What’s In It For Me?
Have you ever wondered why some 60 year-olds look like and feel like they are in their 40’s, while some 40 year old looks look at feel like they are in their 60’s? Although many factors contribute to illness and aging, research shows that the length and health of one’s telomeres are a biological underpinning of the long hypothesized mind/body connection. Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Epel’s research, along with other scientists, shows that changes we make to our daily habits can protect our telomeres and increase our health spans (the number of years we remain healthy, active, and disease-free). If nothing else, the research provided in this book should provide that extra motivation you may need to make changes to improve your health.
The Big Idea
With research collected from scientists around the world, The Telomere Effect shows that sleep quality, exercise, diet, and even certain chemicals profoundly impact our telomeres. On the contrary, chronic stress, strained relationships, and negative thoughts can eat away at them. Drawing on a scientific body of knowledge, the authors share lists of foods and suggest types of exercise that are supportive of telomere health, and share stress reduction tips.
Key Concept #1
A Pathway to Living Longer
What are telomeres and why do they matter? The DNA of every chromosome has some end regions consisting of DNA strands coated by a dedicated protective sheath of proteins. This end region of the chromosome is the telomere and they are a small but vitally important component of the chromosome. Telomeres shorten and lengthen with each cell division and help determine how fast your cells age, depending on how quickly they wear down. Scientific research has confirmed that telomeres can actually lengthen, and as a result aging can be slowed down. We all eventually get older, but how we age is very much dependent on our cellular health.
When you think about trying to live in a healthier way, you may groan about all the things you ought to be doing. However, when you think about how your actions can directly impact your telomeres, it can provide motivation to make lasting changes.
The shorter your telomeres, the higher your risk of dying from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and at dying at a younger age more generally.
Key Concept #2
Your Cells Are Listening To Your Thoughts
By the turn of the millennium, scientists had become accustomed to thinking about telomeres and the enzymes associated with it (telomerase) as the foundations for cell renewal. Further research has shown that life experiences, and the way we respond to those events, can change the lengths of our telomeres. In other words, it is possible to change the way we age at the cellular level.
How you experience stress matters. It is not always possible to change your automatic response to stress, but it is possible to learn to change your response to your responses, which is what stress resilience is all about. To be clear, not all stress is bad. Short-term manageable stressors can be good for you because they build up your coping muscles. The ups and downs of daily life will not wear on your telomeres, but a high dose of chronic stress that wears on for years will take its toll. Burnout from job stress and long-term caregiving for a family member are examples shown to potentially decrease telomere length. It is important to keep in mind it is not the situations themselves that damage telomeres, but the stress responses people feel when they are in that situation. Therefore, studies have shown that being under chronic stress does not inevitably lead to telomere damage. For example, some people have a challenge response to stress where they feel excited and energized, with a “bring it on” mentality. A predominate challenge response to stress may help shield your telomeres from some of the worst effects of chronic stress.
Even if you do not naturally have a challenge response to stress, it is possible to learn to develop one. A prominent sports psychologist who worked with an Olympic sprinter struggling with a racing pulse and anxiety right before a sprint told the athlete that trying to think about getting the heart rate down was not the right approach. Instead, he told the athlete to think of the stress as helping her get ready to perform. Believe it or not, this simple change in thinking made all the difference. We cannot get rid of our stress, but approaching stress with challenge mentality can help promote protective stress resilience in the body and mind.
We are largely unaware of the mental chatter in our minds and how it impacts us. However, it is important to recognize some of the negative thought patterns we can fall into below:
Pessimism: The brain is constantly scanning the environment and comparing it to past experience, looking for upcoming threats to your safety. However, too much pessimism is not good and pessimists tend to feel more threatened by stressful situations.
Mind Wandering: We spend roughly half the day thinking about something other than what we’re doing. When you are thinking negative thoughts about the past, you are more likely to be unhappy.
Unitasking: Try to focus on only the task at hand. The concept of multitasking is a misnomer and adds stress with decreased results.
Rumination: Rumination is the act of rehashing your problems over and over. It can be easy to get caught in a spiral of negative thoughts when you are constantly thinking about what is wrong.
Thought Suppression: Thought suppression is an attempt to push away unwanted thoughts or feelings. When we push away our bad feelings, they inevitably roar back, and then we feel bad, and then we feel bad about feeling bad.
