Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Factors that affect aging: Telomere Length

5 Oct 2023 · 1 min

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0:35

A short video segment by Aaron Hartman, MD explaining telomeres—protective caps on DNA that shorten with cell replication and environmental stress. He states telomere shortening is directly related to cellular aging, that cells have a limited number of divisions, and that research on telomere preservation is controversial though some interventions may help.

Chapters

Telomere length or telomere attrition. Some of you may have heard about telomeres, the caps on our DNA that actually protect the DNA. And every time your cells replicate or you make new cells, these things get shorter and shorter and shorter. So every time you turn over cells, you have more environmental stresses that affect cells multiplying. These telomeres actually get shorter. The research here is a little controversial, and there are some things you can do to help preserve telomere length, but this is something we know that's directly related to cell aging. And every cell in your body can only divide so many times before it actually dies. And so these telomeres actually you can look at and tell how long a cel live or how many replication cycles that cell line actually has.