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When we look at the fact of aging, or getting older, we often measure it in two ways:
The number of years we’ve been on this earth, chronologically.
And the amount of decay that’s set in: fatigue, lower energy, poor fitness levels, poor sleep, loss of muscle, worsening vision and hearing, digestive problems, memory loss, etc.
But, while we’ve come to see the second as the inevitable result of the first, it’s actually not. It’s the result of getting biologically older, accelerated aging before our time.
We don’t realize this because our view is obviously based on what we’ve seen for decades now. And what we’ve seen is not good.
But this isn’t a natural situation. It’s a created situation.
Today, 90 percent of the money spent on health care in the US, almost $4.1 trillion, is spent on preventable chronic disease.
And a 2018 study found that 88 percent of Americans are in poor metabolic health—meaning they are on the road to the above diseases.
That’s not 88% of the elderly, that’s 88% of the population of the US.
This is despite the US spending nearly double the amount on healthcare and medicine as any other country.
But in the Blue Zones of the world, where they don’t have access to either our medicine or our toxins and very poor foods, they live quitehealthily to 100 or more.
This is accelerated aging. And we don't need it.
So sit tight, because we’re about to get sciencey.
You wouldn’t know it, looking around at the world today, but science has made great strides in the last many years towards real de-aging.
And one of them is in determining our biological age, because this opens the door to so much more.
Two main systems have been derived. The first I’ll cover is one you may have heard of: Telomeres.
You know about cell division. When new cells are needed, specific cells divide into two cells, the new one containing everything that the original contained.
But these are specific cells that do this, stem cells, embryonic cells that have been with us from birth and which contain the full DNA blueprints for every cell in the body.
As they’re embryonic, these cells, when dividing, can become any cell in the body.
This is necessary. When cells dies and new ones are needed, some of these stem cells divide, creating new cells to take their place.
When we’re injured and must heal, stems cells provide the new cells. When we workout and increase muscle tissue, the new muscle cells are coming from stem cells. When toxins damage cells, stem cells replace them.
Now let’s go further.
In the nucleus of these cells are tiny threadlike structures made of nucleic acids and protein. They’re called chromosomes, and they are what carry your genetic information in the form of your genes, your DNA.
Literally all of the genetic information for the entire blueprint of your body is carried in these genes.
And at the end of each of these chromosomes are something called telomeres, like caps on the end of a shoelace.
And here’s where biological aging comes in: every time a stem cell divides, to make a new cell, the telomeres in the stem cell shorten slightly.
Every time.
Even more, these telomeres can only shorten so many times, about 62, before that stem cell can no longer make new cells.
This is an important point. Your body only contains so many stem cells, and not all of them are in use at any given time.
But the more they’re used to create new cells, because of illness, injury, toxins destroying our cells, poor nutrition leading to the death of cells, etc, the less active stem cells we have over time.
And when we finally get to the end, where we have no more active stem cells for cell division to replace old cells, we can no longer heal ourselves and death sets in.
So if one were to live a healthy life, low in sugars, high in the proteins, heathy fats, vitamins and antioxidants necessary to keep cells healthy, while staying away from trans fats, toxins and harmful bacteria, they would naturally have more usable stem cells with longer telomeres — because they weren’t needed as much.
But if we live the opposite life, eating processed sugars, trans fats and high omega 6 oils (as our modern diet overwhelmingly contains) which damage cells, toxins that damage or kill cells, harmful bacteria that thrive on processed sugars, etc…. then naturally these stem cells would have been much more active in replacing damaged or dying cells.
And as we get older, we’ll have much fewer of them.
But this gives us two things.
First, we can now measure the length of telomeres in a person’s stem cells and determine their biological age, how long they actually have before their body can no longer repair itself.
But even more, we know one of the routes of accelerated aging. And we can not only prevent it — we can actually reverse it.
There is an enzyme (a biochemical that causes action in cells) called telomerase. And it helps to lengthen telomeres.
Elizabeth Blackburn won the Nobel Prize for its discovery. But even more, she discovered that they can lengthen again through, you guessed it — a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Truly.
Most people don’t believe it until they do it, but we can actually reverse the unwanted conditions in our bodies, and in doing so, we lengthen these telomeres and add more onto not only our lifespan, but the degree of health we’ll have during that lifespan.
In the next article I’m going to cover the other test of biological aging, jumping more into DNA, genetics, and the repair of damaged DNA.
Because when our DNA is damaged, the resulting cells made are less functional than they should be, as they're being made from a now-faulty blueprint.
And from there we’re going to dive into each of the ways these DNA and telomeres are harmed, and how we can not only repair them, but get the very most out of them.
Stay tuned.
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We’ve all heard of gluten.
We’ve heard that it can be bad for us, not bad for us, mildly bad for us, etc.
But what is it really and what does it actually do?
Gluten is a mixture of proteins found in many grains, processed foods and commercial drinks that contain two specific proteins called gliadin and glutenin.
Now, some people know they are sensitive to these, either severely or only mildly, but there are many more who actually are sensitive and experiencing reactions without knowing what’s causing it.
The amount of toxins coming into our body every day, from the environment and our food and water sources, grows every year. And it is affecting us in many ways.
But one area it affects us quite severely is in our microbiome, where these toxins kill off the beneficial bacteria that help to produce key calming neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin.
We covered the microbiome in the last article: a colony of trillions of bacteria in our colon, and how it affects every aspect of our health, our hormones, our longevity and the ability to build muscle, lose body fat and stay fit.
Our body's ability to relax, de-stress, recover, and sleep deeply is heavily determined by one area of our body overlooked more often than almost any other — our Microbiome.
This colony of trillions of bacteria living in our large intestine helps produce the calming, relaxing, cortisol-lowering, and sleep-giving neurotransmitters GABA and serotonin.
These bacteria have more to do with our overall health, calmness of mind, nerve function, ability to sleep, ability to burn fat and build muscle, and even our hormones than you might think.
This colony, made up of about 500 different species of bacteria, is called the Microbiome.