6 Tips to Lengthen Your Telomeres

What Are Telomeres?

Inside every cell is our genetic material: a pair of chromosomes. This is our DNA, which has the ability to split up and produce an exact replica of itself, just as our cells do.

At the end of each pair of these chromosomes are protective segments or caps of special DNA code that biologists call telomeres (pronounced: teh-luh-meers).

These telomeres are in place specifically to guard against damage and corruption of our fragile DNA material when they replicate themselves during cell division.

Each time a cell and it’s DNA split to form a new cell, these bands of telomeres get chopped off, loosing a little bit of their length. After years of dividing, the telomeres eventually become too short to adequately protect these delicate strands of DNA. Once corrupted, the DNA and its cell lose their ability to divide.

Cells with damaged DNA is the main reason that they deteriorate and predictably die off. This is referred to as ‘replicative senescence’. Since we’re only as healthy as the cells that make up our bodies, we eventually die off too.

Two main take-a-ways…

• Short telomeres decrease the number of times a cell can divide
• Long telomeres increase the number of times a cell can divide

If there was some way that we could keep our telomeres long OR, lengthen ones that have already shortened — so they could continually protect our precious DNA — we could, theoretically, live forever.

Understanding the role that something called ‘telomerase’ plays in this scenario just might give us a way to keep our telomeres long, and enable us to live longer lives.

What Is telomerase?

In 2009 Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for:

“The discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.”

Telomerase is an enzyme that is regularly expressed in certain types of cells — such as embryonic stem cells — that has the ability to keep telomeres long, and even lengthen them.

Although telomerase is not normally activated in most of our normal cells, it can be expressed or ‘turned-on’ by certain nutrients, herbal extracts, and even lifestyle factors.

In a controversial 2010 study, reactivating telomerase in older mice increased their telomere length, restoring the rodents to youthful levels.

The scientists involved in the study commented that they were able to:

“Achieve unprecedented reversal in age-related decline in the central nervous system and other vital organs.”

In other words, the aging process in the mice wasn’t just slowed down or stopped. It was reversed!

What if it was possible to reawaken dormant telomerase activity in our cells, keeping our telomeres long and even lengthening them?

One thing that molecular biologists have observed is that telomerase activity tends to quiet down in response to life stress.

That happens to be Tip #1 of these “6 Tips To Lengthen Your Telomeres.”

Tip 1 —Reduce or eliminate stress

Stress is a fascinating concept. Most people would swear up-and-down that stress is something lurking somewhere ‘out there’. Something that we must deal with — pretty much on a daily basis.

I would emphatically disagree with that assumption.

To support my opinion, consider driving in rush-hour traffic, a potentially stressful experience for almost anyone.

Depending on what your state of mind is when another driver cuts you off, your emotional reaction can range from utter outrage to coolly and calmly accepting the truth that there are some incredibly rude drivers out on the road.

So… is dealing with an asshole of a driver a stressful experience or not?

It all depends on your perspective and mental resourcefulness at the time. Which proves my point — that the origin of stress emanates from within, not from ‘out there’ somewhere.

Even though most of us can agree that certain situations are more stressful than others, it doesn’t change the fact that the stress originates and resides solely inside of our own heads.

So how does one reduce or eliminate stress?

One effective way is to come to the realization that everything happening out there in the so-called ‘real’ world doesn’t have to mean so damn much to you.

We all have beliefs about the world that have been deeply programmed into our psyches from both past experiences and well-meaning people. We often keep telling ourselves stories that continually support those beliefs.

If you believe that something you need to happen is so important and for some reason it doesn’t turn out the way you want, then you will feel stressed-out.

One way to move past these distressing and agitating thoughts is through adopting the concept of ‘acceptance’ into your life.

Acceptance is allowing things to be the way they are.

Some things are impossible to control or change — like all those shitty drivers out on the road.

You gotta get to the point where you can allow all of those so-called stressful situations to just be the way they are.

In my experience, establishing this mindset is a practice that can be developed by reading every day.

What has helped me the most is “A Course in Miracles.” ACIM is not necessarily for everyone — nor is everyone ready to read it.

Another amazing book that I emphatically recommend is “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer.

There are many other really awesome books on the subjects of acceptance, letting go and, surrendering. Daily reading will enable you to greatly reduce, or possibly even eliminate stress from your life.

Tip 2 — Yoga

It’s no secret that the cultures around the world noted for their long-lived inhabitants have certain things in common, one of which is that they move around a lot as part of their everyday lives.

There’s also no mystery in the fact that people who exercise regularly are proven to have longer telomeres.

