1. Lengthen Your Telomeres:
Telomeres, the biological mechanism of ageing for many species, exist for an important evolutionary purpose. In the past, organisms that did not develop a way to age and die were at an evolutionary disadvantage because their older generations hung around contributing back into the gene pool. In short, the ‘older’ ones were stopping beneficial evolution of their species.
In humans the root cause of ageing is telomere shortening.
If we could effectively lengthen telomeres at a greater rate than they were shortening then this would be all we would need to do to get younger. But at present nothing this strong exists. However, Sierra Sciences are in the process of developing an anti-ageing drug and preliminary in-vitro research shows they are 16% of the way to their goal. There are also a few companies running trials using gene therapy to lengthen telomeres. While some of these trials show promise and you can even sign up for some of them if you have the means, nothing conclusive has yet been proven. There are several nutritional supplements on the market that achieve very low level telomerase activity and a little something is better than nothing!
2. Replace Your Hormones:
Just like the common cold has many symptoms so does ageing and in the case of ageing many of the symptoms have symptoms. Usually the first signs of ageing that people experience in their 40’s are due to declining hormone levels. Things like increased body fat, decreased libido, loss of energy and muscle mass. We call it middle age spread but it’s just the first insidious symptoms of ageing creeping in. Testosterone in men for example, declines at a rate of about 3% per year from the age of 40. By simply replacing these hormones or by helping your body to produce them more efficiently we can stave off or even undo many of these symptoms.
There are several ways to achieve this goal the most effective and direct way is to simply top them up medically through injections and oral medications and there are many clinics and medical specialists world-wide that provide this service. If this is not for you, there are several nutritional supplements on the market that can achieve the same results albeit at a lower level, some nutritional supplements that may assist: Sublingual IGF-1, Melatonin (a medicine in some places, OTC in others), DHEA (a medicine in some places, OTC in others), Scottish pine bark extract and tribulus terrestris. Another way to help keep these hormone levels higher is to engage in strenuous physical activity at least 3 times a week. If we can effectively negate the declining hormone levels of our 40’s and 50’s we will experience very little outward signs of ageing even though it is still going on at the cellular level.
3. Remove Senolytic Cells:
As our cells age the expression of genes within those cells changes, causing many of the outward signs and symptoms of ageing, old skin cells for example produce less collagen and elastin than young ones, this in itself isn’t good, but the real problem occurs when, due to telomere shortening, the cells can no longer divide and they senesce or, in lay terms, die.
If hormone decline is the main problem in our 40’s and 50’s then telomere shortening and senescent cells is the main problem in our 60’s and beyond. Picture a barrel of apples; one apple rots and sits there producing mould, bacteria and toxins that rot the adjacent apples, those apples in turn rot the apples next to them and so on. This is a simple but effective metaphor for what happens to our cells when influenced by senescent cells and it is very dangerous and exponentially fast.
Removing Senolytic cells from our bodies can slow down this process. There are several drugs on the market that claim to do this and several natural products on the market that have reasonably good effects, Quercetin and Fisetin being the most common of these. If you are in your 60’s taking a senolytic may be a good idea.
Because all of your cells age roughly at the same speed you need some way of replacing some of the senolytic cells. A telomerase inducer could help to balance this.
They don’t have telomeres or telomerase, and don’t contain any of the genetic material in the rest of your DNA. Your mitochondrial DNA is genetically identical to your mothers and her mothers and so on and so on, it sits in all humans and in fact all animal cells and they are immortal. Some would argue that mitochondria aren’t even human, but little organisms that live in symbiosis within our cells and replicate a-sexually.
Although ‘immortal’, the problem is that as our cells age and build up intracellular junk (waste products essentially), the habitat for the mitochondria is compromised. In turn they provide less energy to the cells and the cells don’t function as well as they should leading to an inevitable downward spiral.
The good news is that there are several promising natural supplements on the market that have been proven to have a significant effect on Mitochondria and Mitochondrial function. Nicotinamide Mononucleotide and its precursor Nicotinamide Riboside chief among them.
5. Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle:
The most obvious but often overlooked component. It would actually be better stated as:
Avoid an unhealthy lifestyle
because while there are several things we can do to make ourselves younger, there are also a range of activities that we can and (sometimes all too often!) do indulge in that very effectively age our cells faster than normal!
This is probably no surprise. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, smoking, vaping, being overweight and inactive, high stress levels etc. What may surprise you is that we are better off simply avoiding these things than seeking out things we think are good for us while continuing to indulge in things that are bad.
So the drinking, smoking, stressed out executive that runs 5 miles a day, never eats carbs and sits at 10% bodyfat is probably ageing faster than the teetotal soccer coach with a happy marriage who works out a few times a week and sits at 20% bodyfat.
Of course no one has a perfect lifestyle and no one has a healthy lifestyle for their whole life. Unfortunately the damage done in our 20’s can’t be undone in our 40’s (yet!) the best we can do is to slow down ageing and choose a healthier lifestyle now.
ps. as with any information we share with you, they are our opinions and not intended as medical advice for you. Please seek advice from your medical professional before pursuing a new health avenue.
Article written by Rachael D’Aguiar, Founder of Chase Life Extension Foundation (CLEF) and creator of the One Truth 818 products. Rachael, a mother of two, has been involved in the Beauty industry for over 20 years, previously owning a successful beauty salon before starting CLEF and formulating anti-ageing products using the technology created by Dr. Bill Andrews of Sierra Sciences. Today, CLEF is one of the largest funders of anti-ageing research using Telomere technology, an achievement that saw her nominated NEXT Business Woman of the Year in 2016.
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