The transition to a healthy lifestyle can lengthen telomeres
The results of a small pilot study conducted by scientists at the University of California at San Francisco, working under the guidance of Professor Dean Ornish, indicate that proper nutrition, exercise, stress management and social support contribute to telomere lengthening. The authors hope that the data they have obtained will encourage specialists to conduct more extensive studies necessary to confirm the revealed pattern.
Telomeres are sections of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that prevent the degradation of genetic material during cell division. As the body ages, telomeres shorten, which eventually leads to an acceleration of the aging process of cells and their death. Recently, researchers have received evidence of the relationship between short telomeres and a wide range of age-related diseases, including many types of cancer, stroke, vascular dementia, cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis and diabetes.
In order to reveal the existence of an alleged relationship between comprehensive lifestyle changes and telomere length, as well as the activity of telomerase (an enzyme that restores telomere length), the authors observed 35 men who underwent therapy for localized prostate cancer in the early stages of the disease for five years.
Ten of the study participants were asked to make a number of changes to their normal lifestyle, including a diet based on plant products (with a high content of fruits, vegetables and raw grains and low in fat and refined carbohydrates), regular moderate physical activity (walking for 30 minutes six days a week), reducing stress loads (gentle yoga classes, breathing exercises, meditation). They also took part in weekly group meetings to receive social support.
25 participants of the control group were not asked to make any lifestyle changes.
At the end of the 5-year follow-up period, the telomere length of the participants who made adjustments to their lifestyle increased by about 10%. At the same time, the severity of changes in telomere length directly proportional to the efforts of participants aimed at optimizing lifestyle.
In men of the control group, on the contrary, there was a decrease in telomere length by 3%, which is consistent with the generally accepted statement that telomeres inevitably shorten over time.
This study is a continuation of a three-month pilot observation conducted in 2008, in which the same men were asked to adhere to the program described above. Three months later, a significant increase in telomerase activity was recorded in their cells.
The authors note that the revealed pattern should apply to the general population, and not only to patients with prostate cancer, since telomeres were monitored in blood cells, and not in prostate tissue cells.
At the same time, not all experts are convinced of the significance of the results obtained. So Carol Greider from Johns Hopkins University, who shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of telomerase in 2009, believes that such slight increases in telomere length are inconclusive and may be due to random fluctuations in the processed data with a small sample size.
Article by Dean Ornish et al. Effect of comprehensive lifestyle changes on telomerase activity and telomere length in men with biopsy-proven low-risk prostate cancer: 5-year follow-up of a descriptive pilot study published in the journal The Lancet Oncology.
Evgenia Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the University of California, San Francisco:
Lifestyle Changes May Lengthen Telomeres, A Measure of Cell Aging.
18.09.2013