Who wouldn’t want to look better and feel healthier? This is true no matter what decade of life you are in. The good news is this: there are things you can do now to improve the way you age at a cellular level.
In 2009, three molecular biologists – Elisabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak – won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their research into telomeres and their effects on aging. Telomeres are the caps on our strands of DNA. Think of them like the protective tip on a shoe lace; without the tip, the shoelace ravels and becomes unusable. This is similar to our DNA. If protected by long telomeres, the cell can easily divide and renew the tissues that depend on it. As telomeres shorten, the cell loses its ability to divide and dies.
In the book, The Telomere Effect: A Younger, Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer, Blackburn and co-author Elissa Epel, PhD, provide these tips to keep your telomeres thriving:
Telomeres Love Fish
They especially love fish that contains Omega-3 fatty acids like salmon and tuna. In fact, they thrive on any Omega-3 foods: walnuts, flax seed, chia seed, and soy. Foods associated with shorter telomere length include sugar, saturated fat, processed meats, white bread, pastries and excess alcohol.
Telomeres Don’t Care What You Weigh
More than a number on a scale, telomeres care about your metabolic health—how well you control blood sugar levels. This is true whether or not you are diabetic. On the other hand, yo-yo dieting (losing the same 20 pounds or so over and over ) puts telomeres into a tailspin.
Telomeres Favor a Couple Forms of Exercise
Two forms of aerobic exercise are especially popular with telomeres:
Moderate exercise like light jogging or fast walking, done 3 times a week for 45 minutes each
High intensity interval training, with a 10 minute warm up, 4 intervals of fast and easy running (or brisk walking), and a 10 minute cooldown
This doesn’t mean that strength training isn’t important as we get older, it’s simply that the current research hasn’t linked strength training to telomere length.
Telomeres Crave Sleep
Telomeres respond best to a full night’s sleep, at least 7 hours, allowing your body to complete its four required sleep stages. Short-changing yourself on sleep prevents your cells from replenishing as they should. Likewise, you can’t make up for lack of weekday sleep by sleeping in on weekends.
Telomeres Know When You are Stressed Out
Anxiety, depression, pessimism, chronic stress and hostility have all been linked to the depletion of telomeres. This can be undone, however, through meditation and mind-body practices like yoga or tai-chi and by reframing stress as a positive.
The top take-away is this: lifestyle choices -- including nutrition, movement, sleep and stress management – impact how you age at a cellular level. It’s never too late to improve this picture.