Is your reflection in the mirror showing visible lines on your face? Do you notice your skin becoming thinner and drier? Do you feel like your days of smooth, radiant, and elastic skin are numbered?

These are just some of the signs of skin aging.

Thousands of studies have been done on aging and many are beginning to point to an inescapable conclusion: our lifestyle choices, what we eat and what we don’t eat may actually affect our aging process.

Most of us have extremely busy lives and, despite our best efforts to eat healthy, many of our food choices may be less than nutritious. In fact, up to 90 percent of North Americans are lacking key nutrients in their diets, thus affecting their skin, their overall appearance, and how they feel on the inside.

The good news is, we can actually do something to slow down our aging process! How? By keeping your telomeres long and healthy.

What exactly are telomeres?

In her interview with The Guardian, Berkley professor and Nobel Prize winner in medicine, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, said that if you think of your chromosomes – which carry your genetic material – as shoelaces, telomeres are the little protective tips at the end.

They are made of repeating short sequences of DNA sheathed in special proteins.

What happens to our telomeres as we age?

According to Dr. Blackburn, during our lives, telomeres tend to wear down and when telomeres can’t protect chromosomes properly, cells can’t replenish and they malfunction.

This sets up physiological changes in the body which increases the risks of the major diseases of aging:

  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Diabetes
  • Cancer
  • A weakened immune system and more

Physiological changes are happening in all of us at some rate, but fortunately, there are things we can do to slow down these changes.

An enzyme called telomerase can add DNA to the ends of chromosomes to slow, prevent and partially reverse the shortening. Telomerase replenishes the DNA at telomeres. Thus, depending on cell type, telomerase partially or completely counteracts the progressive shortening of telomeres that otherwise occurs.

Here is a video of Dr. Blackburn explaining the roles of telomeres and telomerase:

How can we take care of our telomeres to delay or reverse aging?

To lengthen our telomeres, or at least stop them from shortening, we need to improve our lifestyle by:

  • Managing chronic stress
    Nobody had any idea that meditation and the like, which people can use to reduce stress and increase wellbeing, would be having their salutary and well-documented useful effects in part through telomeres.
  • Exercising
    The good news, according to Dr. Blackburn, is that you don’t have to go to the gym three hours a day or run a marathon a week.

    People who do moderate aerobic exercise – about three times a week for 45 minutes – have telomeres pretty much as long as marathon runners.

    Mixing things up seems to be good too.

    One study showed the more different kinds of exercise people did, the longer their telomeres.
  • Eating better
    Having adequate omega-3 fatty acids really seems to relate to better telomere maintenance and the easiest way to ensure that may be a supplement.

    It is also in foods such as oily fish and flaxseeds.
  • Getting enough sleep
    Sleep is more closely tied to overall health than most people realize. We all feel bad when we don’t sleep, but that tired feeling is just the tip of the health iceberg.

    According to the National Sleep Foundation, 48 percent of Americans have occasional sleeplessness; 22 percent experience it most nights. Occasional sleeplessness isn’t usually harmful, but chronic lack of 7 to 8 hours of good quality sleep is highly likely to have a negative impact on your health.

I know many of you will think that these things are recommended already, but what many of us hadn’t understood is that these things are helping you maintain telomeres. By supporting and maintaining your telomeres with this tips, you can add up to the key nutrients that you are lacking and slow down your body’s aging-clock and stay years ahead of your peers.

You can also try using dietary supplements to lengthen your telomeres. There’s actually a study conducted by the University of California, Berkeley that was designed to explore the effects of long-term supplementation on telomere length.

The study found out that long-term supplement users (over five years), had increased telomere length (11.2 %) when compared to controls who were not supplementing.

This research called The Landmark Dietary Supplement Study concluded that the group of long-term multiple dietary supplement users consumed a broad array of vitamin/mineral, herbal, and condition-specific dietary supplements on a daily basis.

They were more likely to have optimal concentrations of chronic disease-related biomarkers, and less likely to have suboptimal blood nutrient concentrations, elevated blood pressure, and diabetes compared to non-users and multivitamin/mineral users.

Quality supplements can help fill nutritional gaps left by less than optimal food choices, our overworked bodies, and our environment.

One of the benefits of a good supplemental program like what we offer is that, it works for almost everyone. Unlike medications that can work in some people but not in others, vitamins and minerals do the same job in your body that they do in mine. A good multivitamin is almost universally beneficial—especially for filling in those nutritional gaps that can be the cause of shorter telomeres that could speed up your aging.

To learn what quality supplements I recommend to help to keep your telomeres longer, don’t hesitate to contact me at Jerry@Fit4LifeLLC.com!

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