and highway exit ramps that is downtown Reno, Nevada. Andrews, 59, is a lean 6-foot-3 and wears a close-cropped salt-and-pepper Vandyke and, for today’s outing, a silver running jacket, nicely completing a package that suggests a Right Stuff–era astronaut. He is in fact one of the better ultramarathoners in America. I am an out-of-shape former occasional runner, so it gives me pause to listen as Andrews describes his racing exploits. “I can run 100 miles, finish, turn around, and meet friends of mine on the course who are still coming in,” he says. “I’ve been in many races where I’m stepping over bodies of people who have collapsed, and I’m feeling great.”

To read the full article, visit www.tasciences.com