Telomeres

Does Exercise Slow the Aging Process?

Workout.Exercise.Dict2Almost any amount and type of physical activity may slow aging deep within our cells, a new study finds. And middle age may be a critical time to get the process rolling, at least by one common measure of cell aging.

Dating a cell’s age is tricky, because its biological and chronological ages rarely match. A cell could be relatively young in terms of how long it has existed but function slowly or erratically, as if elderly.

Today, many scientists have begun determining a cell’s biological age – meaning how well it functions and not how old it literally is – by measuring the length of its telomeres.

For those of us who don’t know every portion of our cells’ interiors, telomeres are tiny caps found on the end of DNA strands, like plastic aglets on shoelaces. They are believed to protect the DNA from damage during cell division and replication. As a cell ages, its telomeres naturally shorten and fray. But the process can be accelerated by obesity, smoking, insomnia, diabetes and other aspects of health and lifestyle.

A new study, which was published this month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers from the University of Mississippi and University of California, San Francisco, decided to look broadly at the interactions of exercise and telomeres.

Their results show that risk declined more substantially if someone exercised more. People who reported two types of exercise per week were 24 percent less likely to have short telomeres; three types of exercise were 29 percent less likely; and those who had participated in all four types of activities were 59 percent less likely to have very short telomeres.

Interestingly, these associations were strongest among people between the ages of 40 and 65, the researchers found, suggesting that middle age may be a key time to begin or maintain an exercise program if you wish to keep telomeres from shrinking, says Paul Loprinzi, an assistant professor of health and exercise science at the University of Mississippi.

The message seems clear, Dr. Loprinzi says. “Exercise is good” for your cells, and “more exercise in greater variety” is likely to be even better.

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Source: the New York Times.

Three Key Anti-Aging Lifestyles

Body.OldAge2The protective endcaps of chromosomes that affect how quickly cells age, telomeres are combinations of DNA and proteins that protect the ends of chromosomes and help them remain stable. Telomere shortening is associated with a weakening of structural integrity, and is thought to be a mechanism of aging.

Eli Puterman, from the University of California/San Francisco (UCSF; California, USA), and colleagues examined three healthy behaviors, namely – physical activity, dietary intake and sleep quality – over the course of one year in 239 post-menopausal, non-smoking women. The women provided blood samples at the beginning and end of the year for telomere measurement and reported on stressful events that occurred during those 12 months.

In women who engaged in lower levels of healthy behaviors, there was a significantly greater decline in telomere length in their immune cells for every major life stressor that occurred during the year. Yet women who maintained active lifestyles, healthy diets, and good quality sleep appeared protected when exposed to stress – accumulated life stressors did not appear to lead to greater shortening.

Observing that: “Women who maintained relatively higher levels of health behaviors (1  standard deviation above the mean) appeared to be protected when exposed to stress,” the study authors submit that: “This finding has implications for understanding malleability of telomere length, as well as expectations for possible intervention effects.”

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Source: WorldHealth.net

Healthy Lifestyle May Buffer Against Stress-Related Cell Aging

Support.Healthy.LivingA new study from UC San Francisco is the first to show that while the impact of life’s stressors accumulate overtime and accelerate cellular aging, these negative effects may be reduced by maintaining a healthy diet, exercising and sleeping well.

“The study participants who exercised, slept well and ate well had less telomere shortening than the ones who didn’t maintain healthy lifestyles, even when they had similar levels of stress,” said lead author Eli Puterman, PhD, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at UCSF. “It’s very important that we promote healthy living, especially under circumstances of typical experiences of life stressors like death, caregiving and job loss.”

“This is the first study that supports the idea, at least observationally, that stressful events can accelerate immune cell aging in adults, even in the short period of one year. Exciting, though, is that these results further suggest that keeping active, and eating and sleeping well during periods of high stress are particularly important to attenuate the accelerated aging of our immune cells,” said Puterman.

