I am fascinated by telomeres. Telomeres aren’t some sort of underwater television or talking mirrors. Telomeres are caps on the ends of your DNA, your genes. They shorten with age. Eventually they are gone and so are we. As they shorten we become more vulnerable to disease and generally poor health.
With advancing age, our immune systems do not work as well. We do not really understand why that is. One newly discovered clue is that individuals with shorter telomeres are more vulnerable to infections. There is now basic sciences evidence that telomeres protect against cell degeneration, chromosomal damage and the transformation of healthy cells into cancerous ones. Although we are still just starting to learn about telomeres, we already know that chronic lung disease, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s Disease, coronary artery disease, transient ischemic attacks (threatened strokes), angina, diabetes, HIV, lupus and depression are all linked to short telomeres or compromised telomere function.
These findings do not indicate that all ill health and aging are really some sort of “telomere disease”. In a way, telomere numbers look increasingly like the answer to the question “how healthy am I?”. Taking it a step further ,leading us to practical and effective action, measuring telomere length appears to be the way to answer the bottom line question that interests us all “If I do that will I be healthier?”.
There are many tests which give us a sense of the risk of specific threats to our health. Cholesterol measurement gives us a far from perfect indication about our risk of dying from a heart attack. Blood sugar measurements and blood pressure can also give us some idea about specific health diseases. A very big HOWEVER though is that these individual measurements are as weak as they are strong. They are so narrow and specific that even when they are very good at telling us about specific risks, they are relatively worthless as measurements of overall health. For example, very a low cholesterol is associated with lowered risk of heart attack but also higher risk of violent death – accidents and suicide. You are more than a disease or collection of health problems.
Measuring telomeres is not really useful as far as predicting specific disease risks, at least not yet. At some point (soon?) incorporating telomere numbers should give us a much more accurate impression of just how worried to be about a person’s health generally and specifically. There are people with high cholesterol or a high blood sugar for example who might be closing in on heart attack. If a person’s telomere numbers are as bad as some of these other test numbers, we should get extra excited warranting more aggressive medical treatment. In another person, better telomere numbers could tell us that there is still time to implement a broader plan of healthy diet, exercise, stress reduction etc. That holistic lifestyle plan is far more powerful but it takes time. How much time does THIS patient patient have? Telomere’s might be able to tell us that.
I love this for a few reasons. One is that this information is entirely different from our present testing and then is wonderfully complementary.
Another is evident when we consider what we understand about what improves telomeres. What makes them longer? Healthy lifestyle habits make them longer. Good diet, exercise, stress reduction, vitamin D, the right kind of folic acid, some other vitamins and meditation all make telomeres longer. So measuring telomeres explains why doing the right stuff to be healthy, helps you become healthy in every other way.
Finally, all that we know about telomeres strongly suggests that we can use telomere testing as a holistic yardstick for measuring not only how well we have done, but how effective the changes a person implemented just a couple of months back, are in a biological sense.
Do you see why I think telomeres are so cool?