Size Matters: Talking About Telomeres

Written by Heather

February 15th, 2010

By Heather Morgan

Is that your telomere, or are you just happy to see me?

                A much more professional subtitle to this post would have been something like “Long-term physical activity has an anti-aging effect at the cellular level”, but, not only has that been used by an article already, it just wasn’t as much fun.  Indeed bigger is better, at least when it comes to your telomeres—something I’d better define before going forward.  According to Wikipedia: “A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA at the end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration”. {yawn, right?}  Here’s a more entertaining explanation I dug up:  “Just as those plastic nibs keep your shoelaces from fraying, cellular tips called telomeres protect your DNA from fraying when cells divide. When telomeres are tattered, they’re harder to use.  That’s what causes cells to stop dividing and growing and replenishing your body—which means more aging for you.”

As you may or may not recall from prior biology classes, all of a cell’s DNA is copied during cell division, including the telomere.  All but their DNA strands’ very tips, that is.  So each time a cell divides, the telomere gets shorter and shorter.  Once these little end caps get too short to protect the rest of the cell’s DNA, the cell stops dividing, starts to age, and eventually dies–a process also known as “senescence”.   Sort of a pretty word for a bummer situation, no?  But wait, there’s more!  Studies have shown that even more devastating than replication problems is the effect of free radical activity, which evidently shortens those little guys quicker than you can say “biological clock”.    

Of Mice and Men

The short of it?  Short telomeres are associated with speedier cellular aging and death, which means compromised immune functioning, which then means lowered resistance to just about anything you don’t want to happen to you, be it a cold, cataracts, or cancer.  Longer (and more stable overall) is optimal with regard to telomeres in the minds of lab geeks sweating it out in an effort to figure out what makes our cells into old farts fast.  And regarding the free radical damage, the ability to withstand and recover from stress is imperative for keeping your telomeric population saying “me love you long time”.  That being said, unless you are a nematode worm, Great Frigatebird, or knockout mouse, this might not mean that much to since the majority of this sort of information has been found by studying those sorts of critters.  (Quick note: Apparently “knockout mice” are not really hot looking rodents, but, rather, lab mice that have had one or more gene(s) turned off for research purposes.  Who knew?) 

Good news though, my non-nematodes.  Enough data has been gathered on human subjects to at least make an association between telomere length and longevity.  Dr. Dean Ornish and colleagues were able to demonstrate just such a connection in 2008.  They took a bunch of men and “subjected” them to several activities such as a 3-day retreat, a diet low in sugar and rich in whole foods (esp fruits and veggies), moderate aerobic exercise, breath work, and relaxation techniques.  (I don’t know about you, but I’d have liked to have known where to sign up to be a test subject for that study).  After 3 months they found that telomerase—the enzyme responsible for stabilizing and preserving telomeres—was up by 29 percent in all subjects from which data was sufficient for analysis.  Again, just as with critter studies, this might not be significant to you if you: a) are not a man, b) do not have low-risk prostate cancer (all study participants did).  But it’s an association nonetheless, and it was evidently worthy of publication in The Lancet Oncology.  

Move it or lose it

Let’s get more specific to you, the athlete/health nut/person turning 40 this year and occasionally having moments about it. (oh wait, that last one is me…)   I’ve got really, really good news for those of you who are consistently active, and even better news for those of you who have been for quite some time and have no intention of stopping.  Ever.   Just last year (2009) some researchers received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for uncovering more about the nature of telomeres and how our chromosomes are protected by telomeres and their guardian enzyme telomerase.   

Here’s how the study went down.  Four groups of folks were studied—two groups of professional athletes (runners, specifically) and two groups of healthy non-smokers who were otherwise “untrained”.  In each category, one group averaged 20 years of age whereas the other group averaged 50 years of age.  In case I just lost you, the four groups were: 20 year old athletes currently competing; 50 year old athletes who aren’t competing but are still rocking it; 20 year old healthy non-smokers; 50 year old healthy non-smokers.  I’ll skip over the obvious finding that the fitness level of any age athlete was superior to any age untrained individual.  Big duh there.  The cool part was the concomitant finding that that “[t]he age-dependent telomere loss was lower in the master athletes who had performed endurance exercising for several decades.”

