{"id":1316778,"date":"2019-11-17T19:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T02:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/doctors-tip-lifestyle-and-telomeres\/"},"modified":"2019-11-17T19:32:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T02:32:00","slug":"doctors-tip-lifestyle-and-telomeres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/doctors-tip-lifestyle-and-telomeres\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor\u2019s Tip: Lifestyle and telomeres"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is the fourth in a series of columns based on Dr. Ornish\u2019s latest book \u201cUndo It: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases.\u201d According to Dr. Ornish, these simple lifestyle changes can be summarized as: eat healthy, move more, stress less and love more.<\/p>\n

Each human cell has 23 chromosomes, each made up of two strands of DNA. Caps at the tips of chromosomes, called telomeres, prevent DNA damage \u2014 they are analogous to the plastic tips at the end of your shoelaces. As you age, telomeres gradually shorten, and when they\u2019re gone cells die, and eventually you die.<\/p>\n

The oldest living organisms on the planet are bristlecone pines in California, one of which is 4,800 years old and still thriving. A few years ago investigating scientists discovered an enzyme in the roots of bristlecones that rebuilds telomeres \u2014 and they named it telomerase. Subsequently this enzyme was found in human cells as well.<\/p>\n

Dr. Ornish conducted a controlled study that showed that the aforementioned lifestyle changes lengthen telomeres. His co-researcher was Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a scientist who won a Nobel Prize for her pioneering work on telomeres. They found that shorter telomeres were \u201cassociated with an increased risk of premature death from a wide variety of common chronic diseases\u201d including heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, Alzheimer\u2019s disease, and type 2 diabetes, among others. \u201cAfter only three months on our lifestyle medicine program, we measured, for the first time, a 30 percent increase in telomerase\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

After five years, people in the control group experienced an expected 3 percent decrease of telomere length. \u201cHowever, for those in the lifestyle medicine group, telomere length actually increased by 10 percent. The Lancet Oncology editors described this as \u2018reversing aging at a cellular level,\u2019 the first controlled study documenting that any intervention could lengthen telomeres.\u201d The study also showed a dose-response \u2014\u201cthe more people changed their lifestyle, the longer their telomeres grew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Specific factors that increase telomerase and thereby lengthen telomeres are:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Antioxidant-rich foods such as intensely colored fruit (e.g. berries) and vegetables (e.g. greens, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, red cabbage, red onions, sweet potatoes) are more effective than anything else.<\/p>\n

\u2022 intensely flavored vegetables \u2014 herbs and spices<\/p>\n

\u2022 stress reduction through activities such as mindful meditation and yoga<\/p>\n

\u2022 exercise<\/p>\n

Factors that shorten telomeres and hasten aging include:<\/p>\n

\u2022 smoking<\/p>\n

\u2022 consumption of refined grains, soda, meat, fish and dairy<\/p>\n

\u2022 chronic emotional stress including loneliness (absence of loving relationships)<\/p>\n

\u2022 inflammation<\/p>\n

In summary, telomerase is the fountain of youth. Not that you will live forever if you optimize your lifestyle (most people wouldn\u2019t want to anyway). But you might want to stack the deck in your favor for living a long, disease and disability-free life.<\/p>\n

Greg Feinsinger, M.D. is a retired family physician who has a nonprofit: Prevention and Treatment of Disease Through Nutrition. He gives a free presentation at 7 p.m. the first Monday of the month at the Third Street Center in Carbondale; and is available by appointment for free consultations (379-5718).<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the fourth in a series of columns based on Dr. Ornish\u2019s latest book \u201cUndo It: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases.\u201d According to Dr. Ornish, these simple lifestyle changes can be summarized as: eat healthy, move more, stress less and love more. Each human cell has 23 chromosomes, each made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 12:56:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}