Rechârge Biomedical Clinic

Stress is a survival mechanism that evolved to protect us from danger.  One familiar stress hormone, adrenaline (that jolt you feel if you fall asleep and drift across your freeway lane,) helps you survive by causing your heart to race, lungs to open, pupils to widen, and by shutting down non-essential functions like digestion.

A second stress hormone is cortisol and it generates high blood pressure, high glucose, salt retention…in short, the physiology of running away from something trying to eat you.

Every night, Telomerase tries to repair your stem cells, but the stress-induced hormone, cortisol, inhibits telomerase activity, as shown in this study, causing your immune function to be ground down, and other stem cells to fail.

Here is a video explaining the link between stress and illness:

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.

-Anthony Burgess

Lack of sleep makes you irritable, prone to mistakes, and depresses your immune system.  But Sleep Apnea (aka OSAS or Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome) is also linked with heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, arrhythmias, and diabetes.

Sleep Apnea is arguably the most common and serious medical condition that there is (other than telomere erosion, of course.)  Over 18 Million (or 6%) of Americans suffer from Sleep Apnea, yet only half of those affected have been diagnosed.

Sleep Apnea will be recognized by roommates and spouses as an eerie and impossibly long pause in the sleeper’s breathing or snoring, followed by a gasping back to life that happens just before you were considering CPR or calling 911.  While the witness to Sleep Apnea can be freaked out, the person sleeping is completely unaware of their nightly near-death experiences.

The space behind the nose and mouth collapses

Sleep apnea is caused by a collapse in the soft tissues behind the hard palate. If you recognize these symptoms in yourself, you should call ASAP to arrange a sleep study.

• snoring and apnea
• waking up choking or gasping
  
• dry throat and eyes in the morning
• morning headache
  
• daytime drowsiness
• lack of focus
• irritability

A Sleep Study

During a sleep study, technicians will connect your scalp to an EEG, measure your pulse and oxygen saturation with a finger monitor, and record what happens throughout the night.

Hypopneas (apneic events) are defined by at least 10 seconds without breathing or snoring, accompanied by either a neurological arousal (a 3-second or greater shift in EEG, or brain wave, frequency) or a blood oxygen desaturation of 3–4% or greater. Clinically significant levels of sleep apnea are defined as six or more of these hypopneas per hour.

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During my reading about telomere biology, I came across a study showing that OSAS is strongly associated with shortened telomeres:

Respir Med. 2010 Aug;104(8):1225-9. Epub 2010 Apr 28.
Telomere shortening in sleep apnea syndrome.

RESULTS: Telomere Length was significantly shorter in patients with OSAS than in controls (p<0.001). This difference persisted after adjustment for age, body mass index, cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose, and uric acid levels, smoking status and the presence of arterial hypertension (p=0.018).

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Sleep should ideally involve 4-5 pleasant and consecutive 90-minute journeys down into the oblivion of slow-EEG wave sleep, and then back up to R.E.M. (Rapid Eye Movement or dreaming) sleep.

Nightly sleep stages

Interestingly, sleep is evolutionarily-conserved so it must be important, right?  Did you know that all mammals, birds, and many reptiles, amphibians, and fish require sleep? Yes, even sharks that need to constantly swim to oxygenate their gills, sleep one hemisphere at a time.

With sleep apnea, you are suffocating and being momentarily jarred closer to consciousness at least 6 times an hour. With normal regenerative sleep, you should be enjoying a heightened anabolic (building up and restoring) state, with growth and rejuvenation of the immune, nervous, skeletal and muscular systems.

Returning to the study findings, perhaps the failure to maintain the deeper unconscious stages of sleep is preventing the healthy and prolonged lowering of levels of adrenaline (the “fight or flight” hormone) and cortisol (the “stressed-out” hormone) that should normally occur during the ‘wee hours’ of the morning.  The dozens of near-awakenings keep the Sleep Apnea sufferer in a vigilant and catabolic (breaking down and using up) state that should be reserved for your on-the-go, waking hours.

Whether or not you subscribe to my stem cell theory of aging, you absolutely must get help if you have the symptoms of sleep apnea.  It will transform your life in a way that I can only liken to Dorothy awakening from a dreary black-and-white Kansas into the Wonderful World of OZ.

"You're out of the woods...Hold onto your breath...Hold onto your hope"

And yes, I am speaking from my personal experience of using a CPAP machine every night for the last 17 years (not coincidentally, the year I got married.)  In the interests of health, well-being, and telomere stability, you or your loved ones must get tested and treated for Sleep Apnea.  It will transform your life so that you will never, ever want to leave the “Merry Old Land of  ZZZZZZzzzz”

Yesterday, on December 9th, the Surgeon General released a 704 page report explaining that smoking is bad for you. The headlines were “A single cigarette can kill you” and  “85% of all lung cancer is caused by smoking.”

Regarding cancer, I definitely agree with these two statements in the executive summary:

“6. Exposure to cigarette smoke carcinogens leads to DNA damage and subsequent mutations in TP53 and KRAS in lung cancer.

