What Kind of Exercise is Best for Telomere Health?

There has been a lot of focus on “Long slow distance” (LSD) exercise and telomere health.  I have oft quoted the “German Runners Study” which was actually a paper presentation and not a fully published work at the time that it got so much press.  That study showed that men who ran at high levels (50 miles a week) had telomere length comparable to 25-year-olds.  It did not, however, address what other exercises they were doing, their supplementation habits, their family genetics and their overall lifestyles. More importantly it did not look at what their actual favorite distance was. If you run everyday, 50 miles a week boils down to about 6.7 miles a day.  Five days a week and you are at 10 miles a run.  These are not marathons, nor are they marathon training distances in most cases. Yet every marathon blog on the planet was saying “SEE! Marathons can make you live longer!” In point of fact, serious long term high level marathon training doesn’t even start until you hit about 70 miles a week and there is an association with cardiac dilatation, valvular dysfunction and potentially fatal cardiac arrhythmias, probably causing some of the famous “runners deaths” we read about from time to time. By the way, this is also seen in endurance cycling. I remind you, I have run ultra-marathons, which are often 3x marathon distance, but I have not done that my whole life and currently limit myself to 6 miles a run, maximum.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, telomere length and weight training have not been adequately evaluated with a large well controlled study. There is, however, data on grip strength, leg strength and overall power generation and longevity, all of which suggests you need some muscle and especially power (max force x min time = max power) to live long.

Additionally, there is a published study showing the benefits of “interval style” training for telomerase activation and telomere health.

For most people I still like this for getting in shape. In my practice, the LSD preselects out “people who can take it” because the only ones left standing are those with the genetics (and joints!) to tolerate the LSD. In addition, two other things to consider: 1) People will want to generalize this to “fit” their sport. I guarantee you this will wind up on marathon blogs as proof of the “healthiness” of running marathons or some other thing. It will also wind up on gym blogs as proof that “exercise is good for longevity and come buy a membership to our gym!” This study was about cross country skiing and while it was endurance, it is a very different exercise than long distance running. Remember as you get out your Dr Dave Voodoo dolls that I am an ultra-runner and am telling you I do not think it is healthy for most! This is one reason I take high dose TA-65! 2) The study does not address causality and we have no way of knowing that the long distance skiers do not do a lot of other healthy things that essentially preselect for longer telomeres and a better healthspan.  Finally, the fastest way to improve your cardiac fitness and VO2 max is interval-style training. This will help any LSD work you do if you do that because, contrary to popular belief, LSD does not raise VO2 max much at all! I run ultras because I like what it does for my brain and I enjoy the solitude of moving through miles of territory most people avoid – not because it is good for my telomeres!  Take your fish oil, Take TA-65 if you can and have a rigorous regular exercise routine that includes mobility, strength and endurance. And keep your eyes open for my two books that should come out towards the end of this year.

Thanks to Andy Newman for asking this question!

I’ve also written extensively on lengthening your telomeres with your food choices as well as natural telomerase activators outside of just exercise. Remember good health takes a broad spectrum of attention, don’t just focus on lengthing your telomeres with exercise, get the complete picture.

Doc

http://www.worldhealth.net/news/longer-telomeres-long-term-endurance-exercise/

P.S. – I have addressed this question before to Mr. S Kumar who was kind enough to read it and change his evaluation of my book on Amazon based on this reply.

Hi, thanks for your comment and concerns. Let me say up front that I highly doubt you are going to change your recommendation no matter what I say but there is justification and a citation below for interval training. I can find none for marathon running and telomere length but welcome the citation if you have it.

