Chromosome Telomere Length, Stress, Adaptation Energy, Nutrition, and Exercise

Chromosome Telomere Length, Stress, Adaptation Energy, Nutrition, and Exercise
Bernard Pyron

DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid is the blueprint of the human body, the genetic information in the cells. DNA is made up of four chemicals, called A, T, C, and G that are repeated over and over in pairs. God made man in a pair, "...male and female he created them." Genesis 1: 27 Other animals were also created in pairs. Several of the planets of our solar system are pairs, having similar characteristics.

Genes function as biochemical instructions for making everything the body needs, such as proteins. And human beings supposedly have about 25,000 genes. Genes come in bundles called chromosomes and the DNA of chromosomes encodes a person's genetic information. Every time a cell divides all the genetic information in the cell must be transmitted to the new cell. Chromosomes could degenerate, or become
senescent, i.e., cells stop dividing when telemere length reaches a certain limit in shortening.

Telomeres are the ends of chromosomes which protect the chromosome from degeneration. Telomeres are like the ends of shoe laces which keep the laces from frazzling. Every time a cell divides its telomeres are shortened. But an enzyme named telomerase can rebuild the lost telomeres as ends of the chromosomes, and some research has been focused on what contributes to the production of telomerase. Theoretically, telomere length can be a predictor of aging.

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, at the University of California, San Francisco, shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology for her work on the process of telomere shortening. Blackburn's recent research is focused on telomere length and its relationship to chronic diseases like cancer, and heart disease

In Science Talk of the October 2011 Scientific American, Blackburn says that unpublished research shows that people with higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acid had less telomere shortening.

On http://www.exercisemed.org/research-blog/stress-and-telomere-length.html

They mention a study published in 2004 which found that the longer a women spent in taking care of a chronically ill child, the shorter the women's telomeres became. In addition, women who reported experiencing more stress in taking care of her child had shorter telomeres than women who reported having less stress. The authors of this study - Elissa S. Epel, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, et al - said that a person under high levels of stress (for a long period of time) could lose an average of 550 base pair in telomere length. The study found that the average person, however, undergoes only a 31-63 base pair shortening in telomeres per year.

Accelerated Telomere Shortening In response To Life Stress, Elissa S. Epel, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Jue Lin, Firdaus S. Dhabhar, Nancy E. Adler, Jason D. Morrow, and Richard M. Cawthon. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 December 7; 101(49): 17312–17315. Published online 2004 December 1. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0407162101

This study was done on women who were caregivers for a chronically ill child and rated the degree of their stress is caring for the child.

Epel et al, 2004, say that "Numerous studies demonstrate links between chronic stress and indices of poor health, including risk factors for cardiovascular disease and poorer immune function....... Here we provide evidence that psychological stress—both perceived stress and chronicity of stress—is significantly associated with higher oxidative stress, lower telomerase activity, and shorter telomere length, which are known determinants of cell senescence and longevity, in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from healthy premenopausal women. Women with the highest levels of perceived stress have telomeres shorter on average by the equivalent of at least one decade of additional aging compared to low stress women."

They say that "Telomeres are DNA–protein complexes that cap chromosomal ends, promoting chromosomal stability."

They also point out that in vitro studies have shown that when telomeres shorten to a certain point, then the cell goes into "senescence." They note that in people, telomeres shorten with age in all replicating cells that have been studied. They distinguish between a cell's biological and chronological age. If the telomeres are not shortened, apparently the cell can continue further reprduction by cell division.

A biochemical substance called telomerase protects telomeres from shortening.

Epel et al, 2004, say that "Perceived stress has been linked to one measure of oxidative DNA damage in leukocytes in women . Given these observed links, we hypothesized that chronic psychological stress may lead to telomere shortening and lowered telomerase function in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and to oxidative stress."

The authors say that "Although it is well accepted that cell senescence can include stress-induced processes, psychological stress has not yet been considered as part of the stress pathway. The current findings suggest that stress-induced premature senescence in people might be influenced by chronic or perceived life stress. Psychological stress could affect cell aging through at least three nonmutually exclusive pathways: immune cell function or distribution, oxidative stress, or telomerase activity."

They also say "Glucocorticoids, the primary adrenal hormones secreted during stress, increase oxidative stress damage to neurons, in part by increasing glutamate and calcium and decreasing antioxidant enzymes. It is also notable that, in women, self-reported distress has been related to greater oxidative DNA damage. Oxidative stress shortens telomeres in cells cultured in vitro."

The 2004 study by Elissa S. Epel, et al shows that shortening of chromosome telomeres results from prolonged psychological stress. Hans Selye, the expert on stress, said that there are several kinds of stessors, that all forms of stress can be additive and cumulative, and can lead to aging.

