How can we slow down the aging process? The secret lies in our telomeres. These tiny parts of our DNA play a crucial role in our aging process and susceptibility to diseases. As we age, telomeres gradually shorten, leaving our DNA vulnerable to mutations and breakdown. This affects our immune system, neurotransmitter regulation, and overall health.
In light of recent global events, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve discovered that even young and seemingly healthy individuals can have shortened telomeres, making them more susceptible to severe illness. So, in this episode, we delve into what telomeres are, their importance, and how we can protect and improve their function to enhance our lifespan and quality of life.
“We are genetically designed to live 120 years.” Dr. Sal
Key takeaways:
- The one-pill theory isn’t effective for achieving good health. It is a combination of various factors that contribute to overall well-being.
- Telomeres, which are parts of our DNA, shorten as we age, making us more susceptible to diseases.
- The immune system plays a crucial role in protecting us from diseases, and having balanced immunity is important for preventing cell mutations and cancers.
- Shortened telomeres have been linked to increased vulnerability to severe illnesses, such as COVID-19.
- Taking measures to protect and improve the telomeres, such as consuming a healthy diet and taking supplements like niacin or nmn, can lead to a longer and healthier lifespan.
Dr. Sal [00:00:00]:
The one pill theory isn't the way it works. You know, well, don't you have one pill and then fix it now? It doesn't work way. It's a combination of all these things put together. Welcome to the health quest podcast. Your guide to god's will for good health. Hello. My name is Doctor Sal, and I've been a practicing surgeon for well over 30 years. And my goal for each episode is that you'll be able to have your mind transformed to god's design for good health and affect the way that you eat and live.
Dr. Sal [00:00:51]:
you're new here, we release a new episode every week. And if you enjoy the content, would you leave us a good review? Because it really helps our ratings and allows us to reach out to more people, hopefully, in turn, to help them and change their ways. Thank you for your support. And on today's episode, we'll be talking about telemears. Let's dive right into today's health quest. So what are telomeres? Is it just saying because telomeres are the and parts of our DNA. And what's interesting is that when we're young, these telomeres are very long. But as our cells divide and we make new cells, especially as we start to age, these telomeres get shorter and shorter and shorter.
Dr. Sal [00:01:44]:
Now the the objective of the telomeres machinery. That means the epigenome and the DNA itself. As the telomeres get shorter, over time, That's when we start to age and we become more susceptible to diseases. Now there are a lot of factors as to why we age. I mean, our stem cells start to burn out. our proteins start folding over, and they're not as effective DNA mutations being exposed to chemicals, radiation, certain detrimental toxins that over time start to break down the genetic machinery as well as affect the energy producing mitochondria in the cells. If we don't produce enough energy, or fuel for the cell, components to function the cells start to break down. So the telomeres help us and they protect the DNA from breaking down or causing mutations, which can eventually result in cancers.
Dr. Sal [00:02:56]:
What we noticed is during the COVID period and it's fascinating that during certain episodes in human history, we are able to identify things that we didn't know about before. If we go back to the 19 eighties, when the HIV virus started to affect our community, in fact, our nation other parts of the world, we realized that people that eventually, serial converted into aids developed these cancers and these disorders which was not usual for a normal person to develop And we begin to realize that when your immune system is compromised, you become much more susceptible to a variety of different cancers. So having a strong and balanced immune system is what protects us from having a cell that becomes mutated, trans forms into a cancer. And then our immune system goes off and attacks it and eliminates it before it starts to replicate to a point where our immune it overwhelms the immune system and that it consumes us. Well, telomeres in one respect is when we're starting to realize is that this tail end of the DNA that begins to short as we age, we lose the protection of the DNA, which now doesn't allow the DNA or the epigenome to allow the, the DNA to function optimally where we could produce the proteins necessary to build immune system and to regulate the neurotransmitters. And so we're much more susceptible to these disorders. What we discovered is, as I was saying earlier, during COVID that, you know, one would say, well, doctor Sale, you're talking about individuals that were obese that were at much higher risk from dying from a cytokine storm that was caused by the COVID virus. And that was true because we described in that episode how their immune system is completely out of balance And when you go into cytokine storm, it just literally throws it completely out of whack and the immune system starts to attack.
Dr. Sal [00:05:08]:
The lung tissue destroys And that's how these people were dying from respiratory arrest and also causing some other issues in the body as well. But what we discovered from that is that there were young people that were dying that a lot of people thought they were healthy. Well, they weren't overweight. They didn't have any medical problems. Well, we're now starting to discover that a lot of these people actually had shortened telomeres in their DNA, which then didn't protect them from this raging virus which caused this immune, chaos or havoc that it did that would eventually result in the demise of some people. And so we're starting to realize that this telomere that protects us from all these disorders as it starts to shorten as we age now makes us more susceptible. So what can we do about it? How can we try to improve our lifespan, but more so than that, how do we maintain the quality of our life? Well, if you remember from one of our previous episodes on genetics, we talked about the epigenome. And if we can modified the epigen known by the foods that we eat, the supplements that we consume, what we get exposed to, and how we could protect ourselves from that, like the toxins that we're exposed to by detoxing our body even a couple times a year, helps us immensely by eating certain foods that keeps our liver function functioning optimally so that these toxins don't build up on our body and wreak havoc on our metabolic system and our endocrine system as well.