I think we have to be careful about too much interpretation of the data on some of these studies. For instance, if you read the most quoted “German Runners Study” you will find most of the elderly (51 is elderly!?) runners were not marathon runners specifically. This has been reported differently on web sites and blogs to include marathoners, half-marathoners, triathletes and even used to justify weight training. They were in fact a mixed group of athletes who ran an average of 50 miles a week for the bulk of their adult lives but many were not marathoners. As a matter of fact, the word “marathon” is not mentioned in the study at all. In addition, there is a difference between WBC telomere length and skeletal muscle telomere length and the results are often opposite. (See Below)
I have included some references and posts below that may point you to a different conclusion or to at least be open to other options.
If you are looking for a randomized, double-blinded, double dummy, placebo, gold standard, you will not find it for any exercise or diet or meditation in humans.
Also, one needs to be careful about studies that use only TRAP assays for telomerase as a surrogate for lengthening telomeres, as this is not always the case.
Thus, when one writes a book on cutting edge topics, sometimes one has to interpret based on their own experiences and findings. Or we could simply have waited another 25 years to write the book, but even then much of this will remain unproven in the randomized, double-blinded, double dummy, placebo, gold standard sense, since those studies are extremely expensive and unaffordable for anyone but drug companies who do not stand to gain from the answers to the above questions.
The logic behind choosing interval training for much of the programs in the book is based on the following AND the information included below.
1) VO2 max can be trained up fast with interval training and this (V02 max) correlates with mean telomere length. You may be familiar with the study where experienced interval-trained individuals who were non-runners trained for 12 weeks for a 10K distance and outperformed people who had been running 10K’s for a long time. Exclusively training distance, as so many runners do, is not the best way to achieve total cardiovascular fitness. Also, if done properly, interval training can be done at high intensity with low trauma (deep water pool sprints) allowing even injured people to do it.
2) This was a book for ‘everyman and everywoman’, not specifically athletes or runners. This means the program had to be doable for the average person in terms of time commitment and results. Giving the average non-runner a running program did not fit the goals of the book. Nor would it achieve the results people are looking for, including us.
3) Go to any running club and you will find a large volume of chronically injured runners there. I am a sometime marathoner and ultra-marathoner as well, and my experiences have taught me this is not the healthiest thing to do from a musculoskeletal standpoint.

Again, see #1 with regards to injury.
4) There is a study below on interval training but I could not find any on marathon runners except with regards to shorter telomere lengths and overtraining syndromes.
5) I am an Internist/anti-aging doc and, while I am not a basic science researcher, I have checked telomere lengths in my athletic clients in the past and I have found the MTL to be longer in general in the cross trained individuals than people who just run. Again, this is not a RDBC study by any means but a clinical impression which should be worth something to a reader.
6) Now that the Life Length assay is available, we have a much better tool to assess these findings but don’t hold your breath for any of the above studies to be repeated any time soon. Again, funding is everything in science.
I think in terms of bang for buck, time wise and damage wise, interval training is a great place to start for most people since the oxidative stress is far less even though the intensity is far higher.
It is important to actually read studies and not just abstracts, blogs, online/newspaper articles because they often get the facts wrong. Since the “german runners study” I have seen that very article used to justify all different forms of exercise from yoga to Pilates to dancercise, etc. That is clearly not what it says. In addition, that article did not control for the most important confounding variables such as what else do people who run 50 miles a week do for their health/telomeres that sedentary people do not do – sleep, other training, supplements, maintaining body weight, etc. As such it is an observational study and does not establish causality. Then again, very few studies do on this or any other topic – so again, clinical acumen/experience is the surrogate.
I would love to see more research done here and if you have 5 million dollars to donate I will see it gets put to good use and answers these questions definitively!

Finally, let me say that for a good deal of the last 10 years I have run long and ultra-long distances. No one would be happier if long distance running were the ultimate telomere life preserver. But at this moment we can’t say that unless you know of studies I do not. I remain open to be educated.

Best,

Dr Dave

References:

