Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever. Dave Asprey

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      PILLAR 7—TELOMERE SHORTENING

      Take a moment to picture the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces that protect them from fraying. Your telomeres serve a very similar function—they are the endcaps of your DNA that protect your chromosomes from fraying with wear and tear (aka age). An enzyme called telomerase is responsible for maintaining telomeres, but these caps naturally deteriorate over time because each time a cell copies itself, the telomeres shorten. As you age, they get shorter and shorter until they can no longer protect the cell. The cell then either stops growing or submits to apoptosis. In fact, there is a term for the number of times a cell can divide before it is no longer protected by telomeres and dies—it’s called the Hayflick limit.³¹

      Shortened telomeres are linked to a weakened immune system and chronic and degenerative diseases like heart disease and heart failure,³² cancer,³³ diabetes,³⁴ and osteoporosis.³⁵ The rate at which your telomeres shorten plays a huge role in determining the rate at which you age. Scientists view telomere length as a reliable marker of your biological age (as opposed to your chronological age). People with shorter than average telomere length for their age have a higher risk for serious disease and early death³⁶ than their peers with longer telomeres. In one study, people over the age of sixty with shorter than average telomeres had three times the risk of dying from heart disease and eight times the risk of dying from an infectious disease³⁷ as someone with average-sized telomeres for their age.

      It’s clearly critical to keep your telomeres long. There are some studies showing ways to lengthen telomeres, but not enough evidence yet to say that we know for sure how to do it in every case. But we do know some things about what make telomeres shorter and how to protect them from shortening. Interestingly, there seems to be a direct connection between telomere shortening and stress. In one study, women with the highest levels of perceived stress had telomeres that were shorter by the equivalent of one full decade than women who said they experienced less stress.³⁸ This is an important finding because it offers evidence that how you experience psychological stress has as much of a physiological impact as environmental stress. And this makes sense, since both psychological and physiological stresses are associated with increased oxidative stress in the body.

      Exercise is another important way of preventing early telomere shortening. Researchers in Germany looked at telomere length in four groups of people: those who were young and sedentary, those who were young and active, those who were middle-aged and sedentary, and those who were middle-aged and active. There wasn’t much of a difference between the two groups of young people, but when the participants were middle-aged, the change in telomere lengths was striking. The sedentary middle-aged folks had telomeres that were 40 percent shorter than the young people, while the active middle-aged folks had telomeres that were only 10 percent shorter than the young people. In other words, the active group reduced their telomere shortening by 75 percent.³⁹ Exercise significantly reduces perceived stress levels and inflammation,⁴⁰ which may help to explain these results.

      There are two promising lines of research about lengthening telomeres. One is a synthetic peptide called Epitalon that is modeled after a peptide your pineal gland produces (epithalamin). The research on Epitalon goes back to 2003, but no one has commercialized it. When researchers injected Epitalon into mice, it was shown to increase their life-span by up to 13.3 percent by activating telomerase⁴¹ while turning on apoptosis and slowing down tumor growth.⁴²

      Someone with identical biology to me (ahem) has been injecting Epitalon for ten days every few months for the past several years despite the fact that it is not yet approved for human use and may never be, even though it seems to work. In fact, anti-aging substances like Epitalon often exist in a strange limbo. The pharmaceutical companies don’t develop them because they’re not patentable, which means they won’t pay for the huge studies the FDA requires before approving them. The result is that you can find Epitalon affordably online, but it’s hard to know that you’re getting it from a reputable source. To me, the risk-reward ratio is worth it, but this may not be the case for you.

      Another supplement called TA-65, the name brand of cycloastragenol, also activates telomerase.⁴³ It is incredibly concentrated extract of an Ayurvedic herb called astragalus. By law, the makers of TA-65 can’t call it an “anti-aging” drug because it hasn’t been proved to extend life-span. But studies on this molecule show that in humans, it improves biological markers associated with health span through the lengthening of telomeres and rescuing of old cells. The downside here is that it is quite expensive. If you’ve experienced a lot of stress and/or feel that you are aging more quickly than you’d like and it’s in your budget, this might be worth considering. There are generic versions available, too.

      Until we know more about how to maintain telomere length, avoiding excessive environmental stress and taking measures to reduce your psychological stress is a good start, along with getting good quality sleep to recover from stress that is truly unavoidable.

      You’ve probably noticed that these simple interventions—good food, the right environment, moderate exercise, stress control, and quality sleep—are the best and most effective ways of avoiding all Four Killers and even slowing down or reversing many of the Seven Pillars of Aging. And you’re right! The vast majority of the hits to your mitochondria that cause aging come from your food, your environment, and your lack of quality sleep. So, before we move on to aging backward, let’s take a closer look at the most important ways to avoid dying. After all, what’s the point of being a Super Human if you’re dead?

      Bottom Line

      Want to not die? Do these things right now:

      • Kill off death-resistant cells with natural or pharmaceutical compounds such as AEP, fisetin, and piperlongumine.

      • Consider getting anti-aging drugs like rapamycin or metformin from your doctor.

      • Stop eating fried, grilled, or charred meat. It’s just not worth it if you want to live a long, high quality life.

      • Manage stress—meditate, practice yoga, get good quality sleep, and/or delegate tasks that are draining you. This is not indulgent or selfish—it will literally help you live a longer and fuller life.

      • Consider supplementing with vitamin D to help your body avoid forming dangerous misshapen proteins.

      • Do what it takes to find out which foods are not compatible with your biology, either through an elimination diet or a food sensitivity panel, and stop eating those foods.

       3

       FOOD IS AN ANTI-AGING DRUG

      By the time it became clear that inflammation made me feel like crap and was aging me rapidly, I had conducted enough semi-successful experiments on myself to know that of all the things I could control, food had the biggest impact on how I felt, how I performed, how inflamed I was, and therefore how quickly my body aged. Armed with this experience and the lifetimes of knowledge distilled from medical reports, biochemistry, and experts at SVHI, I set out to determine once and for all which foods and compounds supercharged my mitochondria and reduced inflammation and which led to inflammation, dysfunctional mitochondria, and rapid aging. Fortunately, most of the good stuff also tasted good!

      Years later, I wrote Game Changers, based on a survey of almost five hundred people who had done big things in the world—I wanted to figure out what made them tick, what qualities these superstars had in common. The results showed that high-performing СКАЧАТЬ