
Telomeres – Too much of a good thing? - discombobulate
http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2016/12/12/telomeres-too-much-of-a-good-thing/
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serg_chernata
This is an interesting subject. I first heard of Telomeres from Dr. Rhonda
Patrick[1]. She has her own podcast and actively visits podcasts of other
hosts to talk about health and longevity. For anyone interested, link below.

I've gotten flack for mentioning Joe Rogan podcast here before, but I
discovered Dr. Patrick through Joe's podcast and her visits are some of my
favorites.

[1] [https://www.foundmyfitness.com/](https://www.foundmyfitness.com/)

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erichmond
Wow, why did you catch flack for mentioning the JRE?

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DanBC
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557489)

~~~
withdavidli
somewhat understandable why people have this view of him and his show. he
let's his guests go on about what they think. it's usually a 3hr show. this
gives people the perception that he believes in whatever they're saying
because he doesn't interrupt his guests all the time.

imo Joe is very open minded, an avg Joe (had to) that is willing to hear
people out and is fair handed in contrasting opinions. listening to the one
with him, hannibal burris, and sam harris shows that he tries to take emotion
out of argument and see where each person is coming from. but other times
he'll just repeat things what he has heard other guests has said. for instance
drugs that clogs up the blood for bicyclists when he had lance armstrong on.

i wouldn't say his show is scientifically dense though. that really depends on
the guest. so when you have a person like rhonda on, yea her field is science
and it's going to be dense in that subject matter.

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sigmar
Isn't giving over airtime on your own show somewhat an endorsement? If you're
giving them free advertising, you should probably at least spend some time
vetting their credibility. Seems irresponsible to give a platform to moon
landing truthers.

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colordrops
Moon landing truthers get pretty much almost no time with anyone of
consequence, so they are already well black listed. Rogan at least lets you
see what is inside of the minds of these people, which is fascinating in
itself. No subject, no matter how distasteful or apparently false, should be
completely eradicated from the human dialog, even if only to reconfirm your
distaste for it.

~~~
melloclello
I kinda have a soft spot for ol' Joe Rogan and I see him hosting moon landing
theorists on his show as not unlike Louis Theroux doing a show about UFO nuts.
Interestingly enough Rogan did have Theroux on his show once, I was hoping it
would be a good interview but it went really badly.

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sebringj
What I've read so far of interest relating to age prevention or reversal since
I'm a programmer myself and you may find these interesting...

A Healthy lifestyle slows telomere length decline by producing more telomerase
in your system than otherwise. Activities such as aerobic exercise where you
sweat a lot, eating very healthy food, having a bit of red wine now and again
and probably most important, having a solid network of people you interact
with (and or animals) that care about you and express this for the most part
in a positive way.

There is also strong evidence that caloric restriction slows your aging
process by up to 30% coupled with high nutrition (CRON diet) which is backed
up by tons of experiments in animals as seems to be fundamental to our
biology.

The company "Elysium" produces a drug "Elysium" $50 that claims to slow the
aging process through increasing NAD production which we lose through aging,
putting you in maintenance mode (similar to CRON?) without having to starve
yourself.

TA Sciences sells TA-65 and claims to elongate telomeres and reversing aging?
by boosting telomerase activity from refining the Astralagus root's enzyme and
putting it in pill form (1 part in 10,000 so its 10 times more expensive than
Elysium).

The other route is gene therapy but it costs 1,000,000 dollars (picture Dr.
Evil) which Liz Parrish has partaken in is reported to have increased her
telomere length along with a muscle enhancement to avoid sarcopenia.

An interesting one is stem cell infusion that I've read about as well as stem-
cell injection sites for stem-cell therapy which has been reported to have
miracle-like effects in reversing symptoms of stroke to arthritic conditions
but I don't know the pricing on this one.

Aubry De Grey seems to have tons to say on aging but I have yet to make heads
or tails of his conclusions even though he seems to be super smart.

David Sinclair is a big proponent of NAD and Sirtuins, having a high degree of
credibility in the field and finding proteins that stimulate our production of
NAD, seems very sound.