Another study, published in August of 2011 found that found that women who worked full-time had significantly shorter telomeres than those who were not employed (Employment and work schedule are related to telomerase length in Women, CG Parks, et al.).

Workplace: Employment and work schedule are related to telomere length in women Occup Environ Med 2011;68:8 582-589 Published Online First: 2 May 2011, C G Parks, L A DeRoo, D B Miller, E C McCanlies, R M Cawthon, and D P Sandler ...

http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/04/9652/exercise-may-prevent-impact-stress-telomeres-measure-cell-health

Research led by Elissa Epel studied 63 postmenopausal women for two years who took care of a family member with dementia. In an earlier analysis of data on 36 of these women, those who were more pessimistic had higher level of pro-inflammatory protein, often linked to aging and disease, and they had shorter telomeres.

Then, in a more recent and separate analysis of the data, on the full group of 63 women who reported greater perceived stress showed shorter telomeres - but this was true only for women who did not exercise.

And - a third study led by Eli Puterman analyzed data from 251 healthy women ages 50-65 of varying activity levels. This analyis found that women with histories of childhood abuse who did not exercise had shorter telomeres than those with no history of abuse. For women who exercised, there was no difference in telomere length between those who had experienced childhood abuse and those who were not abused.

“We saw a relationship between childhood trauma and short telomere length but the relationship seems to go away in people who exercise vigorously at least three times a week,” Lin said."

Puterman E, Lin J, Blackburn E, O'Donovan A, Adler N, et al. (2010) The Power of Exercise: Buffering the Effect of Chronic Stress on Telomere Length. PLoS ONE 5(5): e10837. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010837..This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Nutrition also has an influence on telomere length. See http://www.isagenixhealth.net/blog/2011/06/16/fish-oil-for-longer-telomeres/

Several studies have shown relationships between longer telomeres and nutritional supplements, including multivitamins, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, and folic acid.29- 33

See:
29
Richards JB, Valdes AM, Gardner JP, et al. Higher serum vitamin D concentrations are associated with longer leukocyte telomere length in women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;86(5):1420-1425

30
Xu Q, Parks CG, DeRoo LA, Cawthon RM, Sandler DP, Chen H. Multivitamin use and telomere length in women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009;89(6):1857-1863

31
Furumoto K, Inoue E, Nagao N, Hiyama E, Miwa N. Age-dependent telomere shortening is slowed down by enrichment of intracellular vitamin C via suppression of oxidative stress. Life Sci. 1998;63(11):935-948

32
Tanaka Y, Moritoh Y, Miwa N. Age-dependent telomere-shortening is repressed by phosphorylated alpha-tocopherol together with cellular longevity and intracellular oxidative-stress reduction in human brain microvascular endotheliocytes. J Cell Biochem. 2007;102(3):689-703

33
Paul L, Cattaneo M, D’Angelo A, et al. Telomere length in peripheral blood mononuclear cells is associated with folate status in men. J Nutr. 2009;139(7):1273-1278

These studies show some evidence that vitamin D, Multivitamin use, vitamin C, phosphorylated alpha-tocopherols, and Folic Acid protect telomeres from shortening.

Studies comparing one group of people who have higher blood levels of a nutrient, or who report raking a food supplement, to those with lower blood levels of the nutrient or those not taking the supplement could be vulnerable to confounding. It is possible that variables other than taking a food supplement, or vitamin, are responsible for the protection of the person's telomeres from shortening. The possible variables that might be suspect here are income level, education level and intelligence level. Those in higher income levels, higher education levels and/or with higher intelligence might possibly have longer telomeres for some reason. To prevent this more obvious kind of confounding, a repeated measures study design would be best - if such a research design could be carried out and if the reseachers could afford to make repeated tests for telomere length over time periods of a few years. The data from such a study could be statistically analyzed by a repeated measuresanalysis of variance, which would use each subject in the study as his own control.

The next study was by Ramin Farzaneh-Far, et al, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 2010; 303(3):, pages 250-257, Association of Marine Omega-3 Fatty Acid Levels With Telomeric Aging In Patients With Coronary Heart Disease.

The authors reported that "Levels of the marine omega-3 fatty acids docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) were measured in fasting whole blood..........................................Genomic DNA was isolated according to standard procedures from peripheral blood leukocytes collected at baseline and follow-up study visits and stored at −70°C. Purified DNA samples were diluted in 96-well microtiter source plates to a fixed concentration of 3 ng/μL. Relative mean telomere length was measured from DNA by a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay that compares mean telomere repeat sequence copy number (T) to a reference single-copy gene copy number (S) in each sample as previously described and validated by comparison with Southern blot terminal restriction fragment analysis."