After years of running, I’ve settled on yoga (as well as swimming) as my preferred form of movement/exercise. It’s enabled me to undo much of the tightness that I acquired from relentlessly running so damn many miles.

There’s also a meditative, spiritual, stress-relieving aspect to yoga that complements its movement and flexibility attributes perfectly.

Yoga is like developing a ‘double threat’ that supports lengthy telomeres. That’s something that I can live (longer) with.

Tip 3 — Telomere supportive diet

Millions of articles and books have been written over the years on the subject of diet and nutrition. In the past, much of this dietary dogma has been misguided at best.

This erroneous information was disseminated partly due to ignorance, faulty scientific studies, and the vested interests of food growers and pharmaceutical companies.

Thankfully, over the past couple of decades, we are starting to get things sorted out as to what a healthy, anti-aging, telomere-lengthening diet should look like.

Our eating habits began to go haywire around 10,000 years ago with the invention of agriculture.

For 300,000 years before that, Homo Sapiens got along just fine as hunter-gatherers.

Do you really think that our pre-agricultural ancestors evolved, or were put on this earth, without the necessary nutritional needs available in their environment to survive and thrive?

That wouldn’t make any sense.

Sure, the first iterations of agriculture were reasonably healthy, but over time, the simple grains that were grown back then eventually became compromised — subject to over-processing, hybridization and way too many additives.

The simple act of growing and harvesting grains formed the genesis of what I like to call crummy carbs. To be clear, the term crummy carbohydrates refers to ANY carb that is not a fruit or vegetable.

I know, the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.) has as its base foods like bread, bagels, pasta, pizza, etc. They tend to taste soooo damn good but… they’re also very addictive.

But what’s wrong with a simple slice of pizza anyway?

Grains, for the most part, are broken down by your body into glucose very quickly, spiking your blood sugar levels which in turn signals the pancreas to release way too much insulin.

Too much insulin floating around in your bloodstream plays havoc with your metabolism, which causes weight gain and leads to developing diseases such as cancer, Type II Diabetes, Atherosclerosis, Hypertension, Strokes and even Alzheimer’s.

In short, it is critical that you control insulin production, and there is no better way to do that than to eat a telomere supportive diet.

This is drop-dead simple…

• Don’t eat crummy carbs
• Do eat one-ingredient foods

Two ways of saying the same thing.

It’s impossible to eat foods that contain only one ingredient that are crummy carbs.

It’s also impossible to eat a crummy carb that has only one ingredient because they don’t exist.

The BIG idea in Tip #3 is that a telomere supportive diet is, at the same time, an insulin control diet. Insulin is a critical and powerful hormone — so much so that it needs to be meticulously controlled.

The Standard American Diet does the exact opposite — encouraging insulin to run rampant causing sometimes irreparable damage to our metabolism.

Yes, a diet that controls insulin is a different way of eating than we’ve been taught to eat for the past 100 years. But a century is almost insignificant when you realize that our species as we know it has been living on this planet for 300,000 years!

Our western culture’s penchant for eating crummy carbs — and a lot of them — is directly responsible for most age-related diseases.

It’s not as difficult for your body to adapt to an insulin-controlling, telomere supportive diet as you might think.

You can add an extra 20, 30 or 40 years of high quality, disease-free years to your life by returning to the way your body was originally designed to eat.

Tip 4 — Caloric Restriction

If eating a telomere supportive diet frightens you, then Tip #4, Caloric Restriction, or CR for short, might just scare you off completely. It really shouldn’t, because by ingesting one-ingredient, unprocessed foods, you will already be reducing your caloric intake by default.

Over the years, numerous studies have shown, time and time again, that restricting caloric intake is one of the sure-fire ways to prevent age-related diseases and increase life span.

If you happen to live in the USA, you are well aware that there is always plenty of great tasting food to tempt our palates. And most Americans eat it, which is why we’re the fattest nation in the world.

The United States is ranked 55th in the world in life expectancy despite spending twice as much on health care — on average — as other high-income nations. This sad situation can be directly traced back to our diet. Not only are we eating unhealthy, processed foods, we’re eating too much of them!

It can be a challenge to eat healthier and eat less with an overabundance of food (much of it crummy) available to us. But most of our eating activities and food choices are just habits — ingrained into our psyches over the years via misguided information offered up by so-called diet and nutritional ‘experts’.

Some of the food myths that we have accepted as truth:

• Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
• It’s necessary to eat 3 meals per day
• A diet based on whole grains is healthy
• Eating fat makes you fat

There are two interesting things that I’ve noticed about eating:

1. The more you eat, the more you want
2. The less you eat, the less you want

When you change your diet to one-ingredient foods and eliminate the crummy carbs, your appetite will decrease. You will naturally lose the desire to pig-out. Caloric restriction almost takes care of itself.