Key Concept #3
Help Your Body Protect Its Cells
We all know exercise is important, but how much is sufficient and what should we be doing? In the research on telomere health, two kinds of exercise stood out. Moderate aerobic endurance exercise performed three times a week for 45 minutes, and high intensity interval training (HIIT). HIIT involves short bursts of activity followed by brief periods of rest.
However, too much exercise, such as training by ultramarathon runners, can actually damage cellular health because the body is not getting sufficient recovery periods.
The important thing to remember is exercise helps out the cell clean-up crew, so cells have less junk buildup and more efficient mitochondria, along with fewer free radicals. Regardless of whether you have a high stress life or not, exercise is essential to maintaining good cellular health.
Sleep is another extremely important component to overall health. Not surprisingly, those that sleep at least 7 hours a night have longer telomeres than people who get less sleep. However, it is not just hours that matter, but overall sleep quality. Be consistent in the times you go to bed and wake up each day, and try to get into the habit of doing something calming before bed, such as reading a book or meditating. If you are having trouble sleeping, don’t obsess over it. Remind yourself that you can function regardless of how much sleep you get, and by having this approach you will actually be more likely to fall asleep.
Diet is the last essential component to good cellular health, and it comes as no surprise that eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables is the main recommendation from the book. Inflammation, insulin resistance, and oxidative stress are your enemies, so to fight them follow a prudent pattern of eating: fruit, vegetables, whole grains, beans, legumes, nuts, seeds, and low-fat high-quality protein sources. This is essentially known as the Mediterranean diet. It may be worth considering taking Omega 3 supplements given this essential fatty acid is low in many people’s diet, but obviously consult with a physician. It is recommended to minimize red meat (especially processed meat), and it may be worth going vegetarian for a few meals each week. Most importantly, avoid sugary foods and drinks, and processed foods.
Key Concept #4
The Social World Shapes Your Telomeres
The environment you live in has been shown to impact your telomeres. In particular, chemicals such as carbon monoxide, pesticides, and cigarette smoke all have negative impacts on your cellular health. In addition, many of the chemicals found in regular household cleaning products and cosmetics have the potential to cause damage, although further research is needed. The authors recommend trying to use natural products whenever possible.
Arsenic is found naturally in many wells and groundwater, so it is recommended you either have your water tested or use a filter. If you have a habit of eating microwave meals, it is recommend to try to not microwave plastics, as the chemicals from the plastic may get into your food.
Marriages come in all flavors, and not surprisingly, the better the quality of the marriage, the better the health benefits. Happily married people have a lower risk of early mortality, and people in happy marriages show more resilience during stressful situations.
On the other hand, couples in unhappy marriages suffer from a high level of permeability, essentially picking up on each other’s stress and negative moods. If one spouse wakes up in the morning with a big stress response, the other is more likely to as well.
Key Concept #5
Childhood Matters For Life
Childhood exposure to stress, poor nutrition, and violence affects telomeres. When telomeres were measured in healthy adults who experienced adverse childhood events, a dose-response relationship is often seen, meaning that the more traumatic the event the person experienced in childhood, the shorter their telomeres as adults.
However, moderate adversity in childhood can be a good thing. Adults who reported having a few adverse experiences in their childhood have healthy cardiovascular responses to stress. They felt invigorated during stress, perhaps because their early experiences gave them confidence to overcome obstacles. Teaching children how to cope with stress and a young age can be a valuable life skill. The key is the stress has to happen in a moderate amount and be manageable.
Pregnant women hear the advice all the time, “now you’re eating for two.” This is true, and research shows that what a pregnant woman eats can also impact the baby’s telomeres. The authors recommend avoiding a low protein diet, and getting a sufficient amount of folate, which is a B vitamin. However, moderation is the key to success, as getting too much exposure to vitamins can be detrimental.
In addition to diet, a mother’s psychological stress may also impact her developing baby’s telomere length. Mothers with the highest number of stressful life events had babies with telomeres that were shorter by 1,760 base pair at birth (p.289). The good news is mild to moderate stress, which is experienced by everyone, is not impactful to telomere health of babies.
Apply It
*Lifestyle, mental health, and environment all contribute significantly to overall health, which is obviously not new information. However, the book shows that telomeres are impacted by these factors, so use this information as motivation to make a change to a component of your health.
*Evaluate sources of persistent, intense stress. What can you change? If it is not something that is easy to change, can you change your perspective on this stress from a threat to a challenge, or opportunity to grow.
*Help maintain your telomeres by developing a sleep ritual for restorative sleep, such as disconnecting from screens/electronic devices an hour before bed and meditating.