It’s not just a great song by rock superstars, Queen, anti-aging is big business… just ask all the cosmetic companies. Habitually we focus on avoiding external signs of age; but it is the internal signs that require attention and often go unnoticed or ignored. It’s a fact that genetics as well as lifestyle choices and blind luck all play a part in how long you will live.
It’s hard to quantify luck, and you can’t (yet) take control of your genes, but you can control your lifestyle. Anti-aging research used to be science fiction (and a career killer for scientists). But significant discoveries during the last decade have elevated this area of science to the mainstream, and real accolades have already been awarded to some of the pioneers.
Some areas of research have gained more attention than others. Enter the Telomere theory of aging. In very short and generalised form, humans and all animals grow by a process of cell division. Our cells split in two and then those cells split in two, so two becomes four, and four becomes eight, sixteen… etc, you get the idea. In the nucleus of our cells our DNA is packed into thread like structures called chromosomes and the telomeres are effectively ‘junk DNA’ at the ends of our chromosomes, that project your real DNA every time the cells divide; similar to the way the plastic tips on the end of shoelaces stop the lace from fraying.
The most important thing that happens when cells divide is firstly the genetic information stored in the cells must be replicated, so an exact copy exists in the new cell. Unfortunately, in most people, every time cells divide, the telomeres in the daughter cells get shorter and shorter. When the telomeres are too short, the cells can no longer divide. This is the process of aging and its unavoidable consequence; death.
A huge Danish study of 20,000 people in their general population has given more credence to the telomerase aging and disease risk theory. There was a clear link between the shorter telomeres and increased risk of heart attacks, in fact those with shorter telomeres had a 50% greater chance of a heart attack and 25% chance of an early death, compared to those with longer telomeres.
Lifestyle choices such as smoking and poor diet increasing the risk of heart attack have been known for a while. The Dutch study was able to show that the increased risk was due to the shortening of the protective telomeres or to quote the research “smoking and obesity ages the body at a cellular level, just as surely as the passage of time.”
Before you think this is quack science, it is not. Three United States scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2009 for their work on telomeres and aging. Telomeres are one measurable indicator of how we are doing in terms of our health, it is almost certainly not the whole story of aging, but there is a great deal of research indicating we should take it very seriously.
The bad news is that cancer cells don’t seem to suffer from shorter telomeres, meaning they don’t die (which is the main problem). Instead they seem to promote production of an enzyme called telomerase which prevents their telomeres from shortening, and thus they are very hard to stop. There is some good news though, some supplements have been found to be highly beneficial to telomere health. The Danish Study showed that if we could slow down the degradation of our protective telomeres, we should be able to live longer, or perhaps more importantly, simply stay healthier for longer. So what supplements does research suggest can help with this? I should point out that the supplements listed here were the verbatim recommendations from Engredia, an industry news source for the supplement industry, and primary source for this article.
I am delighted to advise that these can be found in the three core About Health products.
1. Resveratrol, is linked to telomere health and DNA repair, by its effect on the sirtuin protein
2. Omega 3’s; a five year study by William Harris, PhD, an Omega 3 expert and the director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at Stanford University found that the higher the blood levels of marine Omega 3’s, the slower the rate of telomere shortening
3. Vitamins C, E and D; research on these three vitamins has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the most interesting results were the 2007 study which demonstrated that people with high Vitamin D levels had a cellular age five years younger that their chronological age. Something to think about?
Lester’s Oil provides 1g of concentrated Omega 3’s for every 2 capsules (the equivalent of four normal fish oil capsules) and the maximum amount of Vitamin D we are allowed to provide in a supplement in New Zealand (1000 iu). Lester’s Oil also contains Vitamin E, as an antioxidant to protect the oil. Res-V Ultimate has the same amount of resveratrol, as used in DSM’s studies on heart health, and Multiva, our multivitamin supplement, contains Vitamins C and E.
