The Swedish Pilates Studio

Why do we age?

Researchers have yet to unravel the mysteries with aging. But more and more is discussed around the role of the telomeres. Telomeres are the region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromatid, which protects the end of the chromosome.

Telomeres play an important role in cell division. As telomeres shorten, a critical threshold is reached where the cells no longer replicate and starts to decline and eventually dies.

Each time a cell divides, the DNA unwraps and the information in the DNA is copied. The process doesn t copy all of the DNA information- the telomeres are not copied. The telomeres lose a little bit of length each time this happens.

Researcher now understands more of the life of the telomeres and the mechanism by which the telomeres can be restored.

There is a lot of data from laboratory tests supporting the theory that stress and other oxidative damage also damage the telomeres and increases the rate by which telomeres are shorten.

Living a healthy lifestyle by not smoking, lowering stress levels, exercising and eating healthy are thought to slow down the rate of telomeres loss, but we can probably not undo what is already done.

While we may not be able to stop cell ageing, at least not yet, we can adopt lifestyle modifications such as avoiding excessive stress and maintain ideal weight.

Healthy living is our best defence in slowing down the sign and symptoms of ageing.

So if we eat healthy, exercise, stress less and don't smoke we can avoid many of our chronic diseases, age related diseases and ageing, so what 's stopping us?


Yours in Health & Fitness,
Birgitta

www.newfitness.com.au