The Telomere Effect

We are all, of course, going to get older and age. But… The process is dynamic and we have a lot more influence than we may have thought.

Liz and Elissa tell us that “Aging can be defined as the cell’s ‘progressive functional impairment and reduced capacity to respond appropriately to environmental stimuli and injuries.’”

Then they ask: “Why do people age differently?” They tell us that one reason is cellular aging. Then they ask: “What causes cells to get old before their time?”

The answer to that? They tell us to think of shoelaces: “Do you know the protective plastic tips at the end of shoelaces? These are called aglets. The aglets are there to keep shoelaces from fraying. Now imagine that your shoelaces are your chromosomes, the structures inside your cells that carry your genetic information. Telomeres, which can be measured in units of DNA known as base pairs, are like the aglets; they form little caps at the end of the chromosomes and keep the genetic material from unraveling. They are the aglets of aging.”

So, if you want nice shoelaces, you need nice aglets, eh? Same thing with our chromosomes. We need nice, long telomeres at the ends.

Here’s another way they put it: “These are the base pairs of telomeres that, repeated thousands of times, offer a way of measuring their length. … The repeating sequence highlights the differences between telomeres and other DNA. Genes, which are made of DNA, live within a chromosome. (Inside a cell we have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, for a total of forty-six.) This genetic DNA is what forms your body’s blueprint, its instruction manual. Its paired letters create complicated ‘sentences’ that send instructions for building the proteins that make up your body. Genetic DNA can help determine how quickly your heart beats, whether your eyes are brown or blue, and whether you’re going to have the long legs and arms of a distance runner. The DNA of telomeres is different. First of all, it doesn’t live inside any gene. It sits outside all the genes, at the very edges of the chromosome that contains genes. And unlike genetic DNA, it doesn’t act like a blueprint or code. It’s more like a physical buffer; it protects the chromosome during the process of cell division. Like beefy football players who surround a quarterback, absorbing the hardest blows from the onrush of opposing players, telomeres take one for the team. This protection is crucial.”

In short: Our telomeres are the protectors of our chromosomes.

Picture the aglets of your shoelaces. Then picture the beefy linemen protecting your quarterback. If your linemen are weak and scrawny, your quarterback is going to sacked.

If your telomeres are short, your chromosomes aren’t going to be able to do what they need to do. Enter: Accelerated aging.

The practical point of the book is to make the connection between your lifestyle choices and the qualities of those aglets/linemen. Know that you can strengthen and lengthen your telomeres and, in the process, delay the onset of what they call your “diseasespan” (the phase of your life marred by poor health) while extending the length of your “healthspan” such that you’re not just living longer, you’re living WELL longer.

The book is packed with a bunch of science about what’s going on at the cellular level. For now, remember your aglets and linemen and KNOW that you can Optimize your telomeres via some simple yet powerful lifestyle changes. Let’s take a look at a few we can apply today!

That’s from Part II: “Your Cells Are Listening to Your Thoughts,” Chapter 4: “Unraveling: How Stress Gets into Your Cells.”

If you’ve ever doubted the mind-body connection, now’s a good time to drop that skepticism. Liz and Elissa walk through the compelling data that unequivocally establishes the fact that what we think affects our bodies and the trillions of cells trying to keep us Optimized.

The very first thing they tell us we need to get good at?

Seeing our problems as CHALLENGES rather than threats.

We’ve talked about this in various contexts. Check out our Notes on The Upside of Stress for some great wisdom from Kelly McGonigal. Pop quiz: Do you remember the simple phrase Kelly tells us we should say to ourselves when we’re feeling the stress rise? … Answer: “I’m excited!!!”

Liz and Elissa reflect on the same research. Simply saying “I’m excited!” to yourself when you feel those nerves kick in is a GREAT way to use the stress response to help you rock it.

Pop Quiz #2: Are you using it yet? If not, get on that! Let’s get REALLY good at seeing our problems as CHALLENGES (vs. threats). That’s a REALLY simple yet powerful way to do it!

So… What do YOU do when you face a challenge?

Do you kinda sorta try to avoid it and maybe feel bad about the fact that you even have to deal with it—thinking that something must be wrong with you because you have all these problems fixed-mindset style? (Enter: Threat response. Imagine your telomeres shrinking.)

Or… Do you rub your hands together, see those problems as reverse indicators that you’re up to big things and shout “Bring it on!” (Enter: Challenge response. See your telomeres expanding!)

Liz and Elissa also like the mantra: “This is good stress helping me perform!” or “I’m excited!” or “My heart is racing and my stomach is doing cartwheels. Fantastic—those are the signs of a good, strong stress response.”

My go to these days: “Bring it on, baby!” “I LOVE challenges!!” “Challenges make me stronger!” “LET’S. DO. THIS!!!” (With the occasional “BOOM!” thrown in at the end for good measure. :)

P.S. As you practice Optimizing your response to problems, make the connection to your telomeres. If you’re feeling it, imagine yourself as the quarterback of your life. Courageously shout your challenge-response mantras at your linemen and watch them expand in power—knowing your telomeres are doing the same for every cell in your body!

