The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer

by Elizabeth Blackburn

Brew warm herbal tea an hour or more before bed. A warm, scented mug of tea will help you wind down from your day. Try making your own blend of herbal tea from chamomile, lavender, rose petals, and a slice of fresh lemon or ginger. Don’t drink the tea right before bed, or your sleep might be disrupted by a bathroom break.

Perform bedtime stretches or do some gentle yoga. Simple head and neck rolls will help melt the tension and anxiety from the day. For a more structured bedtime yoga routine, try this one. You can do it on a yoga

Gentle Rolling of the Head and Neck: Start by slowly and gently rolling your head and neck in a clockwise motion whil...

Forward Bend: Sit with a straight spine and your legs fully stretched out before you and parallel with your mat or bed. Pause here and take a long, deep inhale. On the exhale, start to bend or hinge at your waist, stretching your hands toward your feet.

Child’s Pose: The perfect send-off to bed is simply lying and breathing in child’s pose (see Figure

Insulin resistance and belly fat are your real enemies, not the pounds on the scale. Dieting affects telomeres, both for good and for ill.

That’s because your telomeres care about your weight, but not as much as you might think.

IT’S THE BELLY, NOT THE BMI

Most obesity research relies on the measure of body mass index (BMI, a measure of weight by height), but this does not tell us much about what really matters—how much muscle versus body fat we have, and where the fat is stored. Fat stored in the limbs (subcutaneously, so under the skin but not in the muscle) is different and maybe even protective, while fat stored deep inside, in the belly, liver, or muscles, is the real underlying threat.

When we say a person has poor metabolic health, we generally mean that he or she has a package of risk factors: belly fat, abnormal cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and insulin resistance. Have three or more of these risk factors and you get labeled with “metabolic syndrome,” a precursor to heart problems, cancer, and one of the greatest health threats of the twenty-first century: diabetes.

Why do people with belly fat have more insulin resistance and diabetes? Poor nutrition, inactivity, and stress are all associated with belly fat and higher levels of blood sugar.

There’s also a well-established connection between short telomeres and diabetes.

Weight loss leads to a slowdown in the normal attrition rate of telomeres. Weight loss has no effect on telomeres. Weight loss encourages telomeres to lengthen. Weight loss leads to shorter telomeres.

This idea—that improving your metabolic health is more important than losing weight—is vital, and that’s because repeated dieting takes a toll on your body.

Our body has a set point that it defends, and when we lose weight, we also slow our metabolism in an effort to regain the weight

What happens to animals when they get junk food all the time? They overeat and get obese. But when you withhold junk food most of the time, giving it to them only every few days, something even more disturbing happens. The rats’ brain chemistry changes; the brain’s reward pathways start to look like the brains of people who are suffering from drug addiction. When the rats don’t get their sugary, chocolaty rat junk food, they develop withdrawal symptoms, and their brains release the stress chemical CRH (short for corticotropin-releasing hormone). The CRH makes the rats feel so bad that they are driven to seek the junk food, to get relief from their stressed state of withdrawal. When the rats finally do get the chocolaty stuff, they eat it as if they will never have the chance again. They binge.14