May 28, 2010
Bursts of Vigorous Activity Appear to Be a ‘Stress-Buffer’
FRIDAY, May 28 (HealthDay News) — Short bouts of vigorous exercise (interval training) can go a long way to reduce the impact stress has on cell aging, new research reveals.
Vigorous physical activity amounting to as little as 14 minutes daily, three day per week would suffice for the protective effect to kick in, according to findings published online in the May 26 issue of PLoS ONE.
The apparent benefit reflects exercise’s effect on the length of tiny pieces of DNA known as telomeres. These telomeres operate, in effect, like molecular shoelace tips that hold everything together to keep genes and chromosomes stable.
Researchers believe that telomeres tend to shorten over time in reaction to stress, leading to a rising risk for heart disease, diabetes and even death. However, exercise, it seems, might slow down or even halt this shortening process.
“Telomere length is increasingly considered a biological marker of the accumulated wear-and-tear of living, integrating genetic influences, lifestyle behaviors and stress,” study co-author Elissa Epel, an associate professor in the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) department of psychiatry, said in a news release. “Even a moderate amount of vigorous exercise appears to provide a critical amount of protection for the telomeres.”
Appreciation for how telomeres function and how stress might affect their length stems from previous Nobel-prize winning work conducted by UCSF researchers. Prior studies have also suggested that exercise is in some way associated with longer telomere length.
The current effort, however, is the first to identify exercise as a potential “stress-buffer” that can actually stop telomeres from shortening in the first place.
The team found that those women who were experiencing high levels of stress but were deemed “active” did not have shorter telomeres, whereas similarly stressed participants deemed “inactive” did.
Going forward, the study authors said that more research incorporating larger patient samples need to be conducted to confirm the findings and arrive at definitive recommendations for how much exercise might be needed to derive such cellular protection.
Eur J Appl Physiol. 2010 May;109(2):323-30. Epub 2010 Jan 26.
Skeletal muscle telomere length in healthy, experienced, endurance runners.
Rae DE, Vignaud A, Butler-Browne GS, Thornell LE, Sinclair-Smith C, Derman EW, Lambert MI, Collins M.
Source
UCT/MRC Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine, Department of Human Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Dale.Rae@uct.ac.za
Abstract
Measuring the DNA telomere length of skeletal muscle in experienced endurance runners may contribute to our understanding of the effects of chronic exposure to endurance exercise on skeletal muscle. This study compared the minimum terminal restriction fragment (TRF) length in the vastus lateralis muscle of 18 experienced endurance runners (mean age: 42 +/- 7 years) to those of 19 sedentary individuals (mean age: 39 +/- 10 years). The runners had covered almost 50,000 km in training and racing over 15 years. Minimum TRF lengths measured in the muscle of both groups were similar (P = 0.805) and within the normal range. Minimum TRF length in the runners, however, was inversely related to their years spent running(r = -0.63, P = 0.007) and hours spent training (r = -0.52, P = 0.035). Therefore, since exposure to endurance running may influence minimum TRFlength, and by implication, the proliferative potential of the satellite cells, chronic endurance running may be seen as a stressor to skeletal muscle.

Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2003 Sep;35(9):1524-8.
Athletes with exercise-associated fatigue have abnormally short muscle DNA telomeres.
Collins M, Renault V, Grobler LA, St Clair Gibson A, Lambert MI, Wayne Derman E, Butler-Browne GS, Noakes TD, Mouly V.
Source
Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town, South Africa. mcollins@sports.uct.ac.za
Abstract
INTRODUCTION/PURPOSE:
Although the beneficial health effects of regular moderate exercise are well established, there is substantial evidence that the heavy training and racing carried out by endurance athletes can cause skeletal muscle damage. This damage is repaired by satellite cells that can undergo a finite number of cell divisions. In this study, we have compared a marker of skeletal muscle regeneration of athletes with exercise-associated chronic fatigue, a condition labeled the “fatigued athlete myopathic syndrome” (FAMS), with healthy asymptomatic age- and mileage-matched control endurance athletes.
METHODS:
Muscle biopsies of the vastus lateralis were obtained from 13 patients diagnosed with FAMS and from 13 healthy control subjects. DNA was extracted from the muscle samples and their telomeric restriction fragment (TRF) or telomere lengths were measured by Southern blot analysis.
RESULTS:
All 13 symptomatic athletes reported a progressive decline in athletic performance, decreased ability to tolerate high mileage training, and excessive muscular fatigue during exercise. The minimum value of TRF lengths (4.0 +/- 1.8 kb) measured on the DNA from vastus lateralis biopsies from these athletes were significantly shorter than those from 13 age- and mileage-matched control athletes (5.4 +/- 0.6 kb, P < 0.05). Three of the FAMS patients had extremely short telomeres (1.0 +/- 0.3 kb). The minimum TRF lengths of the remaining 10 symptomatic athletes (4.9 +/- 0.5 kb, P < 0.05) were also significantly shorter that those of the control athletes.
ANOTHER REPORT
“These findings suggest that skeletal muscle from symptomatic athletes show extensive regeneration which most probably results from more frequent bouts of satellite cell proliferation in response to recurrent training- and racing-induced muscle injury.
The vast majority of research on exercise and telomeres points towards cardiovascular exercise as the key component needed to protect telomeres. It is clear moderate intensity aerobic exercise should be a component of training for telomere health. However, other studies have shown that chronic stress coming from excessive exercise or excessive stress may be the major cause of telomere dysfunction. This may be an issue when you consider chronic exercise such as marathon training, which raises cortisol without the benefit of growth promoting hormones. A brand new study in the journal Hormones (volume 8 #1) has shown that a relative excess of cortisol and insulin compared to the anabolic hormones HGH and testosterone plays a key role in telomere damage.
Shorter more intense exercise does a better job at balancing this hormonal equation, and therefore it may have a central role to play. Researchers studying this issue have also noted shortened telomere length in exercisers and athletes suffering from exercise related fatigue and in long-term competitive endurance runners. The May 2010 issue of the European Journal of Applied physiology showed endurance runners compared to healthy sedentary individuals have telomere lengths inversely proportional to the amount of running they did. In other words, the more mileage they accumulated over the years, the shorter their telomeres. It is interesting to note, even with all the exercise they did, their telomeres were not significantly longer than the sedentary non-exercisers.
This same issue was looked at in a group of competitive power lifters. In the January 2008 issue of Sports and Medicine in Science and Exercise long-term weight lifters were compared to a group of healthy active individual who were not weight lifters. There was no detriment seen in the weight lifting group in terms of telomere length, but they too had no significant advantage over the healthy active controls. However, the vast majority of other studies show exercise does provide an advantage. So what do we make of these results and studies? Exercise is protective to telomeres but excessive exercise may actually be a detriment.”

