You Don’t Know What You Can’t Remember: Telomeres and Memory

Memory is a fragile thing.  I am sure you have had days where you can’t seem to find a name, a set of keys or even get a bit confused on what should be a familiar ride or hike, especially if the season has changed.

Then there is the specter of Alzheimer Disease which is looming larger and larger as our population ages.  It is in the minds of many an unavoidable risk of aging.

It’s been nearly 10 years since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Liz Blackburn and her colleagues for their work in telomeres and the discovery of telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens them.

While much of the work they did predated the prize by 20 years, almost no one had heard much about the telomere let alone telomerase. But a small group of dedicated men, people like Bill Andrews, Jerry Shay and Woody Wright, my Immortality Edge co-author Mike Fossel and of course Cal Harley at Geron had been working on the concept of lengthening telomeres to extend life.

I have been fortunate to speak at length and learn at length from each of them. Mike in particular was and is championing the concept of increasing telomerase expression in brain cells to de-age them.

My friend in Spain, Maria Blasco has already shown telomerase increase increases life span in mammals without increasing cancer.  Many people who have other agendas cling to other ways of improving life span and health span- ways other than telomerase expression.

I wish them well.

But like it or not lengthening the telomere does some pretty amazing things including de-aging specific areas of the body.  Namely the immune system.  Now I am personally 100% convinced that it does this by stem cell activation.  I am also 100% convinced that it does this in other areas of the body as well.

I look at it this way.  Everything else that is claimed to lengthen life does so by increasing life span within what is already normal.  I am sure to go beyond normal ( 80 years for most of us and 122 maximum so far) we are going to need to turn on telomerase and keep it turned on for a long time to stabilize our genes, our epigenetics and our long term health.

The first words out of a skeptic’s mouth are, “You can’t prove it!”  Bottom line no one can about any technology and no one will. As I have said for 5 years now when it becomes obvious to everyone, everyone will simple accept it as law and pretend they never said anything else.

The time grows closer and closer each month.

This month, a study equating longer telomeres with less degeneration in the memory areas of the brain was released by the Blackburn lab at Stanford and UCSF.  I have cited other studies in the past that equate telomere length to the presence or absence of Alzheimer Disease as well.

IN my own experience I have seen several years of reversal of biologic age as defined by increased telomere length ( they are supposed to get shorter as you age!) and a decrease in the critically short telomeres.

It shows itself as a 1300 base pari increase over 4 years.  Now there are human studies that show improvement in length and stabilization of telomere loss that have been done in 2010, 2011, and 2013 but these studies were only done over 1 year.  I wish they could have waited longer because this does take some time.  I try to remind my Immortality Edge Pack users of that while they are getting the more obvious benefits.

I do not want Alzheimer Disease.  I don’t want my 88 year old mother to suffer from that. Guess what she takes high doses of every day. Guess what other telomere supplements she takes?  I do not need to remind her even though she was never a vitamin person.

I might need to remind you and I will do so from time to time because I do not want you to face the prospect of not being able to remember reminders!

The studies continue to mount.  What are you waiting for!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top