Join the Epigenetic Clock: How Long Will I Live?

We all know that early lack of love, traumas will cause illness and shorten  life span.   But now we have a more precise way to measure it.  We measure that damage through methylation and damage to the cells which can be different from ordinary senescence.    In other words all the abuse and neglect takes its toll on the cells and affects our longevity.    The genetic clock may be very different from the purely unique development of ourselves as we grow older.  That discrepancy may indicate how long we live.  The more early traumas the wider the gap.  The genetic clock is accurate and plays the music of our lives for us.  We dance fast or slow depending on the results of  the clock, which is more accurate than measuring the well-known telomeres.   These deep cells can age and the telomere levels remain the same.  Telomere levels did not prevent senescent aging.

The importance of late research is that by disconnecting ordinary aging from heavy methylated cells we have a truer picture of how we age and why.  Heavy methylation, inter alia, can tell us about how much early trauma we have undergone.  And then that should leave no doubt that when we are unloved and unfulfilled early on, it will alter our lifespan.  We never just  “grow out of it.”  In a sense our cells evolved differently the rest of us, as strange as that seems.   But many scientists are calling into question the statistical measures used in this study.  So we wait, but we do not have to wait to know what we have observed over 50 years:  that being unloved and unsupported and untouched early on creates damage which is palpable. I see it when we reverse severely high blood pressure, which ultimately impairs heart function.  I see it in breathing problems that result of anoxia during the birth process, which can lead to severe pulmonary dysfunction.  Numbers are fine but seeing it and understanding its impact is crucial. When we observe patients reliving the imprinted damage and hear the cries and screams we know the harm it is all doing. When we hook up patients to electronic measures and see the rises in heart rate and blood pressure, we no longer have to guess about it. During reliving early anoxia the blood pressure can skyrocket in patients. And we see the “why” in chronic rapid heart rate or long-term breathing problems. What methylation does is measure the amount of damage as a corollary to what we observe.

They found that obese people have an epigenetic aging of the liver that increases faster than one would expect.  Sooner or later that aging liver will drag us along with it and cut our lives short.  There are many examples but I believe it is now a truism.  When full of pain we do not grow old gracefully.