Your control over cancer

I hope I am not confusing you with my stance on epigenetics.  Ever since we wrote our book The Immortality Edge (Wiley 2010) I have stressed the role of things like diet, meditation, supplementation, exercise and sleep regulation, as a way of influencing your future health, wellness and longevity. In my Longevity Now talks last year, I reviewed how these things affected epigenetics and predicted, at that time, epigenetics would be the hot topic to come.  And now it is.

There is good news and bad news. Bad news first. Epigenetic study is probably not going to reveal a whole lot of new human behaviors that will modify your future.  Again, reference our book. One commenter, on Amazon, noted that “eating right, exercising and meditation are hardly new”, whining that he/she wanted “new” stuff.  Sorry, my friend, what has worked since the dawn of man will continue to work at a micro (telomeres and epigenetics) and macro (your health and wellness) level.  Additionally, the bad news is we know less about the epigenome than the genome. What I wrote about two years ago and spoke about last year, is becoming apparent: we know less about something that may be far more important than our genes in determining our fate!

Final piece of bad news: in spite of what the usual suspects are telling you, we do not know all that much (other than eating right, meditating, exercising, and supplementing) about how to create really favorable epigenomes, out of not so favorable ones. So while “yoga for epigenetics” or “Our diet or diet pill for epigenetics” or “exercise programs for epigenetics” makes sense, they are as yet unproven, so the claims are to be taken carefully, please.

The good news is that there is tremendous interest (funding) for all that and because of ever increasing computer power and global connectivity, the answers will come flooding in over the next few years, faster than ever!

What is likely to happen first is the disease based model we have lived with in medicine for centuries. Scientists will be looking to develop tests and drugs, to combat unhealthy epigenomes – while Mother Nature has already supplied the answer!

Cancer is one area where there is a flurry of epigenetic research and colon cancer, my personal greatest fear, is tops on the list, as of today, with breast cancer a close second.

A recent article, referenced below, has identified something called VELs, Variant Enhancer Loci that can be used to predict the risk of colon cancer. These are not part of the genome, but rather the epigenome.  They represent methylation gains and losses in thousands of histones (proteins attached to DNA – histones really are the major physical arbiters of epigenetics!) spread across the entire genome.  Since this pattern of changes is strongly predictive of colon cancer risk, it will surely be developed into a “pre test” for said cancer, allowing us to see a person at risk, long before a polyp or cancer develops.  And of course it then allows for follow up testing and a chance to change that epigenetic expression by the doctor and the patient. It does not alter your genetics and if you have high risk genes, you can’t change that. But, by far, most people succumb to their epigenetics, not their genetics, so you really can change the balance of these epigenetic marks, from sickness to health.

In case you are wondering about the role of telomeres here, an increasing percentage of short telomeres is almost always found in these situations, so therapy there may also help reverse the damage.

You will soon see profiles for other types of cancer, heart disease and diabetes, as well.  All of these are markers for accelerated aging, in my book, so I am going to predict a significant overlap in these epigenetic marks. Further, I am going to predict that the central clearing house for these effects will be the telomere.

Speaking of books, if you want to know what you can do to clean up your epigenetics, make sure you read our book, The Immortality Edge,  because everything that helps the telomere helps your epigenetics as well!

Stay tuned to the newsletters and blogs so you can get the developments in honest, unadulterated fashion.

Doc

Science. 2012 Apr 12. [Epub ahead of print]

Epigenomic Enhancer Profiling Defines a Signature of Colon Cancer.

