Lengthen Those Telomeres!

This is the post I meant to write up last month but I lost the article I read that it is based on and therefore lost all motivation to write anything, sorry! I read this article a few months ago and found it really interesting. It is in the Food and Nutrition Magazine, Jan/Feb 2014 edition and is called "Telomeres - Insights into Aging".

So you are probably wondering what in the heck telomeres are, unless you are real good at remembering your human biology (microbiology?). Telomeres are kind of like the plastic tips on shoelaces, except for they are on your chromosomes, protecting their integrity. Each time the cell replicates the telomeres shorten until they reach a critical point where the chromosomes become unstable and the cell dies and thus your body ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere

Research has looked at telomeres as an indicator of a person's true age to see the effects of not only time (age) but also lifestyle, genetics, disease, and drugs. What they've found is shortened telomeres are related to a number of diseases (like Alzheimer's, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and dementia), as well as tobacco and drug use, physiological and psychological stress and some nutrient deficiencies.  Shortened telomeres are also associated with some cancers but not all, and the relationship is not entirely clear.

Okay, so enough with the background, here is the part that I thought was interesting. The article details some of the things they are discovering about actually lengthening your telomeres through changes in your lifestyle. A small study took a group of men with low risk prostate cancer (one of the cancers not associated with shortened telomeres) and studied them for five years. They had them on a low-fat plant-based diet, they meditated and some stress relief measures, they had moderate daily exercise and spent time with family and friends (yay for family and friends!). The control group (who did not have the above interventions) had a 3 percent decrease in the size of their telomeres after five years. The experimental group however, had an increased telomere length by 10 percent!

Moral of the story: find stress relief and spend time with loved ones! Oh, and eat plants and exercise and all that jazz that people know already.

In looking at other studies the following were associated with longer telomere length:

-Folate
-Vitamin C, Vitamin E and selenium
-omega-3's from seafood
-Higher vit D levels
-Taking a multivitamin
-Physical activity (especially during leisure time, as opposed to those who have strenuous work)
-Stress management and meditation

Anyways, I found the article super interesting and I even started giving Zeke a multivitamin a couple times a week just to cover my bases. I'm not one that is a big fan of taking a lot of supplements as I prefer getting the nutrients from the actual food but who am I to keep Zeke from lengthening his telomeres?

We're working on balancing life like everyone else and right now our goal is family exercise time a couple times a week. We've done walks/runs at the park and indoor obstacle courses with running, diving through tunnels and stairs. Zeke absolutely loves it when we do it and it is a great way to have family time, stress relief and exercise all at the same time! Lengthen those telomeres!!!

P.S. Happy Birthday Michelle!!!! Welcome to 30 years! It is pretty awesome as far as I can tell :)