Telomere Length Is Associated With Dementia Risk

[Mike Lustgarten]

 

[Mike Lustgarten]

Telomere Length Test #6: Correlations With Diet

 

[Mike Lustgarten]

 

[Ron Put]

Interesting, Mike. How much cacao nibs are you consuming?

I actually switched to 10-20g of raw powder, since it has far less fats than nibs. Have you considered that it may be the fats that are negatively impacting telomere length?

[Alex K Chen]

He hasn't found a difference between saturated and unsaturated fats yet. Esp MUFAs/olive oil...

Also how about total omega-6 intake?? The RATIO is not all that matters

I guess I'm glad I don't like cacao that much. I can't overeat cacao the same way I overeat nuts. Also, cacao sometimes makes my chest feel "weird"

Edited September 17, 2023 by InquilineKea

[Ron Put]

On 9/14/2023 at 3:59 PM, InquilineKea said:

He hasn't found a difference between saturated and unsaturated fats yet. Esp MUFAs/olive oil...

The saturated fats in cacao nibs contain a large proportion (about a third) of stearic acid, which doesn't appear to raise cholesterol. But there is also enough palmitic acid to cause me to switch to cacao powder, which contains considerably less fat.

If palmitic acid is responsible to a significant extent for the shortening of telomeres, Mike might want to experiment with powder instead.

[Mike Lustgarten]

Or cut down on the quantity, which I've done for the next test...

[Ron Put]

3 hours ago, Mike Lustgarten said:

Or cut down on the quantity, which I've done for the next test...

Thanks, it makes sense, but if the effect is indeed reduced, it still won't allow us to identify if it was likely the fat content or something else in cacao (my bet is on the fat).

[Mike Lustgarten]

Definitely, thanks Ron. Rather than identifying the culprit, I'm happy to reduce cacao intake, assuming correlation = causation. I'd rather eat less of the whole food than eat the processed version (cacao powder).

[Mike Lustgarten]

Telomere Test #8

 

[drewab]

It's really quite interesting that there are basically no correlations with specific foods and telomere length in your data (outside of parmesan cheese). It's good to see that lower caloric intake is associated with longer telomeres. Are there any other ideas you have that may related to telomere length? As a side note, you mention making home made chocolate out of cocoa and dates. It would be amazing if you took photos or did a video of your daily food intake to see what the consumption visually looks like!

[Mike Lustgarten]

Thanks drewab. Aside from macros, micros, and foods, CR may be the biggest factor, we'll see how the story plays out...

I show daily diet data, including pics, on Patreon (not trying to plug, I promise!)

[Mike Lustgarten]

Telomere Length Test #7 in 2023: My Best Data Yet

 

[corybroo]

Does your exercise program change over time?  I’m asking because I’ve seen a number of articles claiming that HIIT training is associated with longer telomere length.  For example,

Here’s Why HIIT Workouts May Be Best for Your Body — and Brain

HIIT tends to burn more calories in a shorter period of time than other forms of exercise and can help speed up weight loss. [This would raise the question of whether it’s HIIT or lower excess of calories that is providing the benefit.  CB]

At the end of a 26-week study period, individuals who did aerobic or strength training saw no change in telomere length. The HIIT group saw a “two-fold” increase in length.

[Mike Lustgarten]

Interestingly, the average daily HR is inversely correlated with TL in my data, but that correlation is unadjusted-when accounting for calorie intake, the average daily HR is no longer significantly associated with TL. That further implicates calorie intake as the biggest potential driver, in my case.

[IgorF]

While reading a 30years old Hayflicks's book on aging I started to wonder if longer telomeres are really a wanted thing, especially without any possibility to distinguish between the cases, e.g. they are long because not used much (thus could be a proxy of less need to do so) or because the cells have slightly increased telomerare activity (or ALT https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/14/3/715) that "fixes" them not for good.

