+1: #335 Meet Your Telomeres

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Hi, this is Brian.

Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Elizabeth Blackburn won a Nobel Prize for her research on telomerase, the enzyme that nourishes our telomeres. She wrote a great book called the Telomere Effect with another world class researcher named Alyssa Epel in which they tell us just how powerful our telomeres are. Today we're going to meet our telomeres. But first, a quick pronunciation lesson. I always thought that telomeres was pronounced telomeres, but apparently it's pronounced telomeres.

Alright, with that out of our way.

Here'S what we need to know. The length of your telomeres is one of the most important indicators of your overall health and or lack thereof. Here's how to think about them. You know those little caps at the end of your shoelaces? Those plastic little guys that keep your laces all neat and tidy? They're called aglets. Once they go, your shoelaces are pretty much done right. Well, that's almost exactly how our telomeres work. Our chromosomes are the shoelaces and our telomeres are the aglets. Here's another way to think about it. Imagine an American football team. The quarterback needs a strong offensive line to do his job. If the offensive line is weak and easily run over, he's going to get sacked. Again. That's how your telomeres work. Our chromosomes are our quarterbacks. Our telomeres are the offensive linemen. Telomeres sit at the end of our chromosomes and keep them all neat and tidy, protecting them so they can do their job of replicating themselves to keep us nice and healthy. Once your telomeres go, your chromosomes are going to have a really hard time replicating, which means you're going to have a really hard time staying healthy. This is why the length of our telomeres is such a powerful predictor of when we will exit the health span of our lives and enter the disease span. The good news? We can lengthen and strengthen our telomeres.

How?

Well, that's pretty much what we do together every day with these ones. We'll explore their number one tip in the next one. For now, take a nice deep breath and thank your telomeres for all they do behind the scenes. And know that breathing deeply is actually one of the quickest ways to drop out of super busy fight or flight mode. And give your telomeres some rest and lengthening. Love know this as well. Their number one nutrition tip is to reduce or eliminate the highly processed, sugary foods and sweetened drinks. They say we're looking at you packaged cakes, candies, cookies and sodas, but you only want to reduce or eliminate those if you want to keep your telomeres nice and long and strong and extend your health span.

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