Читать книгу Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever онлайн

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It’s clearly critical to keep your telomeres long. There are some studies showing ways to lengthen telomeres, but not enough evidence yet to say that we know for sure how to do it in every case. But we do know some things about what make telomeres shorter and how to protect them from shortening. Interestingly, there seems to be a direct connection between telomere shortening and stress. In one study, women with the highest levels of perceived stress had telomeres that were shorter by the equivalent of one full decade than women who said they experienced less stress.³⁸ This is an important finding because it offers evidence that how you experience psychological stress has as much of a physiological impact as environmental stress. And this makes sense, since both psychological and physiological stresses are associated with increased oxidative stress in the body.

Exercise is another important way of preventing early telomere shortening. Researchers in Germany looked at telomere length in four groups of people: those who were young and sedentary, those who were young and active, those who were middle-aged and sedentary, and those who were middle-aged and active. There wasn’t much of a difference between the two groups of young people, but when the participants were middle-aged, the change in telomere lengths was striking. The sedentary middle-aged folks had telomeres that were 40 percent shorter than the young people, while the active middle-aged folks had telomeres that were only 10 percent shorter than the young people. In other words, the active group reduced their telomere shortening by 75 percent.³⁹ Exercise significantly reduces perceived stress levels and inflammation,⁴⁰ which may help to explain these results.