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This one hurts, I understand. When I was in my twenties, I was the master of the grill. I loved charring meat over an open flame, but now I love my clean, highly efficient cells even more. It’s worth ordering grass-fed steak with no char.

PILLAR 7—TELOMERE SHORTENING

Take a moment to picture the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces that protect them from fraying. Your telomeres serve a very similar function—they are the endcaps of your DNA that protect your chromosomes from fraying with wear and tear (aka age). An enzyme called telomerase is responsible for maintaining telomeres, but these caps naturally deteriorate over time because each time a cell copies itself, the telomeres shorten. As you age, they get shorter and shorter until they can no longer protect the cell. The cell then either stops growing or submits to apoptosis. In fact, there is a term for the number of times a cell can divide before it is no longer protected by telomeres and dies—it’s called the Hayflick limit.³¹

Shortened telomeres are linked to a weakened immune system and chronic and degenerative diseases like heart disease and heart failure,³² cancer,³³ diabetes,³⁴ and osteoporosis.³⁵ The rate at which your telomeres shorten plays a huge role in determining the rate at which you age. Scientists view telomere length as a reliable marker of your biological age (as opposed to your chronological age). People with shorter than average telomere length for their age have a higher risk for serious disease and early death³⁶ than their peers with longer telomeres. In one study, people over the age of sixty with shorter than average telomeres had three times the risk of dying from heart disease and eight times the risk of dying from an infectious disease³⁷ as someone with average-sized telomeres for their age.