Dr. Sal [00:06:56]:
We begin to live a much healthier life, but with much better quality. You don't wanna be 75 or even 80 old in a wheelchair with Alzheimer's or dementia and having other health issues and on multiple medications. That's no way to live. That's not how god wanted us to live. I've seen people, especially women in their eighties in Europe, that would walk a quarter of a mile to go do their grocery shopping, and then they would carry their groceries back. These are eighty two eighty three year old women. There's places in the world such as, northeast portion of Pakistan known as the Hunza region where if you die at the age of ninety two, it's like dying 62 here in the United States. These people live well over a hundred years old.
Dr. Sal [00:07:41]:
Of course, they're in the mountains. They're not exposed to any factories. or pollutants. They don't have chemicals in the ground. They grow everything naturally in organic. They eat certain food that literally protects them from cancer. In fact, cancer is almost unheard of in that society. So there is that so called area, the blue zone like in the, portion of the Mediterranean where people that live on these certain islands in Greece and in Italy that live, well up into their nineties and a hundred years old.
Dr. Sal [00:08:12]:
Okinawa is the same way. It's the foods that they eat type of activities that they do so much different than our lifestyle here in the United States. There are certain things that we can do to help improve the quality of our life, but also protect the telomeres from breaking down as the cells start to divide. And your your b vitamins are very important, especially niacin, which is vitamin B3. years ago, Doctor Abramson, wrote a book, back that extended to his research back in the fifties sixties, The book came out in the 19 seventies that high levels of niacin helped generate energy at the level of the mitochondria but then it turns into a product called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. Now The problem with NICE and especially at high dosages is it causes this flushing effect, which can be reduced if you take a little bit of aspirin with it, but You can't keep taking aspirin every time you take these high dosages of NICE and because then you're gonna start taking too much aspirin, and that can have some detrimental effects too as well. So now there are vitamin supplements out there like nmn, which is, nicotinamide mononucleotide, which doesn't cause the flushing, but helps us build the NAD or new, nucleotide add 9 dine nikatenamide, ad 9 dinucleotide in the mitochondria, which generates the ETP which is the fuel that's used as energy to run all these systems in the cell. And by running them optimally, they also help protect the telomeres.
Dr. Sal [00:10:02]:
This is a wonderful thing because it not only by protecting those telomeres and taking these supplements, Of course, you gotta eat a healthy diet. You can't just go out there and eat fast foods and say, well, I'm gonna take these supplements because the the one pill theory isn't the way it works. You know, well, don't you have one pill and then fix it now? It doesn't work way. It's a combination of all these things put together. And so a good healthy diet, a lot of fruits and vegetables, nuts, berries, take you know, taking some of these supplements can protect the telomeres, reduce our chances of developing these disorders And on top of that, can give us a long life span, a healthy quality life. These are some of the things cover it. We can now alter the way we do things. Really, we have to because our society changed so dramatically.
Dr. Sal [00:11:08]:
But, yeah, if you take a look at these people from other parts of the world, even centuries ago and how they were able to survive infections and diseases using natural products. Remember, god put all the anecdotes in the food, but it's the quality of the food. We're talking about foods that are not tampered with with chemicals for manmade products or genetically modified foods or or vegetations. God had it all planned out. And this is why you gotta trust god in saying, Hey, we gotta go back to these old ways to maintain our health. The objective is to try to stay off the medications as much as possible and to live a good quality life. So, taking NMM, which you could buy at over you can get that now over the internet, or you can get them at the health food stores and supplementing that with your diet, but, of course, eating a good healthy diet will extend life and improve the quality of your life as well as protect from a lot of these diseases. And so one would think, well, doctor Sal, if these telomeres are shortening and now making us more susceptible to orders as we age.
Dr. Sal [00:12:31]:
Is there a way to lengthen the telomeres and protect us from aging or slow the aging process down and protect us even more. There is, and it's been suspect did, through some studies with some mice that the medication called tamoxifen, which they use for breast cancer for women. and it's to control the, the hormone estrogen, from exacerbating or worsening the breast cancer, they've shown that it actually lengthens the telomeres. The problem with that is this this, and here's the concern. Now with that, it also helps to prevent, further cancer However, there were some evidence that if these telomeres are sticking out too much and they touch another chromosome that it may stimulate or turn on that chromosome to produce an abnormal protein, which now can be detrimental. So my whole objective in in trying instead of trying to do things that, you know, we're gonna try to control our DNA which we are by the foods that we eat, but the of, and my point is is in lining our will with god's will is to eat the foods that keep us healthy. that keeps our normal system the way it was supposed to operate. And by doing that, that's why making the recommendation that the EPI genome, if that's maintained well, Then our bodies will it keeps us much healthier, and that's how we do live longer.
Dr. Sal [00:14:31]:
we are really genetically designed to live a 120 years. So, you know, when we're dying in our 60 and and early seventies when we still have the potential for another 20-30 years, at least get to 100. And that's happened. There are people that have lived that long, but we're not seeing it now. In fact, I'm being to see people in the hospitals that are dying in a much younger age And it look, we talked about the obesity issues that are now affiliated with the type 2 diabetes, the neurologic disorder that are becoming more and more prevalent. All of these things that we can basically avoid or prevent and put it down further down the road or not even get it and just live to have a good quality life. So with that, wanna thank you so much for joining us today on our episode. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a good review and visit our website at social media to connect with us more.
Dr. Sal [00:15:31]:
If you like what you see, and you wanna get access to the sources of research that we use in episode. It'll be available in the show notes in the description as well as on the webpage. As for now, I'm doctor Sal. Have a great day. and god bless.