Dr. Dave’s Telomere Book Part 1: The Introduction

Telomeres May Be The Single Most Important Health Indicator Ever Discovered.

First off I want to congratulate you on taking the first step to better understanding telomeres and how they relate to your health. They are a complex topic, and I’ll do my best to explain each and every piece of information you need to know about them. I strongly believe they are one of the single greatest indicators of lifespan and health, and it’s of the utmost importance that everyone understands them. Way to be a leader of the pack by taking this first step! With that in mind, let’s get started!!

I have watched a lot of changes in medical thinking over the past couple of decades, particularly the last ten years.  Sadly, there is a huge lag between pioneering studies and pioneering thinkers and the way medicine is practiced in this country. Medical practice in this country is far more often driven by dollars and cents then actual intellectual information.

For instance, those of us who practiced real Anti-aging medicine knew that vascular disease is caused by chronic oxidative stress that the body can no longer handle.  Antioxidants were the first line of defense against this stress that is going on right now inside of you and me.

Five years ago or so, Time Magazine had this “revelation” as its cover story.  Subsequently, the powers that be (you know, Big Pharma, traditional drug oriented medical authorities) felt sufficiently threatened to mount an “Anti – antioxidant” campaign that is still going on to this day.


Such brilliant headlines as

“Vitamins no good for you”, “Antioxidants show no benefit” and my personal favorite, “Antioxidants may make oxidation worse, if you take too much” all did their part to foster fear-based decisions by doctors and their patients.

If you knew how to read studies, of course most of them did not show what the headlines claimed and almost all of them were poorly done, with the same tiny doses of Vitamin E and Vitamin C that would ensure failure because of dose and the actual anti-oxidant choices themselves. Some of this was the fault of “alternative medicine”, however, whose early pioneers had championed the “Get healthy with Vitamin C” type approach to supplementation.

Once the way to failure was clear, the naysayers could simply repeat the same study over and over again to PROVE anti-oxidants don’t work.

Perhaps the saddest thing

Is today we have bona fide ways to measure, not only the antioxidant capacity of supplements, foods, the amount of inflammation in our bodies, but we have an even more definitive measurement of how all of this affects us, that almost no one is using: Telomere length.

To recap, telomeres are the biologic time clocks I wrote a book about with two other very bright people, – in 2010 called, ”The Immortality Edge” it was also all about telomeres. Ultimately, the telomere represents how long your cells (and thus you!) live.

Most of my readers know a ton more about them than their doctors do.  Today’s information is all about telomeres, vascular disease and inflammation, and of course the role of antioxidants in preserving telomere health and your health.

If you take the cells that line your blood vessels and expose them to oxidation, they will mount an effective defense, for a while.  At some point, the damage will be too much to repair and the health of the cell will begin to suffer and so will you!  Functionally, the cell may do its job, but something has to give. What gives is the telomere – that little biologic time clock that determines how long the cell can live and how many healthy cells you have to play with.

Researchers who did this experiment found that when the cell was asked to duplicate itself to make new cells to handle the vascular lining, it lost twice as much telomere length as cells that were not depleted of antioxidants.

What results is, the skin within the blood vessels gets too thin and sickly and cannot repair itself any more. Then, all of the steps that lead to clogged blood vessels, strokes, heart attacks and so forth get started.

I will save the speech on why Vitamin C and Vitamin E do little to change this, but I will tell you there ARE antioxidants that slow down this loss, combat inflammation, help cells keep their regenerative power as long as possible and, if they are ever seriously studied, will make a lot of pharmaceuticals unnecessary.

Which means they will never be seriously studied.

My contribution to the field of telomere based antioxidants are the Immortality Edge Packs. You won’t find anything else out there that cares for your telomeres like this does.

When I wrote my parts of our book “The Immortality Edge“, I spent a ton of time researching the best antioxidants for that very purpose.  The Immortality Edge Packs are the result of that work and thus are unique among supplements.

Almost 5 Decades Later…

So here we are now, almost -five decades after inflammation was discovered as a cause, not only of disease, but of aging – premature aging to be specific.  It is treatable, reversible to some degree at least, and directly related to the health of the telomere biologic time clocks.

Almost no one is testing for it; almost no one is treating it, especially not Big Pharma. Twenty or thirty years from now, there will be a patented antioxidant drug that all of the alphabet agencies approve of and all of the busy overwhelmed doctors hand out like candy (or statin drugs!).

But, if you wait for that “revelation”, you and your cells will be 20 or 30 years older.

The choice is yours, but you can bet I am not waiting. I want to be a thick skinned individual!

Dr. Dave


PS There is a ton of information on telomeres, so I’ve decided to break it up over a number of chapters, with this one being the first and many more to come. I’ve found it’s best to digest information a bit at a time so it really has a chance to sink in.

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2 thoughts on “Dr. Dave’s Telomere Book Part 1: The Introduction”

  1. Ellen Lenchner

    I have recently been diagnosed with Polycythemia Vera a blood disorder that causes my red blood platelets to continuously multiply which can lead to heart attack or stroke. Would like to know more about Telemores.

    1. Hello Ellen,

      This is Bailey with The Longevity Edge it’s a pleasure to serve you today! I sent you two emails with 2 links. One of them to Dr. Dave’s Blogs, the other to his Q&A.

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