I didn't list references as probably something you should look into yourself
and more research is coming out so fast to debunk or bunk it.

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andai
Does the caloric restriction thing basically mean that for each person there
is a certain amount of food they can eat before they die?

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sebringj
That wasn't a finding that I read about anywhere but I'm sure if you ate 1000
hotdogs in a day you would die.

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reasonattlm
One thing to bear in mind is that most of the relevant studies are carried out
in mice, and mouse telomere dynamics are significantly different from those of
humans.

Telomerase gene therapies clearly slow aging and extend life in mice to some
degree, but the actual mechanism involved is up for debate. We can argue that
it has more to do with stem cell activity and influence on mitochondrial
function for example than keeping cells out of senescence.

My comfort level for telomerase therapies would be increased by running them
in dogs or another longer lived mammal with telomere dynamics that are closer
to those of humans and observing the results there. Of course this might well
be beaten out by actually running them in humans if the BioViva / Sierra
Sciences collaboration gets their medical center running in Fiji to offer the
gene therapy at a reasonable cost some time in the next year or two.

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atomical
Liz Parrish had some cutting edge genetic therapy done to increase her
telomeres.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_name_is_liz_parrish_ceo_of_bioviva_the/)

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imaginenore
We don't know how it will end up for her. She might live past 150, or she
might get horrible cancers all over her body in 5 years.

We also don't know if she actually had undergone the treatment, it can simply
be a scam.

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atomical
Truly, anything can be a scam. I think the most disappointing outcome for her
will be if she lives out the rest of her life in an average way. Did it work?
Didn't it work? Sure, living past 90 would be nice but did her treatment have
anything to do with it if that's the case? There are some things we won't know
in our lifetimes.

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tormeh
If it worked I would expect her to start looking younger in some way.

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industriousthou
I believe increasing telomere length may slow ageing, but wouldn't reverse it.

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daemonk
Tert has been shown to have non-canonical functions interacting with signaling
pathways (wnt and nf-kb). It's easy to think of genes as a single function
entity when the truth is a lot of genes have pleiotropic effects. The same can
probably be said for other genes involved in telomere maintenance. It's
probably more complicated than a simple correlation between length of telomere
and resulting phenotype.

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badloginagain
This is a really well written article. I knew nothing about telomars, their
importance in the field, nor the controversy surrounding their length.

While some of it was over my head (specifically that image of telomar
transformation(?)), the author did a fantastic job of giving an overview of
the field, create a compelling argument (at least to a layman), all with
several links that (I hope) support and cite his arguments.

Good lessons in persuasive writing here.

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UhUhUhUh
Interesting how entities initially considered more or less as packaging stuff
without much use, such as histones and telomeres, turn out to be a lot more
than that. People, and investors, may tend to focus on the obviously active
part of the code and to overlook the architecture.

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darpa_escapee
I feel like evolution would have weeded out significant waste from common
systems shared among life. We may have been too quick to throw things we find
in the junk pile instead of the "probably don't completely understand how this
fits together yet" heap.

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oh_sigh
I agree with your second point, but not the first.

If true waste has very little/no cost associated with it, evolution wouldn't
be able to select for it's removal.

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aoeu345
That's a great point, though I surmise that there is no waste in the human
body.

Human's constituents are entirely composed of cells or organelles, and those
all consume energy. If there were any cells/organelles that did not contribute
at all to the human, he would have a lower performance than humans without the
waste, and so evolution would select them out.

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grzm
_I surmise that there is no waste in the human body_

This is a naive interpretation of evolution. For one, selection doesn't occur
instantaneously.

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jondiggsit
So quick questions: Is this Elysium Health supplement I'm taking going to give
me cancer?!

