By David Blyweiss, M.D., Advanced Natural Wellness

June 02, 2014

• The secret to a longer and healthier life
• Reverse aging with this extraordinary nutrient
• Another way to rev up your anti-aging potential

Life is precious. And I’ll bet most people dream of living a long life and feeling young forever.

Well, we can’t feel like 20-year-olds forever. But don’t let that quench your enthusiasm, because I have some wonderful news for you today.

It’s a Nobel Prize winning discovery that allows you to slow down your aging clock and avoid many of the health problems that come along with growing older. It can make you look younger, feel younger and extend your life. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to being “forever young.”

I’m talking about telomeres (pronounced TEE-loh-meers).

You might have heard about these before. Telomeres are strands of DNA at the ends of your chromosomes. They’re sometimes compared to the plastic tips on shoelaces, because their job is to protect the ends from fraying and deteriorating.

There’s a problem with them, though. As we age, our telomeres shorten. Each time a cell divides, some of the telomere is lost. When the telomere becomes too short, the chromosome reaches a “critical length” and can no longer replicate.

Ultimately, the shorter your telomeres, the shorter your life will be. Shortened telomeres are also linked to many age-related conditions, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, and Alzheimer’s.

This makes telomeres a sort of cellular time clock – one that either speeds up or slows down your biological age.

How can you slow down the clock and put the brakes on aging?

In many ways, the human body remains a mystery. It’s not like a car engine where we know exactly how every single part works. But we are learning more and more every year.

Until recently it was believed the key reason for aging was mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria power every cell in your body with energy. But they slowly run down and begin to malfunction as we age.

Newer research finds that’s only part of the story.

It’s not your mitochondria that are in the driver’s seat. It’s your telomeres!

The shorter your telomeres and the more frayed your chromosome ends are, the more impaired your mitochondria become. That’s two strikes against you when it comes to aging gracefully.

The key, then, is to start repairing some of this damage – in an attempt to turn back the clock. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to do this.

One of my favorite supplements is resveratrol. A lot of my patients call it “reverse-it-all.” That’s pretty much a true story, because it really does reverse-it-all when it comes to aging.

Resveratrol works by activating two genes critical to telomere protection. One of them is Sirt1. This is your “anti-aging” gene. We’ve long known Sirt1 protects your body from disease by revving up the mitochondria.

Now we’ve learned it also reduces telomere shortening by increasing telomerase activity. (Telomerase is the enzyme inside your body that protects your telomeres and helps them stay longer as you age.)

The other gene is called WRN helicase. This is a gene that helps protect and repair telomeres. It also helps prepare cells for division so they can be copied properly. Low WRN activity is the cause of Werner Syndrome, a premature aging disease.

This is all good news, right? So, you’ll be astonished when I drop the next bombshell on you…

Resveratrol is great by itself. I highly recommend it. But there’s actually a way to amplify the results you get with resveratrol.

You see, resveratrol has a highly potent cousin. The cousin’s name is pterostilbene.

Both of these compounds have very similar properties. They also work synergistically, which means a combination of the two is more effective than using them separately.

But there is one place pterostilbene really shines. It’s a whopping four times more bioavailable than resveratrol alone. So, combining the two really makes good sense if you really want to turn back the aging clock.

Look at it this way…

You can be a Yugo, struggling to get started and make your way forward on a good day or, worse, completely breaking down on a bad day. This is how you’ll feel if you let your telomeres run down.

Or, you can be a turbo-boost Porsche, all revved up to get on with your life and have a fine time doing it! That’s what longer telomeres can do for you.

I recommend at least 50 mg. of resveratrol and 25 mg. of pterostilbene each day. This will protect your telomeres and mitochondria to keep you going full throttle (think Porsche!) for years to come.

Sources:

Sahin E, et al. Telomere dysfunction induces metabolic and mitochondrial compromise. Nature. 2011 Feb 17;470(7334):359-65.

Palacios JA, et al. SIRT1 contributes to telomere maintenance and augments global homologous recombination. J Cell Biol. 2010 Dec 27;191(7):1299-313.

Uchiumi F, et al. The effect of resveratrol on the Werner syndrome RecQ helicase gene and telomerase activity. Curr Aging Sci. 2011 Feb;4(1):1-7