Akhtar-Zaidi B, Cowper-Sal Lari R, Corradin O, Saiakhova A, Bartels CF, Balasubramanian D, Myeroff L, Lutterbaugh J, Jarrar A, Kalady MF, Willis J, Moore JH,Tesar PJ, Laframboise T, Markowitz S, Lupien M, Scacheri PC. Source

Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.

The exercise sleep connection

Your mother always told you not to exercise late at night, as it would disturb your sleep.  Of course, she was right and nowadays, with the sophisticated sleep studies and the ability to measure hormone levels, including melatonin (the sleep hormone), we can find out all the reasons why.

The simplest explanation may be the most compelling.  We were “genetically matured”, in an environment where we could not effectively control light and dark.  It made sense for our ancestors to work and hunt, during the day and when the sun disappeared, hunker down and take refuge against the beasts of the night.

During our study of some of these human rhythms, it was found that we have light sensitive pathways to our brain (photic pathways through our eyes) and non light sensitive cues as well, one of which is activity level.

So many people have sleep disturbances these days and it is such a negative to health and longevity that I decided to revisit the literature on these topics, again.  It turns out that melatonin, the “sleep hormone”, does indeed work by both pathways, although we are not really sure how its “non photic” component works.

One other very interesting answer to sleep disturbance, I found, was our old friend exercise!

As it turns out, early evening exercise is not bad at all for sleep and may enhance it, especially in people who have trouble falling asleep, due to “racing minds”.

Here are a couple of key points in using early evening exercise to enhance your sleep patterns.  Early evening means before 8 PM.

Next, the exercise that works best is vigorous, which could be interpreted as interval training, lasting about 30 minutes in total, per session.  It may take a few evenings to get the effect, so don’t despair if it does not kick in right away.  Try it every other evening for a week or so and you should be on track.  Interestingly, exercise done this way seems to increase melatonin levels later in the evening and also stimulates the non-photic sleep pathways.

Seems like a great way to get two anti-aging benefits in one: better sleep and good quality exercise.

If all else fails there is always Sleep Wizard!

Sleep tight,

Dr Dave

P.S. fans of fractal time and 12/21/2012, will recognize that everything we know has a rhythm of some sort.  Figuring them out in people is one of the most fascinating anti-aging disciplines out there.

Epigenetics – The chosen one

Because there is so much misinformation on the internet, I occasionally engage in Yahoo! answers.  This one, by yours truly, was chosen as the best description of epigenetics.  While I probably just did someone’s term paper for them, it may be useful to you as well, especially in keeping with my prior blogs on the topic.

The literal definition of the epigenetics is “around or on top of the genome”. It refers to the structural and functional complex of proteins and non-coding mRNA that activates and deactivates areas of the genome (DNA), suppressing or permitting transcription of specific genes. The science of epigenetics is the study of what results from that interaction – both heritable and mutable.

A simple analogy I use in lay public lectures is: your genome as the big library building, with all the books and blueprints you need for life and more – epigenetics is the books you check out and read.
The statement you refer to, concerning what your ancestors ate, means that while epigenetics is not really “genetic”, e.g. it is not the creation of new genes, or the changing of old ones.  It is heritable and does carry on, from generation to generation, in the form of epigenetic markers, or more simply, “marks”. Your ancestors’ dietary habits determine a fair degree of the epigenetic marks they passed on to you. This means, you get patterns of histone proteins (and their activation and inactivation) from your parents and other ancestors that are less likely to change from generation to generation. It is a misconception, however, to think that they cannot change at all. As a matter of fact, they can be changed in weeks to months, in many cases. And from the moment you are born, you begin to forge your own epigenetic patterns. No one is 100% sure, if there are unchangeable epigenetic patterns that are inherited, but it is not likely, for most of what matters to us. Things like body composition, specifically obesity, muscularity, tendencies towards diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc are known to be changeable and not set in stone. The end result is, for most of what matters, you have at least 80% control, by lifestyle choices and environmental exposures, rather than being 100% limited by your genetics.
The processes that are involved in epigenetic expression and change are primarily the attachment of simple molecules like methyl groups, acetyl groups and a series of lesser known molecular changes, to the histone proteins that interpolate the DNA. Things like diet, exercise, sleep, meditation and much to the chagrin of traditional medical doctors, supplementation have major effects on epigenetic expression by providing these simple molecules, or effecting the enzymes involved in their placement. Said molecules, then attach to the protein structures that interpolate and give structure to the DNA (known as histones) and change the conformation of the histone-DNA complex, by folding or unfolding it, thus making it more or less likely that the genes, in this area, will be transcribed and the proteins products that result will be made and go out and “do what they do”, good or bad.
Some research examples are Milner, J.A. (2004) Molecular targets for bioactive food components. J. Nutrition 134, 2492S-2498S.

