Could This Be The Secret to Anti-Ageing?

When we imagine ourselves getting old, we often imagine long, drawn-out periods of pain and suffering - spending our days in the doctor's office, hunched back, fading senses, trouble getting up and down the stairs.

But ageing doesn’t have to be so miserable and traumatic. According to researchers in the field of longevity, it is possible to prolong our youth and ward off premature ageing and the key to this resides in the health of our cells.

Your body is comprised of cells called proliferative cells that constantly need to be renewed to maintain a state of health. Proliferative cells grow and divide to produce daughter cells. This increase in cells leads to tissue growth, which is vital for longevity. When cells lose their ability to regenerate, the body will start to age and the organ site in which the cells live will start to lose function.

This halt in cell renewal is often a result of telomere shortening. When the telomeres become too short it sends signals to stop cell division and replication, causing the cell to become senescent. The problem with senescent cells isn’t just that they affect cell renewal, senescent cells produce pro-inflammatory substances to other regions of the body. These substances fast-track ageing in multiple ways depending on the site of the body they reach. In the brain, the senescent cells may secrete harmful substances causing neuronal death. In the pancreas, they may deregulate insulin production, leading to diabetes. In the skin, they may reduce elasticity and collagen leading to sagging and wrinkles.

With this in mind, it would be useful to consider the health of your telomeres. Your physical appearance is a great indicator for determining their health. Do you have age spots or skin pigmentation? Have you noticed your hair starting to grey prematurely? Is your posture stooped or have people commented on you looking shorter?

The outer layer of the skin is comprised of proliferative cells. Some of these cells make telomerase, which slows down the ageing process. Over time, these cells do still lose their ability to proliferate. However, older people with youthful-looking skin have been observed to have longer telomeres. The longer telomeres help to fend off oxidative stress which is important in maintaining healthy collagen production and skin cell functions. The same can be observed elsewhere in the body. People with shorter telomeres have a harder time balancing out the osteoblast (bone-building cells) to osteoclast (bone-demolishing cells) ratio, leading to bone loss and osteoporosis.

So, can you protect your telomeres from shortening and is it possible to lengthen them?

According to longevity researchers and epigeneticist’s, you can. In the next article, we’ll explore the multiple ways in which you can protect your telomeres and even lengthen them to slow down the process of ageing to look and feel younger for longer.

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