Forget the statements “you’re only as old as you feel” or “age is just a number.”
As researchers learn how to naturally slow aging to keep us looking and feeling young, they’re looking at telomeres. And with possible links to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some types of cancer, the stakes are high.
What Are Telomeres?
Telomeres are segments of DNA at the end of our chromosomes. Scientists frequently compare them to the plastic tips of shoelaces that keep the laces together. Telomeres function similarly, preventing chromosomes from fraying or tangling with one another. When that happens, it can cause genetic information to get mixed up or destroyed, leading to cell malfunction and increasing the risk of disease or even shortening lifespans.
Each time a cell divides, it's telomeres become shorter. After years of splicing and dicing, telomeres become too short for more divisions. At this point, cells are unable to divide further and become inactive, die or continue dividing anyway — an abnormal process that’s potentially dangerous.
Essentially, this is how our bodies age. As more of our cells lose their telomeres and go out of commission without others to take their place, the body follows and begins breaking down. And telomeres don’t leave (or shorten) quietly. Their shortening process has been linked with aging, cancer and a higher risk of death.
Each telomere’s ticking biological clock has the potential to alter our lives in drastic ways but interestingly, it’s not our age that determines when the clock will stop — it’s the length of our telomeres.
What Do Telomeres Have to Do with Health and Aging?
One of the largest studies to date on telomeres shed some light on telomeres’ effect on a person’s health. Researchers collected saliva samples and medical records of more than 100,000 participants. Their findings showed that shorter-than-average telomere length was associated with a boost in mortality risk — even after adjusting for lifestyle factors that affect telomere length (smoking, alcohol consumption and education).
The study found that individuals with the shortest telomeres, or about 10 percent of the study’s participants, were 23 percent more likely to die within three years than those with longer telomeres. However. researchers are still unsure whether telomere length is just a marker of aging, like gray hair or wrinkles, or if it’s an active factor in whether a person is more likely to have a disease like Alzheimer's.
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