Egger, G Liang,G Epigenetics in Human disease and the prospects for epigenetic therapy. Nature 429,457-463.
Robertson ,K.D. Wolfe.A.P. (2000) DNA methylation in health and disease. Nat. Rev. Genetics. 1, 11-19

It is important to know that epigenetics, much like telomere science, is not new. It has been around for decades. It just so happens that now it’s hit the news media because there is enough intriguing info to catch the public eye. Stay tuned for more!

Dr Dave

Another Take: Can exercise really help you live longer?

Just a few short weeks ago our host Greta Blackburn held one of her fabulous FITCAMP events in Cancun, Mexico.  If you missed it, you missed a great one!

At that event several presenters, including top Scientist Bill Andrews — co-discoverer of the HTERT gene and leading scientist at Sierra Sciences LLC — and top trainer Phil Campbell (whose book  “Ready Set Go Synergy Fitness” revolutionized the field of high intensity interval training over a decade ago) both gave phenomenal presentations on the how’s and why’s of everything from sprint training to ultra-running.

A recurring theme emerged: exercise is not only good for you in terms of how you look and how you feel but it also is good for longevity, especially for telomere length.

Remember the telomeres are those biological time clocks AND health clocks that live at the end of your chromosomes.  Every time your cells divide to make a new set of cells the time clock ticks and your absolute life span gets shorter.

But a study in well-conditioned German middle distance runners whose average age was about 45 showed you can indeed slow down those time clocks with exercise.

Researchers found that at age 25 most everyone had a free pass which equated to long telomeres although there were some outliers who had already started to age faster probably from too much partying!

But in the folks who did not exercise at all the telomere length shortened dramatically over the next 2 decades.  In the runners, however, there was almost no distinguishable difference between telomere length at 25 and at 45.

Now a couple of things are important here.  These runners were high level former collegiate athletes in most cases.  They had been running steadily for 2 decades and were putting in over 40 miles a week.  That is lot of miles for most people.

Also most high level runners don’t just run they strength train and do interval training programs similar to Phil Campbell’s Sprint 8 as their speed work.

So what is it about this kind of training that helps keep telomeres long?

Well most like it has to do with the body’s ability to handle oxidative stress.  Runners tend to develop the mechanisms needed to handle the increased oxidative load of exercise to a high degree.

Even ultra-runners whose oxidative stress levels go through the roof in the first 24 hours after a long race return to baseline soon after.

We Telonauts are convinced that the best exercise is one that develops the ability to handle free radical oxidative stress without actually putting all that much long term oxidative stress on the body.  That is why we favor Phil Campbell’s Sprint 8 programs as detailed in his book  “Ready Set Go Synergy Fitness” as well as our book “The Immortality Edge” which is coming out in January 2011.

Using these programs you can really crank up you oxidative capacity (as measured by VO2 max and lactate threshold for you exercise buffs) without having a lot of damaging stuff hanging around for days on end.

Another study done in Canada showed you could reverse years of exercise neglect with just a year of high intensity training for a total of 9 hours a week and reverse the age related decline in your functional lung capacity by up to twelve years.

Here’s a quick note on weight lifting. We think strength training is absolutely essential for balanced physical being.  There is only one tiny study in weight lifters specifically power lifters.  In this group the average telomere length and the shortest telomere lengths both were longer than in non-weight trained individuals suggesting at the very least that weight lifting may be good for your telomeres as well.

So what should you do?

Train hard and fast at least some of the time and take those anti-oxidants, specifically fish oil, co Q 10, Carnosine, Vitamin D and a good multivite to keep those free radicals at bay.

Odds are you’ll live a longer and healthier life because of it. And make sure you get a copy of Phil Campbell’s great book “Ready Set Go Synergy Fitness” and watch for our book “The Immortality Edge” coming soon.

Can You Prevent Diabetes and Heart Disease?

One of the things that make me different from some other internet doctors is that I will not lie to you. Now I will admit there are some pretty far out characters out there with “MD” behind their name but I have yet to meet one that doesn’t know the truth from the lies.

The same cannot be said of their copyrighting teams, which is why when you read my newsletters you are actually reading something written by me.

