by Lawrence Wilson, MD

TELOMERES, AND

HOW TO LENGTHEN THEM

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.

An exciting new area of medical and anti-aging research concerns an aspect of genetics called the telomeres. These are tiny tags at one end of each of your chromosomes. At conception there are at least 15,000 to 35,000 pairs of them linked to the end of each chromosome in your body. As you age, the telomeres become shorter and shorter. When there are only about 4,000 pairs of them left, the DNA cannot replicate itself properly and health suffers. At that point, most people die of old age.

Researchers observe that anything that keeps the telomeres intact longer and ideally, increases their length, will decrease or inhibit aging. This is very exciting news as it gives scientists a way to check how “old” your body is on the inside without surgery.

Assessing telomeres. It is relatively easy to count a person’s telomeres from a simple blood sample or even a hair or other tissue sample.

I have heard that a crude way to assess your own telomeres is to look at the moons on your fingernails. These are the whitish areas at the base of the nails. If the moons are non-existent on some nails, this is an indicator of shorter telomeres. Ideally, they should be present on all your fingernails. I don’t know the accuracy of this method.

HOW TO LENGTHEN YOUR TELOMERES

We suggest a complete development program. It incorporates many methods to help lengthen the telomeres. A few of these are described below.

1. Reduce oxidant damage. Oxidant damage is one reason for the shortening of the telomeres. This means that anything that can help prevent oxidant damage is helpful to preserve your telomeres.

One can take anti-oxidants, but this has a serious problem. All anti-oxidant supplements are quite yin and this is not helpful. To read about the problems with anti-oxidant nutrients and supplements read Anti-Oxidant Therapy on this website.

Anything that increases glutathione is helpful. Selenium is required to make glutathione, along with several amino acids. An excellent idea is to eat plenty of sulfur-containing amino acids. These are found in meats, eggs, cooked green vegetables, and few other foods. For more information about this topic, read Glutathione on this website.

Much better than taking anti-oxidants, however, is to get rid of the oxidants in the body, which are often mineral oxides. A development program will do this, but not with most other nutrition, chelation, herbal, homeopathic or other healing programs. To read about this interesting approach to stopping oxidant damage, read The Amigos – Manganese, Iron and Aluminum.

2. Increase the yang quality of the body. Another aspect of healing that apparently helps lengthen the telomeres is to make the body more yang. The opposite – making the body more yin – seems to damage the telomeres even more.

This concept is not yet accepted medically. However, I think it will be appreciated in the future. Development programs are designed specifically to make the body more yang. For much more on this topic, read Yin And Yang Healing and Yin Disease on this website.

3. Resolve mental and psychological traumas. Many methods can be used to undo traumas and psychological stress that simply wears out the body faster. A development program is a powerful bio-energetic method for releasing all types of traumas. It uses a diet, certain supplements, mild exercise, more rest and sleep, and the pulling down mental exercise . This is explained in more depth in the article entitled Trauma Release on this website.

The problem with many stress release techniques such as vigorous exercise and homeopathy, herbs, vitamins and others, is they have other undesirable effects. This must be recalled at all times when considering these approaches.

4. More rest and sleep. This is also helpful to slow the shortening of the telomeres.

References

1. The Immortality Edge by M. Fossel, G. Blackburn, and D. Woyarowski.

2. Dr. Mercola’s article of 4/19/2011 is:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/18/is-this-the-key-to-living-longer-than-150-years-old.aspx