{"id":38871,"date":"2013-09-16T18:30:48","date_gmt":"2013-09-16T22:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&p=38871"},"modified":"2013-09-16T19:18:12","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T23:18:12","slug":"intense-lifestyle-changes-may-lengthen-telomeres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/09\/16\/intense-lifestyle-changes-may-lengthen-telomeres\/","title":{"rendered":"Intense Lifestyle Changes May Lengthen Telomeres"},"content":{"rendered":"
A very small pilot study offers early evidence that a program of comprehensive lifestyle changes increases telomere length. Telomeres, which have been compared to the plastic caps that prevent\u00a0shoelaces from unravelling, help protect chromosomes. Telomere length is closely correlated to cellular aging: as we age the telomeres in our cells grow shorter.\u00a0The new study,\u00a0published online in\u00a0Lancet Oncology<\/em><\/a>, is one of the first studies to test whether\u00a0the Nobel-prize winning research into telomeres<\/a>\u00a0has a role to play in assessing the health of humans in typical clinical situations.The first author of the new paper is Dean Ornish, whose career has been devoted to demonstrating the benefits of a comprehensive lifestyle program consisting of radical changes in diet and exercise, accompanied by stress management and social support. The senior author of the paper is Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of telomeres and their significance. In the paper, Ornish and colleagues report on a long-term followup study in a small group of people with low-risk prostate cancer who agreed to follow Ornish’s rigorous program.<\/div>\n

After 5 years, telomere length increased in this group and decreased in a group of matched controls. Adherence to the lifestyle program varied among the participants, and some members of the control group made lifestyle changes on their own. The investigators reported that change in telomere length was significantly related to the degree of lifestyle change regardless of the study group. Further, as expected, telomere shortening was independently predicted by age, but the effect of the lifestyle program was independent of age and worked in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

In 2008, the same group reported\u00a0the 3-month results of their study<\/a>\u00a0showing\u00a0an increase in telomerase activity in the treatment group. (Telomerase is the enzyme that repairs telomeres and is associated with telomere lengthening.) Surprisingly, however, the 5-year results found no significant differences in telomerase activity between the two groups.\u00a0Prostate-specific antigen values, a measure of prostate cancer activity, also did not differ significantly between the two groups.<\/p>\n

The authors offered the following interpretation of their study:<\/p>\n

“Our findings are consistent with those of earlier studies, but to our knowledge this is\u00a0the first study of any intervention that has shown a significant change in relative telomere length in human immune-system cells over time when compared with a non-intervention group. We noted a correlation between the degree of positive lifestyle change and increase in telomere length when all participants were assessed together, which supports the internal validity of this study. Although our sample size was small and all participants had early-stage cancer with low risk of metastasis, we believe large, randomized trials to test the validity and applicability of our results are warranted.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In an email interview, Ornish said:<\/p>\n

“The prospect of beginning to reverse aging on a cellular level is an important finding that may be of great interest to your readers who, I hope, will feel inspired and empowered by them. Our genes are not our fate. And now that I’ve just turned 60, it has personal meaning as well!<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

This is the same lifestyle intervention that we showed in earlier randomized, controlled trials may stop or reverse the progression of coronary heart disease and early-stage prostate cancer, as well as improve gene expression in over 500 genes in just three months. In these earlier studies, we also found a dose-response relationship between the degree of lifestyle change and the degree of improvement in a variety of metrics\u00a0\u2014 the more you change your lifestyle, the more you improve\u00a0\u2014 at any age.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Donna Arnett, the president of the\u00a0American Heart Association, said that the study was “interesting” and “fascinating” but pointed out that it was a very small pilot study with only 10 people in the intervention group. “The fact that they could increase telomere length is impressive,” she said. Interventions that increase telomere length are worth further study, but it will be extremely difficult to prove a link between the effect on telomeres of an intervention and an improvement in outcomes. She also noted that patients in the treatment group were “clearly a very motivated group” who had good adherence to the program. For “people with time and motivation this may be feasible… for other people this might be a challenge.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A very small pilot study offers early evidence that a program of comprehensive lifestyle changes increases telomere length. Telomeres, which have been compared to the plastic caps that prevent\u00a0shoelaces from unravelling, help protect chromosomes. Telomere length is closely correlated to cellular aging: as we age the telomeres in our cells grow shorter.\u00a0The new study,\u00a0published online […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[1974,1524,1973],"class_list":["post-38871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-prevention","tag-dean-ornish","tag-lifestyle-intervention","tag-telomeres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}