In addition, if you ever meet me in person there will be no inconsistency with who I am, what I am and what I write. I always have to laugh when people meet their heroes for the first time and they are nothing like what they thought!

Odds are they are they are not the people who actually write what you read!

So I am not going to lie to you and tell you in a headline that you can prevent diabetes and then spend the rest of the newsletter qualifying what I said.

Here is the truth: a small amount of type 2 diabetes and a larger amount of type 1 diabetes is not preventable.

Most people who are type 1 become so relatively early in life. I have also seen a disconcerting trend in what I call clusters of adult onset type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes that seems to happen in the same geographic area or at the same time of the year related to virus spread.

We are probably looking in the wrong direction for type 1 diabetes. We probably need to address auto-immunity and inflammation. I think that fish oil could be a huge help here IF you are on it when your immune system and pancreas are challenged, not afterward as much.

The majority of our population is now type 2 diabetes. Once called “adult onset” we had to rename it because between sugar loading our food, inflammatory artificial fats and sedentary lifestyles, we’ve now managed to give it to little children, adolescents and teens too!

Congratulations to Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Media for the endless distractions that sit us on our butts and to yes, you and I for not following our gut and doing the two things that would prevent it and teaching our children and loved ones these words: eat less, move more!

Ok off the soapbox. Here is how you prevent type 2 diabetes…

*Eat less
*Move more
*Go on a Paleolithic or near Paleolithic diet
*Adopt a regular exercise program
*Take fish oil!

Now because most people will not do all those things and more people will take a pill than eating less or moving more, I am happy to tell you that fish oil is a great thing whether you have diabetes or not.

It improves insulin sensitivity.

It improves fat burning and lean body mass.

It decreases inflammation and this is important because we used to say you eat too much sugar and you burn out your pancreas and then you get diabetes. I am sure this explanation is still being given to people across the country in doctors’ offices.

What really happens is the inflammation in our body skyrockets because of excess sugar and excess insulin and we INFLAME our pancreases to the point of burn out.

So once again the anti-inflammatory actions of fish oil are critical.

So odds are that you and I can prevent diabetes. And this reduces our odds of heart disease 6 fold.

The only real question is do you love your body and yourself and your loved ones enough to take the best, cleanest and most potent fish oil out there instead of some off shore cheap contaminated brand sold in bulk by large retailers.

If you want the best, it lives right here.

Fish oil – Super Omega 3

Get it now take it every day and know you are doing something amazing for yourself. Something nothing else can do!

To ask questions or find out more about Dr. Dave’s physician-developed,
pharmaceutical-grade health and anti-aging solutions,
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How food affects gene expression

If you have read any of my material at all for the past 3 or 4 years, you’ve heard the terms “neutragenomics” and “epigenetics”.

The first term refers to how food and supplements affect genetic expression.  The second term is a bit broader and refers to which books (genes) in your genetic library are actually checked out and read by your cellular machinery.

They converge to form a theory that has translated into reality and will change the future of your health and quite frankly, the future of all mankind including how long we can live.

Lofty stuff but right now it doesn’t mean diddly unless we put it into practice.

So that is what I am going to give you today; practical information.  Because I make supplements and preach the Paleolithic Diet, I am biased towards my own opinion.  But if you like, you can remove the sales pitch and the information still holds true 100%.

We have a vast genetic library in our DNA. There are some areas of “junk” which will potentially turn out to be important but we have mapped out most to the stuff our cells make to keep us going.

Still there is a lot more stuff sitting around in that library like books waiting to be checked out. Some are a good read, some are nonsense and some are dangerous and deadly; acquired over generations of mutations or maybe even the last time you walked in front of a microwave tower.

Still, not every book gets read and so your genetic material does not determine 100% of your fate.  It does not determine (in most people who survive past childhood) how long you live, how healthy you are, what illness you get and what you will die of, at least not totally.

As a matter of fact, the odds are 2 to 1 that something you do or don’t do in your lifestyle or your environmental exposure will determine what happens to you ultimately.

So basically epigenetics refers to which books get read.  Nutragenomics refers to your and my attempts to get the best ones read and not to even look at the dangerous delay and superfluous ones.

How do you do that?

Simple:  Dr Dave’s Four Pillars of Health

1) Nutrition, including supplements: this might be the biggest and best way to do it.  So stick with a Paleolithic Diet. This means no grain, no dairy and of course no refined sugar.  You’ll melt fat, lose a ton of weight and be far healthier.  And yes, you can and should cook your food; Paleo is NOT 100% raw.  We’ve have been cooking food for over 2 million years, long before our current genetic library was shaped.

