Cellular Science
Cellular Science
My Favorite Telomere Scientist
I have had the chance to meet most of the major figures in telomere biology over the last fifteen years. Of all of them, the one whose work…
My feelings about salivary telomere testing
I want to address salivary telomere testing directly. A company called TeloMe offered a salivary based telomere test and the marketing was getting traction in some health and…
The cancer doctors were wrong about telomerase activators and antioxidants!
I can’t tell you how many times I heard this from cancer doctors (oncologists): “Don’t give my patients antioxidants; you’ll blunt the effect of the chemo and help…
New Study on Telomeres Answers some Huge Questions
A couple of questions have been nagging at those of us who study telomeres and telomerase closely. The first is – what is the correlation, if any, between…
Short telomeres are associated with decreased cancer survival
At the end of 2010, JAMA published a large meta-analysis on telomere length and cancer incidence. JAMA is not usually my favorite journal for this kind of work,…
Yet another study connects human lifespan with telomere length
Scientists are by nature skeptics. Usually it takes more than one positive result and one positive study to convince them. There is no set number of studies you…
Aging fat as a cause for diabetes – the role of short telomeres
Over the past couple of days, I have dug pretty deep into the metabolic associations between obesity, diabetes, and short telomeres. The end result is of course, accelerated…
Telomeres and Your Heart
Warning: this blog is not just regurgitation or rewording of a press release from somewhere else. It contains original content and original commentary. Since February is National Heart…
Telomeres and Drugs and Big Pharma
Heart disease has one of the longest standing associations with short telomeres in the aging literature. The relationship was first noted decades ago, and it has held up…
Telomerase magic
If you study the biologic time clocks in the cell, known as telomeres, and you study the enzyme that lengthens them, telomerase, you are truly learning about magic.…
Old Dad versus Young Dad – who should father children?!
Ah yes, the more we know, the more we don’t know! In this country and other Western nations there seems to be an increasing trend for men to…
Fish oil and Telomeres – it’s all about length
I want to believe; I really do! I want to believe that fish oil, specifically MY fish oil, is a telomerase activator! But there is this little thing called lying…