According to Ulrich Laufs, MD and Head Geek in Charge of the award winning study: {read with German accent} “The most significant finding of this study is that physical exercise of the professional athletes leads to activation of the important enzyme telomerase and stabilizes the telomere.  This is direct evidence of an anti-aging effect of physical exercise.  Physical exercise could prevent the aging of the cardiovascular system, reflecting this molecular principle.”  A longer telomere, such as that of an athlete, is a more efficient one it seems.  Animal studies back this up, showing that the enzyme-boosting effect of exercise has more positive effects than just keeping telomeres long and strong, such as protecting cells from deterioration and pre-programmed death in general.  (Knockout mice on treadmills-what an image!)   

Pimping your DNA

By now you might be thinking: “I’m physically active, I don’t intend to stop, I eat a super clean diet chock full of free-radical-fighting antioxidants, and I don’t smoke.  What do I care?”  Well, maybe nothing.  But, heck, if my “Better with Age” post last week didn’t motivate you, maybe knowing that your healthy lifestyle really, truly operates to your advantage at the cellular level with regard to aging will.  It goes well beyond a butt that doesn’t drop to your knees at 50+, or skin that defies the number of candles on your next cake.  Clearly, being active-and staying that way-is now a proven way to slow the aging process, right down to your chromosomes.  And we are likely only scratching the surface on that science.

On that last note, you might instead be thinking: “Holy moly.  I’m already rocking all of those lifestyle factors.  But I want to look and feel like I do right now in 40 years.  What can I pop, shoot, freebase, or snort to make that happen?!”  Well, not so fast.  While one might initially think that if stretching your ‘meres can prevent awful things like cancer or diabetes (crow’s feet prevention aside) it’d be a great idea to take something to supercharge telomerase activity, I’m here to break the news that cancer cells have beat you to the concept.  As cells become cancerous, they divide more frequently, rapidly shortening their telomeres.  Initially this sounds like a victory of nature as we already know that means a cell will likely die soon.  Oddly, however, cells can escape death by becoming full-on cancer cells and activating telomerase, lending themselves to a sort of immortality.  Yikes. 

As if the potential to initiate or perpetuate serious disease processes isn’t scary enough, give a thought to the potential issues with life extension.  Using technologies to merely lengthen a lifetime can bring along with it the toll of living longer with illnesses associated with old age such as Alzheimer’s and heart disease, in addition to cancer.  Cell biology researchers agree: “In the ideal case, the healthy citizens of a modern society will survive to an advanced age with their vigor and functional independence maintained, and morbidity and disability will be compressed into a relatively short period”.  Summary: Focus on quality over quantity. And the take home point with regard to supplementing for Turbo-charged Telomerase?  We are not at a point in the science to be monkeying around with anything outside of consistent long-term good lifestyle practices.  So, while this science is relatively new, it is flooding the mainstream rapidly and you will no doubt be seeing ads for things promising to optimize your telomeres, “The Fountain of Youth”.   Don’t fall for it.  Go with what you know, and what you know to be safe.  

In closing, I’ll leave you with my top tips for longer-more-sassy-and-stable telomeres according to what I read and was able to make some sense of before my eyeballs spun out of control.

Heath’s Tips for Going Totally Telomeric

• Choose your parents well.
• Move, huff-and-puff, sweat, repeat over and over forever.
• Eat a colorful palate of whole fresh foods, including so many fruits and veggies you develop TMJ disorder from all of the chewing.  Small price to pay for an array of antioxidants.
• On that note, follow an anti-inflammatory diet, emphasizing clean and unprocessed everything, oodles of good fats, and lots of water.  Think Mediterranean. 
• Take Vitamin D!  It brought a joyful tear to my eye on the heels of my “Vitamin D Gets an A+” post that a study showed conclusively and with high significance that higher Vitamin D levels were associated with longer telomeres.  Very cool. 
• Consider becoming a Great Frigatebird.  Those guys are known for demonstrating a slow overall rate of telomere shortening as they age.  

References:

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/11/you_docs_keep_your_telomeres_h.html  (easy read)

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

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8234/8234aging.html (this one is more heavy duty, more than just telomere stuff with regard to aging)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091130161806.htm (the athlete study is referenced in this one; also, just search “telomere” on the Science Daily site as there’s a lot there about protecting them, links to cancer, aging)

Tags: Aging athlete, Beauty, Health