I've tended to be mindful of caloric restriction partnered with meditation to reduce stress levels for the purpose of increasing health and longevity. It's amazing how little food we need to operate compared to what seems 'normal', and so I tend now to see obese people as having distended intestines full of excrement - its not a pleasant thought and I mean on offence to heavy folk but;
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Yikes. While life extension techniques might not be backed up with hard evidence, there is good statistics to show obesity leads to a shorter lifespan. On the flipside the full-on guru's in India etc who have full control over their stomach's, sit in caves all day and eat hardly anything, don't seem to live super long either.
Anyway I thought I'd post some key points taken from Wiki about Telomere's which might help summarize them;
The
telomeres are disposable buffers at the ends of chromosomes which are truncated during cell division; their presence protects the genes before them on the chromosome from being truncated instead.
Over time, due to each cell division, the
telomere ends become shorter. They are replenished by an enzyme,
telomerase reverse transcriptase (which through the enzyme
telomerase operates).
In most multicellular eukaryotic organisms,
telomerase is active only in germ cells, some types of stem cells such as embryonic stem cells, and certain white blood cells (which happen to be cells which divide at a higher rate then normal cells AFAIK hence a need to keep
telomeres replenished).
There are theories that claim that the steady shortening of
telomeres with each replication in somatic (body) cells may have a role in senescence (cell death) and in the prevention of cancer. This is because the
telomeres act as a sort of time-delay "fuse", eventually running out after a certain number of cell divisions and resulting in the eventual loss of vital genetic information from the cell's chromosome with future divisions.
Because DNA replication mechanisms are affected by oxidative stress and because TERT expression (component of
telomerase) is very low in most types of human cell,
telomeres shrink a little bit every time a cell divides.
But Mammalian (and other) somatic cells without
telomerase gradually lose telomeric sequences as a result of incomplete replication..... and as mammalian
telomeres shorten, eventually cells reach their replicative limit and progress into senescence or old age.
Interestingly
telomerase can be re activated and reset
telomeres back to an 'embryonic state' by a lab technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer.... so maybe future research will have some success of arresting or perhaps even reversing aging!!?!?! What age would you pick if you can could maintain a 'body age', or perhaps you wouldn't!!??