Another eating habit that is fairly easy to adopt is intermittent fasting.

This is when you restrict your eating ‘window’ to just a few hours a day… like from 12 noon to 8pm in the evening, eating just two meals per day. That would be a 16 hour intermittent fast.

As you become more accustomed to this type of eating pattern, the next step would be a 2pm to 6pm window. Now you’re down to maybe just one meal per day or OMAD.

You will be amazed at how quickly your body and brain can adapt to an eating program such as this. With intermittent fasting, you’re restricting your caloric intake and, for the most part, barely even noticing.

You’re trading that bloated, fat, foggy feeling for being delicately deprived, energized, and clear headed.

I’ll be the first one to admit that CR is NOT for everybody. But if you’re seriously interested in living a remarkably long and disease-free life, like I am, then it might be for you.

Tip 5 — Anti-Aging Supplements

The food that you put into your body, and the amount of it, forms the foundation of your anti-aging, telomere-lengthening program. There are, of course, additional ways to bolster this enhanced way of eating.

It’s called anti-aging supplementation.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time reading and researching anti-aging supplements. There are so many products available that this area can get quite confusing — and that’s putting it mildly. You will find diverse and ample opinions as to what the best anti-aging supplements are.

I prefer to keep things as simple as possible, so I will list below what supplements I currently take and a brief reason behind my choices.

The book, “Growing Young” by Marcus L. Gitterle, M.D. is an excellent resource when it comes to longevity and supplementation.

NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine) — 1000mg daily. Supports glutathione production which controls oxidative damage.

ALCAR (N-Acetyl L-Carnitine) — 1000mg daily. Cellular garbage cleanup.

Beta Alanine — 500mg daily. Increases carnosine levels which helps to reverse glycation.

Ubiquinol (reduced form of CoQ10) — 100mq daily. Boosts cellular energy.

Fish Oil (EPA + DHA omega 3 fatty acids) — 1000mg daily. Overall telomere health support.

Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) — 1000mg daily. Energy production.

Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) — 1000mg daily. Immune system support.

Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) — 1000 IU daily. Overall telomere health support.

All of the above supplements are readily available and cost me around $30 per month. That’s not a lot of money when taking into account the longevity benefits that can be had.

When you combine these supplements with the already mentioned Telomere Supportive Diet, which controls insulin, and Caloric Restriction, which activates important genetic switches that control the aging process, you are doing most everything you can to keep your telomeres long.

Tip 6 — Aging Expectations

Yasmina Rossi is a 69-year-old model. The above photos of her were taken in 2015 when she was 59. Interestingly enough, she didn’t begin her modeling career until she was close to 30 years old — the age when most models are ready to call it quits.

Her secret? She’s practiced yoga for the past 30 years (Tip #2), and she eats an avocado a day (Tip #3). But, like the tip of an iceberg, what Yasmina does to stay young accounts for maybe only 10% of her actual results.

The previous 5 telomere lengthening tips can be viewed in the same way…

They are like the tip of the iceberg. What plays the biggest factor to anti-aging is what’s going on inside of your head, not necessarily what you’re doing on the outside.

If who you are — on the inside — is a healthy, youthful, disease-free person, then you will naturally, almost effortlessly, follow the appropriate lifestyle behaviors that are congruent with that person.

As within, so without.

Instead of struggling to lose weight… you eat appropriately because that’s what a thin, healthy person does.

Instead of worrying about age-related diseases… you realize that none of them are part of who you are. They simply don’t exist for you.

Instead of being preoccupied with face creams, Botox injections, and face lifts… you allow your younger self to radiate from the inside-out.

Instead of living your life in a constant state of being stressed out… you know, from a place deep within, that there’s really nothing to worry about.

Like Yasmina Rossi, I’ve decided not to participate in the aging narrative that most everyone else seems to be embroiled in. In other words, I expect to look, act and feel young.

Are things the same for me at 76 as they were at 26? Of course not. But I will say that my biological age is much closer to 56 than my chronological age.

The truth is that every part of your life, even how you age, is merely a reflection of what you believe to be true about yourself.

If you choose to believe that it’s normal to contract age-related diseases, then that will be your reality.

If you think that you’re going to die before you reach 90 years of age, then you probably will.

If you buy into the myth that people should act their age, then you will act accordingly.

You can look around and observe how most everyone else is aging, and instead of following the crowd, be like Yasmina and turn your nose up at the whole idea.

Instead, embrace a new narrative of what it means to grow old.