Have you heard about this? We recently discovered how your body keeps track of its age.
This is huge because it means that we can, for the first time in history, change how old your body thinks it is.
I’ve been telling you about this discovery called the telomere. But I still get excited with every new telomere story in the news and all the new people who are discovering that your telomeres hold the key to anti-aging.
Take Suzanne Somers, who has come out with a new book. She talks sincerely about how maintaining telomeres slows aging and makes people feel younger.
She was just on a popular national morning TV show telling the hosts about activating telomerase.
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She explained how telomerase is the enzyme that your body uses to rebuild telomeres. Telomerase is normally turned off. But when you activate it, you reset your biological clock to a younger cellular age.
Somers said, “People say they have better hair, better skin, less wrinkling, more energy and [they’re] more youthful. My interest in health is all about keeping the insides young, and that’s what I’m out there for.”
I thought it was ironic that she knows more about this than doctors. She played the brainless blonde on the TV show Three’s Company. But in real life, she’s very well informed, and has a number of things dead right.
I heard her the next day on another show talking about bioidentical hormone replacement. And she said something that impressed me to the point that I’m going to start doing it. She’s changed from getting her bioidenticals all together, to compounding them separately.
She prefers to be able to vary them, because it’s natural to cycle off some and not others. I do this by age, symptoms and preference. But I’ve never quite done it the way she does it, which gives a woman complete liberation from whatever her doctor says she should do about the way she wants to feel.
That’s a new kind of autonomy. She’s enabled herself with modern technology, But the thing I like about it is that it’s technology that’s still all natural.
But Suzanne Somers isn’t the only one who’s well informed. I read in Men’s Journal magazine where Dustin Keller, a receiver in the National Football League, was talking about telomeres too.
Football players take a pounding in the NFL, especially receivers and running backs. They asked him what supplements he used and he said he wanted to lengthen his telomeres. “I just started … Shorter telomeres are associated with aging and decreased performance. I’m hoping it will improve my reaction time, strengthen my immune system, and speed my recovery process throughout the season.”1
I give other doctors credit for coming around to the idea that telomeres are the key to aging. They’re writing books and telling their patients about telomeres and telomerase activators.
And that’s a good thing, because we all took the Hippocratic Oath to: “…respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.”
That’s why I write to you so often about these discoveries, how I experience them along with you, and how you can apply them in your own life.
Maintaining my telomeres gives me an overwhelming sense of optimism. Like a kid who just started summer vacation … like someone who had his whole life ahead of him. It’s truly awesome.
I also can tell you my energy levels are off the charts. What used to feel like a strain just doesn’t take any effort at all now.
I spent two months in Africa where I traveled to seven different countries, met with more than a dozen healers, trekked through the jungle after gorillas, went on safari and did not miss a beat when I got back to my clinic in the States.
Then I turned right around and flew halfway around the word to the international anti-aging conference in Malaysia, delivered two keynote addresses – one on telomeres and one on P.A.C.E. – visited my friends Westi and Lelir in Bali, came back home, and went right to the office.
And no matter where I go in the world or how many planes I get on, I don’t seem to get sick. I credit telomere maintenance as part of the reason. It can make critically important immune cells act much younger.
I know in my practice, the patients who use a telomerase activator, over a 12-month period, on average have reduced their pulmonary age. And that’s good news. Your lungs are your number-one indicator of all-cause mortality. The more lung power you have, the longer you live … and lung power trumps all other causes of death.
But it’s not just lifespan we’re talking about. You live better when your telomeres stay longer. One study of 60- to 75-year-olds showed those with short telomeres had a 318 percent higher death rate from heart disease. They also had an 854 percent higher death rate from infectious diseases.3
I want to help you avoid that, and stay as young as possible for as long as possible. And that’s why I’ll keep writing to you about my discoveries and sharing with you all the science and research on anti-aging. So you can benefit along with me.
1 Gillihan C. “Four Questions for Dustin Keller.” Men’s Journal, Nov 28, 2011. www.mensjournal .com. Retrieved May 8, 2012.
2 Harley C, Liu W, Blasco M, Vera E, Andrews W, Briggs L, Raffaele J. “A natural product telomerase activator as part of a health maintenance program.” Rejuvenation Res. 2011 Feb;14(1):45-56.
3 Cawthon, R.M., Smith, K.R., O’Brien, E., et al, “Association between telomere length in blood and mortality in people aged 60 years or older,” Lancet 2003, 361(9355):393-395