Statins and Human Aging- Big Pharma Jumps on Board?

A recent study out of Italy links statin drugs to increased telomerase activity and slower shortening of telomeres.

If you read my blogs you know this is not the first time such an association has been found.  Back in March of this year I reviewed another article predicting we would see more of this. And now we have!

The gist of this study is that statins appear to have a mild effect on white blood cell telomerase activity. They do not lengthen telomeres but they could be put into the broad category of “things that slow down telomere loss”.

The authors make a rather prophetic remark in that they suggest that some of the increased survival that may be seen with statin therapy may be due to improved stabilization of the telomere. They do not go so far as to say that ALL of it may be due to this. They also still mention the cholesterol lowering effect of statins as a survival mechanism.

Let’s look at that a bit more.  Statin drug therapy started when Merck took the “active” molecule from red yeast rice and patented as Mevacor. This first statin drug was much like TA-65 in that it was all natural- a small molecule purified and concentrated that came from a Chinese plant!

Soon after “semi-synthetic” statins arrived and Rosuvastatin or Crestor tm represents the new generation of totally synthetic computer generated molecules. In the process an industry and test was created to support Big Pharma to the tune of $20 billion a year.

In spite of all of this the drug companies are still having to do studies that “justify the use of statins”. As a matter of fact the JUPITER study was done a few years back providing highly funded and perfectly credentialed evidence ( American Journal of Cardiology and researchers from Mass General aka the New England Journal of Medicine folks) that basically everyone on the planet should get a statin drug.

Of course the facts are not all that clear cut. Statins are costly, have a very high cost per prevention of second heart attack let alone first, work mostly in high risk men, don’t work well in women, have side effects profiles that include memory loss, impotence, diabetes, and have failed to provide the much vaunted anti-cancer and anti-Alzheimer’s benefits Big Pharma was hoping for.

Simply put if we applied the same standards to statin use as we did to mammograms, pap smears and PSA for prostate cancer we would not be using statins because they are too costly. And yet they are still much beloved by allopathic doctors like me and almost universally recommended. They even feature heavily on the Cardiology section of the Internal Medicine Boards!

I think you get the picture. Statins are too big and too profitable to be gone anytime soon. But this whole association between statins and telomeres does have a very positive side. Sort of.

If Big Pharma gets involved in the anti-aging market things will move much faster. Then again they will own it which is not necessarily a good thing for all of us. Then again it may not be preventable.

My friend what you are really watching hear is a “product cycle” in development. The association between a drug company drug and the anti-aging market will blossom when enough people like me have done enough work and educated enough people to support the desire in Big Pharma to capitalize on the market need and desire that has been created. Then when the social moral and economic risks are the lowest, and someone else has incurred the cost and risk of developing the answer, Big Pharma will swoop in, use their gigantic advertising resources to saturate the market, buy off the actual pioneers in the industry ( don’t worry they won’t pick me! I am far too controversial!) and be the hero of all humanity thus cementing our dependency on them forever more. Or so they hope.

The truly good thing is that telomeres and the association of telomeres with disease and disease prevention and treatment will become a real thing with a real agenda instead of just a fascinating research tool like it is now. Finally the field will get some of its due even if there is a terrible price to pay.

So here is some food for thought. If you are on TA-65 or the Telomere Edge Pack you are actually in the fringe-pioneer group that is forging the new future for humanity RIGHT NOW.

While we cannot link TA-65 to disease prevention just yet it is a real possibility in the not too distant future. Remember it is the only compound on the market that actually has real human data.

This brings up another point. TA Sciences had the foresight to use the Life Length assay before it was even commercially available. Unlike the Italian study just released which used the inaccurate Q-PCR assay to measure people’s telomeres (which makes the data suspect in the first place!) their data is real, repeatable and in the process of being expanded as we speak.

The Life Length test is the ONLY test that can give you an accurate biologic age.

And I have to be honest. For a lot of people only drugs will do. This is true of most doctors who do not understand how severely and tactically they have been marketed to become the mouth pieces of the pharmaceutical industry.

But for guys like me- I feel a lot safer and better about using an all natural product that I have proven in repeated personal testing using the Life Length Assay has reversed my biologic age by 7 years.

So the only question is: are you a pioneer?!

 

Doc

 

 

PS as an aside my telomere research buddies tell me that statins may actually work better in people who have shorter telomeres because they may have a more demonstrable effect on their telomeres. This means that Big Pharma could and should do some stratification work on their respective statin drugs to see who will benefit most. This will cost money and reduce the risk of statins so don’t look for it any time soon!

