- [Rhonda]: People ultimately that are concerned about the aging process and about living healthier
and increasing their health span and wanting to, you know, basically, hold on to their
telomeres, you know, what sort of factors in the lifestyle not only can delay but even
possibly reverse, so activating telomerase for example?
- [Elissa]: So there are supplements out there, they haven't been studied much.
- [Rhonda]: TA-65.
- [Elissa]: That's one of them, you know, I think there's always...
I mean, telomerase is also pro-cancer.
So there's always that kind of... you want to see...
- [Rhonda]: I've been concerned about that.
- [Elissa]: You want to see the long term studies.
Cancer doesn't just take one year, they follow people on one of those telomerase activation
supplements.
And one year later, telomeres look good, better.
So that's exciting except for that's only one year, you don't know what's brewing, right?
Cancer takes a long time to develop.
So there's that worry.
There's the Omega supplements, which of course seem healthy for so many reasons, depression,
inflammation.
They appear to affect telomeres in a dose-response way depending on how much we absorb them.
So a colleague, Jan Kikult [SP] Glazer [SP] did a study on high dose and low dose omegas.
And it wasn't the dose, it was how much omegas people actually had in the blood cells that
predicted telomere lengthening over four months.
So it can't hurt.
It's one of the few supplements that we think is good for telomeres and safe.
- [Rhonda]: Oh, that's interesting.
I take omega three for a variety of reasons, you know.
- [Elissa]: Yeah, me too.
- [Rhonda]: Brain health.
So basically, I think I remember the study.
The blood levels omega three did seem to positively correlate with longer telomeres.
- [Elissa]: Yeah.
- [Rhonda]: That's right.
- [Elissa]: Exactly.
- [Rhonda]: I remember that.
I think vitamin D...there was another one also with vitamin D correct where there was
a sweet spot of vitamin D levels.
I think it was something like 40 to 60 nanograms per mil which was associated with better telomere
length as well.
- [Elissa]: Important hormone, yeah.
- [Rhonda]: What about exercise and meditation, so telomerase activation.
- [Elissa]: So these lifestyle things...and Liz I wrote a book summarizing all of the
different things we know about telomeres from their biology and genetics to the lifestyle
factors.
And it's interesting, I would say that there's a pretty big literature on nutrition, exercise,
sleep, showing healthier levels, longer telomeres.
But of course, these are correlational.
So what we really want are these intervention studies in humans.
How much can we really move these things around?
Is it just that they're all correlated at birth?
You're born with disadvantage, you have shorter telomeres, you're less likely to do all these
health behaviors.
So we really need to experiment and move these things.
So one study that I believe you just read maybe just came out was a study by Eli Puterman,
who took sedentary high-stress caregivers.
So men and women caring for a partner with dementia and he had them exercise for six
months.
At the end of six months, their stress was lower, their telomeres were longer compared
to the control group.
And so that's a hint, you know, it's just one study but it's a hint that we can improve
our circulating immune cell telomere length.
Exactly how that happened, we don't know.
Is it per cell?
Is it a refreshing of naive cells in the immune system?
It's very crude when we do this in humans and we look at blood.
We don't know exact mechanisms but we see telomere lengthening and that's probably a
good thing.
So another study, Ashley Mason just published this, we did a weight loss trial.
And we found that, first of all, no one really keeps off a lot of weight a year or two later,
right?
The handful of people who kept off 10% of their weight a year later had telomere lengthening.
So that was pretty exciting.
And then we had the same thing for the people who kept at least 5% off, it was just less
dramatic.
So a proof of concept study, if you change your set point of weight, that's probably
very good for a lot of your metabolic health but including your telomere length.
So that was pretty exciting because there's many meta-analyses showing higher BMI, shorter
telomere length.
So what?
Can we change that?
Can we move that?
What is it?
Is it insulin sensitivity?
Is it really at a paucity?
I personally think forget about weight, don't get on the scale.
Just look at your metabolic health, your levels of glucose and insulin.