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arrosenberg
I've seen those ads. It's pretty unlikely that it will substantially increase
your cancer risk. I would also mention that while there is some science behind
their claims, the studies they put on their site are insufficient (n=120
people, t=8 weeks of study) to make any medically valid claims, and the
efficacy of the treatment (consuming NAD+ and plant sterols) hasn't been
clinically proven to have a positive effect on human health. They also don't
claim the participants saw a benefit, just that their NAD+ levels were
elevated

I am personally bullish on the thought process behind NAD+ [1], but I probably
wouldn't buy a consumer product for it today without some serious clinical
proof. Caveat Emptor.

1 -
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112140/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112140/)

Disclaimer: I'm involved in the business side of the aging industry, but I
only have a BSc in Genetics/Biochem, not a PhD.

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pfarnsworth
This type of thinking is exactly why we are where we are today with Trump.

It's not an endorsement to have a conversation, for God's sake. People seem to
have forgotten that freedom of speech includes the freedom to sound as stupid
as you want. If it's so glaringly obvious to you that it's dumb, then have the
confidence that others will find it dumb too. Don't deny people the
opportunity to even talk with them because they're interested in what others
have to say. You end up driving people underground, which is even more
dangerous, like what happened with the Trump supporters, who were too afraid
to even talk about the issues that were motivating them.

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sigmar
You are conflating minority viewpoints with reputability. No serious media
source would invite a conspiracy theorist with no credibility. Differing
viewpoints are an important part of any discussion.

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pfarnsworth
Stop changing the subject. The issue that you brought up is whether or not Joe
Rogan giving air time to something is endorsing it. Which it isn't. It's
having a conversation on a podcast.

And why are you comparing Joe Rogan to a "serious media source"? He's a
comedian with a podcast, who can talk to whomever he wants that he deems
interesting.

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sigmar
>Stop changing the subject. The issue that you brought up is whether or not
Joe Rogan giving air time to something is endorsing it.

I was referring to an endorsement of the person, not the topic. ie "Seems
irresponsible to give a platform to moon landing truthers."

~~~
nitrogen
The concept of "platform" (and thus no-platforming) is an area where IMO
ostensibly progressive society has gone off the rails. It starts with good
intentions, maybe as a reaction to the silliness of giving equal time to
scientists and unqualified critics on mainstream media.

But then it morphs into this idea that thinking and talking about an idea, or
being seen with people who hold an idea, without foaming at the mouth against
it is the same as endorsing it, and that is a very dangerous place to be.

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cantrevealname
The first time I heard about telomeres many years ago, it blew my mind. What
everyone has thought of, but no scientist is willing to say out loud is that
_maybe_ if the telomere count is reset (like it is for babies!), then we'd
have cellular immortality. You could still die from accidents, disease,
homicide, but not from ageing.

One sentence background info: Telomeres set a count on how many times a cell
can divide before it ceases to divide and becoming old and useless; in humans,
the count is 40-60 divisions and then you (the cell anyway) dies. Simplified,
but that's the essence.

Yes, this is all extreme speculation, but if telomeres are the basis of
ageing, can you imagine the upside for discovering a "cure" for that?

If only someone like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg were willing to throw a
billion or $10 billion to answer this question. Ideally it should be
government funding it -- like an Apollo moon shot or Manhattan project effort.
But any kind of research with words like "immortality" in it will never get
off the ground. It has to be funded by an individual or maverick organization.

~~~
Lewton
"What everyone has thought of, but no scientist is willing to say out loud"

What no scientist is willing to say out loud, is basically what scientists
have been saying out loud since the mid 90ies. It has nothing to do with
unwillingness to talk about the subject, but it has not been pushed that hard
because there was* a strong belief that messing with telomeres had a very high
risk of causing cancer.

*is? Although I think this belief has softened lately

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cantrevealname
> what scientists have been saying out loud since the mid 90ies

Maybe when they speak privately, but every scientist has a huge fear of
branded a crackpot if they said something even remotely like, "I'm researching
the possibility that we can make immortal cells".

To take one concrete example, Geron, a company that is/was very active in this
area was always careful to say that they are investigating telomerase to
control cancers, etc. They never even hint that they might possibly be
interested in the Holy Grail result of solving ageing.