P.P.S. Yesterday I had a coaching session with Phil Stutz. As I’ve said an infinite number of times, his #1 Tool is basically learning how to shift from a threat to a challenge response. He tells us we need to “reverse our desire” if we want to grow. I thought he’d get a kick out of the fact these authors recommend we adopt a “Bring it on!!” attitude if we want to take care of our telomeres. So I read him the first paragraph of this Idea. We both laughed.

P.P.P.S. Liz and Elissa reference Jim Afremow in this section. He’s the mental toughness coach for the San Francisco Giants and author of The Champion’s Mind. They share a story of an Olympic athlete who told him: “Before every race, my pulse races. My heart is about to jump out of my chest. You’ve got to help me stop it!”

His response? After he laughed he said, “Do you really want me to stop your heart?” He says that the worst thing athletes can do is try to get rid of their stress. → “They need to think of stress as helping them get ready to perform. They need to say, ‘Yes! I need this!’ Instead of trying to make the butterflies in their stomach go away, athletes need to make those butterflies line up and fly in formation.”

So, we learned about the importance of a challenge response to stressful situations. The next thing we want to get good at? “Minding our telomeres” by replacing negative thinking with resilient thinking. (But only if we want to lengthen our telomeres!) Here’s the quick look.

First: Negative thinking. This includes everything from trying to suppress your thoughts or ruminating to letting your mind wander or allowing yourself to feel “cynical hostility.”

Very short story: Trying to suppress your thoughts doesn’t work. Scientists call this “ironic error.” (Try not to think of a white polar bear and what pops up?) Nor does ruminating. We’d be much better off letting our thoughts roll in and then roll out—recognizing that our thoughts have a very short half-life when we let them pass, kinda like clouds rolling through the sky.

Another good way to trim your telomeres is to allow yourself to get angry. They call it “cynical hostility.” And then we have “mind wandering.” Get this: “The iPhone mind-wandering study showed that when people are not thinking about what they’re doing, they’re just not as happy as when they’re engaged. As [researchers] observed, ‘A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.’”

How to be more resilient? First tip: Unitask. In fact, they tell us that focusing on what you’re doing RIGHT THIS MOMENT is one of the best ways to high five your telomeres.

Another tip: Bring awareness to your thoughts. Simply stepping back from the torrent of thoughts and seeing them helps soften their blow and reduce rumination. (btw: They’re big fans of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Check out our Notes on Russ Harris’s books for more.)

And, they describe the power of a mindfulness practice many times throughout the book. Meditation. Yoga. Qi gong. Pick your favorite but train your mindfulness. (Liz also shared a cool “micro-meditation” practice where she uses time she used to get bored and antsy to take a couple deep breaths and focus her mind.

Plus, they love Kristin Neff and Self-Compassion. (Check out those Notes for more.)

One more way to get your resilience on and watch your telomeres lengthen? Purpose. They say: “Life purpose is what brings us eudaemonic happiness, the healthy feeling that we are involved in something bigger than ourselves. Eudaemonic happiness is not the transitory happiness we experience when eating or buying something we really want; it is enduring well-being. A strong sense of our values and purpose can serve as a bedrock foundation that helps us feel stability through life events, those earthquakes both minor and major. In hard times, we can bring them to mind over and over again.”

How will YOU mind YOUR telomeres today? :)

After getting our minds right, we move to our bodies. The book is basically a scientific overview of why our fundamentals are SUPER important. Eating, moving and sleeping each get their own chapter—echoing what we talk about all the time. Here’s a quick look at some highlights.

EAT: #1 tip: Reduce/eliminate the sugar. (Note: That’s a Nobel laureate coming down on the side of the “metabolic theory” and the fact that a calorie is NOT a calorie.) Eat more whole foods. Eliminate the kryptonite: “Adding healthy foods to your diet is great, but it may be even more important to avoid the kind of processed, sugary, junky foods that feed cellular enemies.”

MOVE: It doesn’t take a ton (as little as 3, 45-minute moderate aerobic workouts can do it), but it’s SUPER important to be fit. Good news for ultra/endurance athletes: Train/run/etc. as long as you want PROVIDED you don’t feel burned out. Note: “If you have a high-stress life, exercise is not just good for you. It’s essential. It protects you from stress-shortened telomeres.”

SLEEP: They share the same sleep hygiene tips we cover in Sleep 101. Unless you’re in the 5% of the population that can get by on less, you and your telomeres need 7+ hours per night. “Then again, if you feel terrible without eight or nine hours of sleep, don’t try to scrape by with seven. Get those extra hours. And remember that rule of thumb, which offers highly customized sleep advice: If you feel sleepy during the day, you need more sleep at night.”

Those are some of the last words in the book in the final section called “Outside In: The Social World Shapes Your Telomeres” in which Liz and Elissa walk us through how our environment shapes us and how we, in turn, have an opportunity (and, I would say, a moral obligation) to help shape our world positively.

One of the alarming things they point out in this section is the fact that the hardships one tends to experience in poverty effects the length of the telomeres of the people who have experienced it. AND… Science shows that those individuals pass on their shorter telomeres to their children who, unless their environment changes, will then continue the cycle. :/

The first step to making a difference? Mind your own telomeres. Optimize your life. But that, of course, is only the first step. It’s the vehicle but not the destination.

The real question: What cellular legacy will you leave? How will you give your greatest gifts in greatest service to the world? Give us what you got. We need you now more than ever before.

With love and high fives to you and your telomeres, I say, “Let’s do this!”