Did you ever meet someone who seems to have boundless energy and enthusiasm? They’re always relaxed and confident – and never seem to be tired or stressed.
You can be one of those people… all you need is a simple trick used by a group of people under more stress than most of us will ever know.
You know stress hurts. You worry, you feel anxious… you lose sleep. That’s old news. But now, we can actually measure the effects of stress. And the wear and tear is more distressing than we even imagined.
It goes all the way to your DNA.
Researchers at the University of California discovered that stress makes your cells die before their time – and produces all the terrible effects we think of as aging.
They compared women who felt a lot of stress to women under little stress. Using certain cellular markers, they discovered the high-stress women were up to 10 years “older” than women with low stress levels!1
The cellular markers they used are “telomeres.” Telomeres are the “time keepers” attached to every strand of DNA. As they get shorter, you get older and your body breaks down.
What’s more, the effects of stress on telomeres get worse with age.
A North Carolina study found that stressed women over 55 had significantly shorter telomeres.2
But stress isn’t something that happens randomly inside our bodies. Many of these problems start with the modern world.
Today’s fast-paced environment causes you to overuse your stress response.
For more than 20 years, I’ve been helping patients at my Wellness Center in South Florida overcome this condition I call “adrenal burnout.”
Adrenal burnout happens when your adrenal glands flood the body with cortisol, the stress hormone. Too much cortisol shortens telomeres…
This can be devastating to your health over time. Just a few other effects of too much cortisol are:
- Mental Breakdown: Chronic high levels of cortisol put you at greater risk for a host of psychiatric problems, including depression, anxiety or worse. Studies show that people who suffer from personality and mood disorders have abnormally high cortisol levels.3,4
- Diabetes: High cortisol levels increase your insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. One study shows that insulin resistance increases in step with amount of cortisol in the blood, regardless of your fitness level or body fat.5
- Hormonal Hunger and Obesity: Cortisol can strongly influence what you eat. One of the latest studies found that the kind of “daily hassles” we deal with stimulates your desire for snack foods even when you are not physically hungry.6
Adrenal burnout is a commonly missed diagnosis. Doctors often treat the symptoms instead of the cause.
I’ve treated dozens of patients who are experiencing this common issue. To protect their telomeres and their overall health, and reverse adrenal burnout, I use a mindfulness exercise that’s proven to work.
The U.S. Marines even use this to knock out stress.
In a recent study, they divided 48 male Marines into two groups before they deployed to war. Thirty-one took a mindfulness meditation course, while the other 17 Marines did nothing out of the ordinary. After only 8 weeks, Marines meditating for about 12 minutes a day scored better on mood evaluations, and had improved working memories.7
Another study done by the Mind Fitness Training Institute and the University of Pennsylvania looked at 30 Marines preparing to deploy to Iraq. The high-practice meditation group scored significantly better on test assessing reducing stress and anxiety. The control group that did nothing scored significantly worse.8
And in one recent study that is still underway, Marines took a “mindfulness fitness” course at the University of California at San Diego. I read about it in Pacific Standard magazine.9 After their mindfulness training, Navy researchers took blood and saliva samples from the service members, and also gave them MRIs.
Meditation helped the troops recover better from stressful training. And their brain scans showed similarities to those taken of elite Special Forces soldiers and Olympic athletes in their ability to handle stressful situations.
One of the reasons meditation works so well is that is has a positive effect on your telomeres. Long healthy telomeres help protect your cells from damage and aging. A recent study looked at family caregivers in their very stressful jobs. They found that after only 8 weeks, those who meditated had their bodies’ telomere protection enzymes skyrocket by 43%.10
Here’s the technique the Marines and Special Forces use, and you can use too. One thing to remember is that the benefits come from being mindful and focusing your concentration.
- Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes.
- Let your awareness settle on the movement of your breath.
- Follow the in-breath and out-breath, perhaps by saying “breathing in, breathing out” quietly to yourself.
- Sit upright, with spine straightened and chin tucked in, while you calmly observe your breath.
- Do this for ten to fifteen minutes a day.
That’s it. Try to do this practice every day. It helps to lower blood pressure, slow down your thoughts, refresh body and mind, and reverse the stress that can shorten your telomeres and cause disease.
Fortunately, modern technology has helped come to the rescue to stop the damaging effects of modern stress. Technology has shown us that there are nutrients that can also help you maintain your telomeres to better your overall health and extend your “health span.”
That’s what I call that period of time you can stay healthy, vibrant, independent and strong.
Telomere protection is a great example of nutritional medicine. If you want to learn more about how to use these nutrients to increase your health span, reduce stress, protect your telomeres and stay young and healthy, please click here to get your free report.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1 Epel E, Blackburn E, Lin J, Dhabhar F, Adler N, Morrow J, Cawthon R. “Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004;101(49):17312-5.
2 Parks C, et. al. “Telomere length, current perceived stress, and urinary stress hormones in women.” Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2009;18(2):551-60.
3 Yilmaz et al. “Increased Levels of Nitric Oxide, Cortisol and Adrenomedullin in Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia.” Medical Principles and Practice. 2007;16(2):137-141.
4 Wingenfeld et. al. “Overnight urinary cortisol release in women with borderline personality disorder depends on comorbid PTSD and depressive psychopathology.” European Psychiatry. 2007;22(5):309-312.
5 Holt et. al. “Cortisol clearance and associations with insulin sensitivity, body fat and fatty liver in middle-aged men.” Diabetologia 2007;50(5):1024-1032.
6 Newman et. al. “Daily hassles and eating behaviour: The role of cortisol reactivity status.” Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2007;32(2):125-132
7 Jha A, Stanley E, Kiyonaga A, Wong L, Gelfand L. “Examining the protective effects of mindfulness training on working memory capacity and affective experience. “ Emotion, 2010;Vol 10(1), 54-64.
8 Stanley E, Schaldach J, Kiyonaga A, Jha A. “Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training: A Case Study of a High-Stress Predeployment Military Cohort.” Cognitive and Behavioral Practice 2011;18, 566–576.
9 Mockenhaupt B. “A State of Military Mind” Pacific Standard. www.psmag.com. June 18, 2012. Retrieved Jan 21, 2013.
10 Lavretsky H, Blackburn E, Irwin M, et. al. “A pilot study of yogic meditation … effects on mental health, cognition, and telomerase activity.” Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2013;28(1):57-65.