 

 

References:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002914905020321

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002914905020321

Stress Kills Right?

Ever since the emergence of the so-called Type A personality some 50 years ago, scientists have struggled to understand the relationship between stress, disease, and aging. We all kinda knew there had to be a relationship, but the data did not always bear it out.

All kinds of statistical machinations were needed to make things fit but eventually the problem was discovered to be lack of information. What we did not know and had a hard time measuring, falls under the realm of “psycho social interactions”.

Simply put, the resources a person has to deal with stress make all the difference in the world, more or less independent of the actual stressor.

Examples of positive stress modifiers include:

• Meditation and other specific stress relievers (bio feedback, etc)
• Economic status
• Education status
• Social Support
• A Past History of chronic stressors

Still, it was very difficult to actually measure much. Questionnaires were subject to the memory and bias of the person filling out the questionnaire. You could measure end points like heart attack, cancer, dementia and so forth, but you really had a hard time fitting all of this into “dying before your time”.

Then along came the telomere, the biologic time clock that governs the actual lifespan of the cell and thus the organism to a large degree. Telomere measurements have advanced greatly in precision and accuracy with the best test being the Life Length HT-Q Fish assay developed by Maria Blasco.

Using precision testing allows us to make direct correlations between stress and biologic age.

Remember your biologic age is how many tick tocks are left on your clock and is often quite different than chronologic age – how many birthdays you’ve had.

Recently a large ethnically diverse study looked at telomere length in people recovering from heart attacks.  The study was adjusted for smoking, weight, age and other factors known to shorten telomeres.

Thus the numbers they generated were directly related to the level of social support a person had while recovering from a heart attack.  Social support in this context includes familial care givers, hired care givers, extended circles of friends, and community involvement (social organizations) either by the person or with the person (community outreach programs).

Now I am going to ask you to guess what they found.

In case you need a little help, here are some previous things that were associated with shorter telomere lengths.

• Being the care giver of a chronically sick child or adult
• Growing up in an orphanage
• High levels of perceived stress

Ok, I hope you figured out that the lower the level of social support, the shorter the telomeres and the higher the likelihood of illness and death.

These factors are something you can modify and you are never too young to start. Keep your friends close, join at least one organization that allows you to socialize, consider volunteering in an outreach program so you can see firsthand what it’s like.

Oh yeah, it doesn’t hurt to be above average in the smarts and income department either.

In a very real way how you live your life and how you fulfill your potential impacts on how well you age!

Now, with the advent of HT-Q FISH telomere testing, you can “see how you are doing” in a very real sense and you have time to make the changes you need to live longer and healthier.

Doc

P.S. For more on Telomere Testing, visit www.adltests.com.

New advances in the detection of real aging

Telomere length seems to correlate nicely with the appearance and dysfunction of aging.  Most diseases associated with aging so far are also correlated with short telomeres.  This includes heart disease, cancer (in spite of the huge over expression of telomerase in many, if not all cancers) arthritis, and various forms of dementia.

In most cases, the white blood cell telomere length is an adequate marker, for this aging as well, even though it is not always directly related to the tissue affected by the disease.

Or is it?  The effects of inflammation appear to be more global and widespread than originally thought, playing a role in heart disease, dementia, especially of the Alzheimer’s type, diabetes and cancer.  Since the immune system is intimately involved with modulating the response of various tissues to inflammation and “immune senescence” is clearly deeply involved in aging, especially in the old, old white blood cells, might turn out to be the ideal measurement, after all, correlating on a predictable basis with the state of various tissues in the body.  In this case “more research is needed” is actually totally valid and it is one question we as Telonauts would love to see answered in more detail, in the future.

The global improvement of disease outcomes, using things like Omega 3’s, makes this even more interesting and an area where our scientists need to focus more deeply.

The immune system also plays a pivotal role in removing sick, dead and dying cells. Chinese researchers have postulated that the removal of such cells may actually skew the standard telomere testing towards “too young”, as many of the cells with the shortest telomeres may be removed before they can be tested.

As of this moment, mean telomere length is of limited utility, since it is not looking at the most critical “shortest telomeres”.  The short telomere test remains esoteric and unavailable, for all but the most well connected in the field.

The Chinese are proposing a new marker using standard technology know as ELISA that has been around for decades and should be easy, reproducible and possibly cheap enough to be widespread, to become more than a research tool.

The new test called CRAMP ELISA requires more work and testing, as well as commercial interest, to become a usable way to test telomere length.  If this happens, however, it may be considerably easier than our current testing methods, although it may take a while before it amasses enough data to prove its worth.  We’ll keep you posted!