2) Exercise like the kinds in Fabulous Fat Burning for Everyone.  Total body, short, sweet, high intensity, functional exercises.  You’ll also get the look you want but it will mean something when you have to get out of the way of a bus or knock an attacker out!

3) Sleep: always underrated and very important to keep your hormone cycles “young”. That’s why I make all natural Sleep Wizard.

4) Mental peace and stress reduction, meditation, hobbies, prayer, pets — whatever does it for you; more is better!

What you have read above is really the basis of 8 years of writing my Daily Health Tips and will probably be enough for another 8 years of material.  I have been blessed to be one of the first in fish oil.  I have some new innovations coming out in that. I have been fortunate to be at the forefront of telomerase activation and longevity medicine.  Look for more there as well.

You cannot read this stuff anywhere else so keep your eye on those daily newsletters. If you’re not on the list already, you can sign up on any page of my website.

Doc

This year’s model

Well it’s been a long, long time so I will try to keep it succinct.

Back in late March, when I had the luxury of writing about sneakers and strength training, I was doing very well with my training indeed!

I had gotten to marathon distance on the trails and was on a perfect schedule.

But like every April before this one, this April became my nemesis.

To recap, in April of 2008, I was put out of action for 4 weeks with rip-roaring bilateral Achilles and bilabials anterior tendonitis.

In other words both the front and back of my lower legs were -unctional.

Bad biomechanics!

I got past that just in time to run and finish 2008’s Canadian Death Race as you see on the pictures here on the site of me crossing the line just over 24 hours after the start.

Last April I got either Pertussis or swine flu, no one is sure but I had respiratory problems for months past the race. Race day 2009 was a disaster, which I won’t recap but suffice it to say I had no business being there and had to quit at 30 miles.

OK, now in 2010 I’m doing great, right!?

Well I instructed at Greta Blackburn’s Fitcamp in Cancun in late April.

Greta, for those of you who don’t know, is the originator of the Fitness Boot Camp concept and has been doing them for 25+ years — long before most of the current crop of instructors were even out of grade school!

This one was special and you can read about it at Fitcamp.com but the theme was anti-aging and fitness and we had top people there including yours truly, Dr Joe Mercola, Phil Campbell the godfather of modern sprint and interval training, Bill Andrews discoverer of the human telomerase (longevity gene) and Marjorie Brook AIS guru to name just some of the presenters.

Greta is also one of my co-authors of our upcoming book, “The Immortality Edge” due out in January 2011, published by Wiley and Sons.

Anyway, I did what I always do, led a pack of fit younger people on some very cool but tough “fun runs”. Only 3 miles but chock full of sprints, band work, body weight exercises; these are monster workouts and everyone loves them including me!

But it had been a while since I had done this much speed work in such a short period of time.

Superimposed on top of my distance training it led to a devastating injury in the last 10 yards of the last sprint on the last day of the camp.

It felt like I actually slipped on something with my right foot and it seemed like the right leg went far out behind me.

The ensuing pop, pop, pop in both groins and below my belly button and the immediate seizing up of my movement told me immediately I had done some serious damage.

The words are “sports hernia” but it’s not a hernia at all. As a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with the inguinal canal or the gut like a real hernia does.

My MRI said it best: torn adductors from the right hip to the pubic bone, torn rectus abdominis off the symphysis pubis (the top of the pubic bone) and more of the same on the left side.

Grade 1 is the simple groin pull.

Grade 2, which I had, is fluid inflammation and partial tears: minimum 4 weeks to heal and often months.

Grade 3 is a complete tear and surgery is usually required.

I did see a surgeon but no one in my area was interested in even coming close to operating on this as much due to their own inexperience with the problems as the actual protocol for taking care of it.

I very quickly became aware of the absolute lack of information and consistency of what was available. Everyone had different opinions on how long it would take to get better and how to treat it. I can never pick anything simple!

So I rested, hit the Airdyne, stretched and strengthened.

Long story short, I did a 40 mile run in late June and had a great CDR prep camp last week.

So in spite of my nasty injury and some residual pain I am off to Grande Cache in 2 weeks to run my third Canadian Death Race.

Wish me luck!!

P.S. Greta will be hosting another monster fitness and longevity event in November at her home base in Malibu California and again in Cancun at the beautiful Ceiba del Mar on the Mayan Riviera. I plan on being at both of them so come see us and let us teach you how not to get hurt, how to live long and healthy and to be in top shape! Fitcamp.com