The Farzaneh et al study is reported online at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=185234

Their results showed that "In summary, among patients with stable coronary artery disease, there was an inverse relationship between baseline blood levels of marine omega-3 fatty acids and the rate of telomere shortening over 5 years."

In other words, over a five year period, people with coronary artery disease who had the greatest amount of omega-3 fatty acid levels in their blood showed less telomere shortening that did those who had less amega-3 fatty acids in their blood.

While the above research appears to be a better design than some studies in the area of nutrition, it should be noted that allopathic medicine, or, at least the giant pharmaceutical corporation-medical elite leadership, has been hostile to nutrition and food supplements as a means for increasing human health. If the medical establishment - and the Journal of the American Medical Association is part of that establishment - becomes highly involved in work on the contribution of nutrition, food supplements and exercise to human health, as an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs and surgery, this could move nutrition and exercise toward becoming a part of Obama Care. And Obama Care is about control over the health and health care choices of people.

Some foods and some food supplements and regular exercise appear to have protective effectds on telomere length and the continuation of healthy cell reproduction in the human body. And - studies have shown that prolonged stress can be associated with shortening of telomeres. So, it is important to have a knowledge of stress. Hans Selye, who died in 1982, and was long at the University of Montreal, or Université de Montréal where he had a large number of research assistants. Selye was the father of the stress concept.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Selye Hans Selye (1907-1982), was a Hungarian endocrinologist. Selye drew on the findings and ideas of Walter B. Cannon (1871-1945), an American physiologist, on the fight or flight responses, the autonomic nervous system and its two arms the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.

According to http://www.centerforaltmed.com/?p=70 Hans Selye taught that "All forms of stress produce the same physiological consequences. This includes environmental stress (heat, cold and noise, etc.), chemical stress (pollution, drugs, etc.), physical stress (overexertion, trauma, infection, pregnancy, etc.), psychological stress (worry, fear, loss, grief, etc.) and biochemical stress (nutritional deficiencies, refined sugar consumption, etc.). All of these different sources of stress are additive and cumulative in their effects."

Prolonged stress is harmful to the body. Selye taught that pfrolonged stress can use up the body's recources, or adaptation energy, and finally stress can lead to exhaustion. Stress can lead to organ or body sysem failure.

On http://www.icnr.com/articles/the-nature-of-stress.html they say of Selye's stress concepts that "The selective exhaustion of muscles, eyes, or inflamed tissue all represent final stages in local adaptation syndromes (L.A.S.) only. Several of these may develop simultaneously in various parts of the body; in proportion to their intensity and extent, they can activate the G.A.S. mechanism. It is when the whole organism is exhausted - through senility at the end of a normal life-span, or through the accelerated aging caused by stress - that we enter into the (fatal) stage of exhaustion of the G.A.S."

Since stress is additive from various types of stressors and is cumulative, prolonged stress causes aging.

In the summer of 1975 I did a reel to reel video recording with a friend, Anton Pliska, about stress and the ideas and findings of Hans Selye. It was filmed by my son Blake in the Madison, Wisconsin arboretum, on the bank of what looks like a river, but is really an inlet from Lake Wingra. The opposite bank is really a narrow island-like strip of land, with the one quarter to one third mile wide lake beyond.

This 1975 video could be called "Anton Pliska As Gabby Hayes and Bernard Pyron As the Gringo Brasadero."

I cut the video down a bit and its in two short parts, at:

http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=25z32io&s=6

http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=2unvqyt&s=6

According to Selye, reported on the site above "The term "adaptation energy" has been coined for that which is consumed during continued adaptive work, to indicate that it is something different from the caloric energy we receive from food; but this is only a name, and even now we still have no precise concept of what this energy might be."

The idea that Selye's concept of adaptation energy might be increased in several ways would occur to many. In general, adaptation energy might be increased by certain kinds of food and food supplements, by regular exercise, by sleep, and by the changing of one's mental processes, belief and attitude systems, so that what was stressing before might not be as stressing after one has undergone such a mental change.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8: 32

In John 8: 32, first of all, Christ is talking about, Isaiah 61: 1, "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;"

Christ came to bring the truth to those who were captives of the strong man of Matthew 12: 29, "Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house." The "goods" of the strong man are those who he holds captive, without Christ and his truth.

Being set free by the truth of Jesus Christ is spiritual freedom - from sin, from being in false doctrines, and from being alienated from God.

Yet truth can also set a person free from being bound by ideologies, attitudes, traditions, beliefs, ignorance, and truth can include knowledge that can be used to prevent prolonged stress and to overcome its harmful effects.

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." John 10: 10. Christ is talking about giving spiritual life with him to those who accept him and his doctrines. Yet stress can harm our physical life and to be relatively free of the harmful effects of stress is life also, though still in the flesh. Some of us are slow and need more time in the flesh to allow the mind of Christ to become part of us.