We often experience many phenomena working with our patients and with each one being different how can we distill down to some of the biggest underlying factors that cause the cascade of health depreciation? Aging has been studied for centuries, and recently we have accelerated our knowledge to understanding more about longevity secrets.

Due to the impact of biological processes in the body we’ve been able to identify one thing that is common across almost all disease states – and that is those individuals have a much higher percentage of short telomeres.

Telomeres as you know them, are the protective end caps of our DNA and shrink every time a cell divides and protect the cell through cellular division.  They protect the genome from nucleolytic degradation, unnecessary recombination, repair, and interchromosomal fusion. Telomeres play a vital role in preserving the information in our genome and keeping senescence at healthy levels in the body, which in turn helps us maintain a robust immune system.

Understanding Telomere biology can open many other options and impact the way you treat patients when looking at their health and longevity.  More than ever, telomere biology has become such an essential component of functional medicine care.