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Source: University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “Healthy lifestyle may buffer against stress-related cell aging.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 July 2014.

For Older Men, Short Telomeres Can be a Sign of Chronic Stress

Body.DNA.Gene2Telomeres are protective strings of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes. Over time, cell division and oxidative attacks cause telomeres to shorten. There is a connection between short telomeres and cellular aging; when telomeres reach a critical shortness, cell function is impaired and eventually, cells die. Scientists have found links between short telomeres and smoking, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease and susceptibility to infectious diseases.

Andrew Steptoe of University College London and his colleagues have found that telomere length can predict how long it takes older men to recover from stressful situations. Men with shorter telomeres have longer recovery times than men with longer telomeres. This could mean that men with shorter telomeres suffer from chronic stress.

Studies also show a correlation between psychological stress and short telomere length. Steptoe and his team wanted to understand why this correlation exists. They were particularly interested in an enzyme called telomerase (TA). This enzyme makes telomeres longer. It becomes more active in times of acute mental stress. Short telomeres and high TA activity could be a sign of a stressed system.

The researchers divided 333 healthy men and women between the ages of 54 and 76 into three groups, those with longer telomeres, those with shorter telomeres and low TA activity and those with shorter telomeres and high TA activity. All the subjects were given tasks designed to cause psychological stress.

When they performed the tasks, all the subjects experienced an increase in heart rate and blood pressure. Their levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, also rose. However, once the task was completed, some men found it easier to recover and return to normal conditions than other men. Men with longer telomeres had quicker recovery times than men with shorter telomeres. Men with shorter telomeres and low TA activity had quicker recovery times than men with shorter telomeres and high TA activity.

Psychological testing showed that men in the short telomere/high TA group were more hostile and less optimistic than other men. They also had less social support. The researchers think these men found it harder to recover from stress because they were carrying a high allostatic load. That is, chronic stress had caused the their regulatory processes to become disturbed.

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Source: MedicalXPress.

Statins May Slow Human Aging by Protecting Against Telomere Shortening: A Feature of Senescent Cells

Body.OldAge2Not only do statins extend lives by lowering cholesterol levels and reducing the risks of cardiovascular disease, but new research suggests that they may extend lifespans as well. Specifically, statins may reduce the rate at which telomeres shorten, a key factor in the natural aging process. This opens the door for using statins, or derivatives of statins, as an anti-aging therapy.

By telomerase activation, statins may represent a new molecular switch able to slow down senescent cells in our tissues and be able to lead healthy lifespan extension,” said Giuseppe Paolisso, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Internal Medicine, Surgical, Neurological Metabolic Disease and Geriatric Medicine at Second University of Naples in Naples, Italy.

“The great thing about statins is that they reduce risks for cardiovascular disease significantly and are generally safe for most people. The bad thing is that statins do have side effects, like muscle injury,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “But if it is confirmed that statins might actually slow aging itself – and not just the symptoms of aging – then statins are much more powerful drugs than we ever thought.”

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Source: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. “Statins may slow human aging by protecting against telomere shortening: A feature of senescent cells.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 August 2013.

Post-Exercise Hormone Predicts Biological Age

Business.Cloud6Scientists from Aston University have discovered a potential molecular link between Irisin, a recently identified hormone released from muscle after bouts of exercise, and the ageing process.

Irisin, which is naturally present in humans, is capable of reprogramming the body’s fat cells to burn energy instead of storing it. This increases the metabolic rate and is thought to have potential anti-obesity effects which in turn could help with conditions such as type-2 diabetes.

Dr James Brown from Aston’s Research Centre for Healthy Ageing, said; “Exercise is known to have wide-ranging benefits, from cardiovascular protection to weight loss. Recent research has suggested that exercise can protect people from both physical and mental decline with ageing. Our latest findings now provide a potential molecular link between keeping active and a healthy ageing process.”

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Source: MedicalXpress.