telomere

The present brace of telomere-related biotech startups are commercializing ways to measure telomere length rather than extend it.

When the telomere is in bad condition, your cells divide slower or even not divide itself.

I made that statement vague because new data is emerging about the telomere network,so I'm not sure what is the current correct way to think about telomere's.

It's not the idea of telomere extension or telomerase, but a quick hit, temporary way of inducing that extension.

Any mechanism that globally, or possibly even narrowly, extends telomere length in people will raise the risk of suffering cancer.

There is a statistically significant correlation between average telomere lengths in immune cells and age and illness across a population.

The span of time is different, our telomere biology is different, and the balance of aging and cell activity is different.

In general if you're thinking of aging as accumulated molecular damage, telomere shortening looks like a consequence not a root cause.

Stopping telomere shortening without cure for the deluge of cancers that would follow seems unlikely.

No no, cause would be something like length of telomere being short or something.

Ordinary, non-stem cell populations exhibit a range of telomere lengths, some short, some long.

For me the most interesting conclusion (from the blog author) was that telomere-lengthening treatments may only give you an extra 5 years.

So telomerase/telomere lengthening is exceedingly unlikely to be a "silver bullet" for aging.

The underlying journal publication "Mindfulness-based cancer recovery and supportive-expressive therapy maintain telomere length relative to controls in distressed breast cancer survivors" is open-access,[1] so medically knowledgeable people here can read the study and check whether its methodology makes sense.

The bottom line was that telomere length robustly predicts longevity, even after factoring out the effect of age, smoking, exercise, blood cholesterol, BMI, and alcohol consumption." Mitteldorf argues that short telomeres are not just a marker but a major cause of mortality, and discusses the hypothesis that short telomeres protect against cancer (a theory he doesn't subscribe to).

Telomere length is more dynamic than this simple picture, however.