Is there a way to actually reverse aging and become younger?
TA Sciences would have you believe so! Unfortunately reality isn’t simple and products like TA-65 are extremely expensive. TA-65 is a very pure and potent extract of astragalus.
What are telomeres? Telomeres are the “end caps” (usually described like the plastic on the ends of shoe laces) of our DNA. Every time a cell divides the telomere portion gets shorter, this is why telomeres are considered a biological clock. The length of your telomeres literally tells you how old you are (longer is better). This is metabolic age, not chronological age.
How long are your telomeres?
Typical:
~15,000 base pairs - At birth
~10,000 base pairs – Teenager
~7,000 base pairs by age 50
~4,000 base pairs by age 80
What is a base pair? A base pair is a step on your DNA ladder. Human DNA consists of approximately three billion base pairs (split among your 23 chromosomes). Each chromosome has between 50 million to 300 million base pairs. Thus at birth, your telomeres make up approximately 0.015% of each chromosome, but that’s a critical 0.015%. Telomeres prevent end to end fusion of chromosomes and they stabilize chromosomes.
Note: Your initial telomere length is a hereditary trait. This is one reason why longevity tends to be hereditary.
A very interesting, and counter intuitive, tidbit is that if you want long living children, the father should be older! Sperm cells, where telomerase activity is high, actually gain about 71 base pairs per year instead of losing length. Like a fine wine, sperm improves with age!
Our telomeres constantly shorten, this is undesirable. Can they be lengthened? Yes, that’s what the enzyme telomerase does. Telomerase does have other roles.
Some people have concern that telomerase promotes cancer since cancer cells have active telomerase (allowing them to divide (growth) many, many times). But encouraging telomerase actually has the opposite effect. Telomerase is anti-cancer because it improves the functioning of your immune cells. Your immune system is your true defense against cancer. The only effective cure for cancer is a fully functional immune system.
Another amusing anecdote is the expert in a lecture saying “everybody understands ____”. Uh, probably not even everyone in the audience understands. We in the audience for such education are supposed to be experts, but metabolism is absurdly complex and thus the experts routinely disagree with each other (fail to understand reality). Something I enjoy doing is attempting to translate technical concepts into a form that is comprehensible by more people.
One concept, that doesn’t seem to get any attention, is understanding that longer telomeres stabilize DNA, which improves DNA function. In other words, when you are young, your cells work better! This is not hitting a brick wall where you are suddenly old and die, but rather maintaining youthful function of your cells as long as you can. “Aging” is a slow deterioration of the functioning of your metabolism.
So how much does TA-65 cost? Well, they offer some low dosage options to keep the appearance of cost low. However for a strong effective dosage (500 units) it’s about $11 per day, which is about $333 per month. Another fascinating statistic is that, in studies, 250 units of TA-65 worked better than taking four times as much (1000 units per day). In my opinion, more research is needed to justify this kind of cost (not all of us are filthy rich).
The evidence is pretty good that supplements can slow down telomere loss. To me, it’s not clear how much better TA-65 is vs other supplements (like Omega 3 fatty acids) or whether TA-65 is actually capable of lengthening telomeres (age reversal). Interestingly the body is intelligent enough to focus on lengthening short telomeres and not just randomly increasing the length of all telomeres.
If your budget doesn’t justify taking TA-65, you may want to stick with lower cost supplements. Omega 3 fatty acids and Ubiquinol seem to especially help. Vitamin D, selenium and antioxidants (Vitamin C) also help. If you are more into food, eating more nuts and seeds helps. Reducing stress (meditation) helps and so does exercise.
Did you know that telomere length is associated with severity of Covid-19? Which may explain why Covid-19 had a greater impact older people.