Googled a bit and it seems there are already described some unwanted cases https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/long-telomeres-may-heighten-cancer-risks

https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/29625-telomere-shortening-protects-cancer/

https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/ijo.2023.5526

https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/115/2/208/6958556

Perhaps a non-cheap test done periodically could give some clue about individual trajectory but its reliability is also questionable - the same technique is perhaps possible to be preserved to have comparable results but which tissue to analyze? There are tens of them that could be of importance in an individual's particular case..

 

Br,

Igor

Edited March 16 by IgorF

[corybroo]

On 3/16/2024 at 3:52 AM, IgorF said:

Perhaps a non-cheap test done periodically could give some clue about individual trajectory

How about individual organ trajectory?

Stanford Medicine-led study finds way to predict which of our organs will fail first

A study of 5,678 people, led by Stanford Medicine investigators, has shown that our organs age at different rates — and when an organ’s age is especially advanced in comparison with its counterpart in other people of the same age, the person carrying it is at heightened risk both for diseases associated with that organ and for dying.

“We can estimate the biological age of an organ in an apparently healthy person,” said the study’s senior author, Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, a professor of neurology and the D. H. Chen Professor II. “That, in turn, predicts a person’s risk for disease related to that organ.”

[Instead of a single estimate of biological age for an individual}  “We can estimate the biological age of an organ in an apparently healthy person,” said the study’s senior author, Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, a professor of neurology and the D. H. Chen Professor II. “That, in turn, predicts a person’s risk for disease related to that organ.”

distinct numbers for each of 11 key organs, organ systems or tissues: heart, fat, lung, immune system, kidney, liver, muscle, pancreas, brain, vasculature and intestine.

“When we compared each of these organs’ biological age for each individual with its counterparts among a large group of people without obvious severe diseases, we found that 18.4% of those age 50 or older had at least one organ aging significantly more rapidly than the average,” Wyss-Coray said. “And we found that these individuals are at heightened risk for disease in that particular organ in the next 15 years.”

Only about 1 in 60 people in the study had two organs undergoing aging at that fast clip. But, Wyss-Coray said, “They had 6.5 times the mortality risk of somebody without any pronouncedly aged organ.”

While there was some modest aging synchrony among separate organs within any person’s body, that person’s individual organs largely went their separate ways along the aging path.

The researchers found that the identified age gaps for 10 of the 11 organs studied (the only exception being intestine) were significantly associated with future risk of death from all causes over 15 years of follow-up. 

Having an accelerated-aging organ (defined as having a 1-standard-deviation higher algorithm-scored biological age of the organ than the group average for that organ among people of the same chronological age) carried a 15% to 50% higher mortality risk over the next 15 years, depending on which organ was affected. 

People with accelerated heart aging … were at 2.5 times as high a risk of heart failure

Those with “older” brains were 1.8 times as likely to show cognitive decline over five year

[IgorF]

yep, I already mentioned this in https://www.crsociety.org/topic/18574-different-organs-age-at-differrent-rates-attempts-to-estimate-organ-age/?do=findComment&comment=47690

Actually the knowledge about different speed of aging in organs is not something new, Hayflick for his book on aging used so called Baltimore study (BLSA) as a huge source of good quality information that reveals this fact. The problem is that for an individual person all this stuff being discussed novadays (often originated from "contextless data sciencing") together with all the scores and clocks and other similar stuff is rarely actionable, if at all. Also 70% of deaths appears to be somehow cardiovacular and up to 80% of them is named sudden (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507854/) with aging of the heart itself or intima media or growing disfunctionality of the immune system or (a long list of other known things) not mentioned at all. People with "overused" heart that is "aged" faster due to ultramarathons do not show some big difference in an earlier deaths due to heart (some anecdotes are known but statistically they are not significant AFAIK). Thus as with other statistics-based things - it is useful for organisations in planning their resources and is less useful for an individual in personal behavior and risk planning (well, sometimes useful to some small degree). But almost nothing new and actionable for an individual comes from these popular now constructs, at least yet. Maybe they will mature to something but it will take decades (as with HRV - it is something researchers discovered in 80-90es as potentially useful as a tool but it is still not ready to be a solid ground for individual usage, despite of being productized heavily within fitness areas).