7. There is consistent evidence that smoking leads to the presence of promoter methylation of key tumor suppressor genes such as P16 in lung cancer and other smoking-caused cancers.”

Failed DNA repair – the common theme for Cancer and Aging

Have you noticed that when someone gets lung cancer, the question that always follows is “was he/she a smoker?”  No one asks if the person lived near radon or had unhealthy lifestyles (poor nutrition, stress, lack of exercise) that shorten telomeres.  Have you ever heard of a partner getting cancer a year after their spouse died of cancer?  We know that Cancer isn’t contagious, so how is that possible?  I believe the stress they went through must have inhibited their telomerase activity, allowing their telomeres to erode more rapidly.

Yesterday’s report states that 85% of lung cancer is caused by smoking.  But this conflicts with most previous studies showing that the majority of deaths from lung cancer are NOT statistically attributable to smoking?  It could also be that 85% of all people have tried a cigarette and that is why 85% of all lung cancer patients have a smoking history. But is that causation?

Perhaps for our own good, the report declares that a single cigarette can kill you.  But note that the same statistical, but not necessarily causal, association would exist between the percent of American’s who have kicked a soccer ball and any other disease group you wish to study.  For example 85% of people who are struck by lightening have kicked a soccer ball.   85% of people who lose a limb in industrial machinery accidents have kicked a soccer ball…etc.

The following paragraph more closely resembles the traditional epidemiological dogma with regard to smoking and lung cancer:

“52.2% and 14.8% of lung cancer deaths were attributable to current and former cigarette smoking, respectively. In females, the corresponding figures were 11.8% and 2.8%. Among current male smokers, the relative risk was strongly correlated with the intensity and duration of cigarette smoking. “

Ando et al, International Journal of Cancer, Volume 105, Issue 2, pages 249–254, 10 June 2003

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"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I am not trying to say smoking is not bad for you.  It most certainly is.  But it is also important that epidemiology not be distorted to further an anti-smoking agenda.

People often conceptualize cancer as a genetic lottery or moral retribution.  But as I explain in this video, I believe that Cancer’s are largely made possible by telomere erosion and failed immune surveillance.  Here are some other facts that may surprise you:

• Did you realize that 2/3 of people with any cancer don ‘t have a prior family history for that particular cancer?

• Did you realize that if you live long enough, you will get cancer of every organ?  It’s just like if you drive your car for 1,000,000 miles, all the car parts will fail.  When you change the transmission at 400,000 miles, you don’t blame abuse of the car or remember that your sister’s transmission failed as well.

To reiterate, smoking does cause lung cancer and many other illnesses and is a bad thing to do.   But as this JAMA article suggests, the telomere erosion occurring in all stem cells is probably the major mechanism for cancer formation in all your organs and is reversible by telomerase activation, whether by TA-65 or other healthy lifestyle choices.

Old paradigms must make way for newer ones.  There are currently 3,924 articles that come up when you type “telomere and cancer” into PubMed.  Academics advance science incrementally. “Publish or perish.”   But you can take advantage of a safe and natural quantum leap in DNA repair.   “Refurbish or perish” should be your motto and that’s not just spin doctoring.

(1927) – Muller and his Microscope

Dr. Muller irradiating Fruit Flies

Did you know that the very first theory of the telomere got it right?  Lucky guess?   No.   Just sound deductive reasoning.

Twenty-six years before Watson and Crick described DNA’s double helix, Herman Muller, a scientist from Harlem and the Bronx, was irradiating fruit flies at Woods Hole to produce mutants with deletions and inversions involving the ends of chromosomes. High energy rays produce DNA breaks, which is why UV exposure gives us skin cancer.

Because he never created deletions or inversions that affected the natural tips of the chromosomes, he concluded that:

‘‘. . . the terminal gene must have a special function, that of sealing the end of the chromosome, so to speak, and that for some reason a chromosome cannot persist indefinitely without having its ends thus sealed.’’

Muller coined the term “telomere” for the tips of chromosomes from Greek:  “telo” for ‘‘end’’ and “mere” for “body.” For his work in creating genetic mutations with X-rays, he takes home the Nobel Prize in 1946.

(1953) – Watson and Crick explain the double helix

Watson and Crick explained the structure of the double helix of chromosomes.  They explained that DNA is a code paired to an opposite strand. For this, they won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

(1961)  – The Hayflick Limit

Leonard Hayflick discovered that cells are not immortal and can only divide about 50 times before becoming non-viable (the so-called “Hayflick Limit” for telomerase-insufficient cells.)

He theorized that there must be a way the cells remember how ‘old’ they are and pass it along. We now know that is primarily from the length of the cell line’s telomeres.

(1967) -  Okazaki fragments

Okazaki explained that since it is impossible to assemble a lagging strand of DNA in the 3′ to 5′ direction, it has to be written in small 5′ to 3′ segments, begun with primers, and joined together before replacing the primer RNA with regular DNA.

(1973) – Olovnikov’s telomerase theory

"I told you so!"

Alexey Olovnikov, a Russian biologist, theorized that there must be a mechanism to create actively generate more length in the telomeres.  His reasoning was that since DNA always shortens with replication, without elongation, we could be unsustainable.

(1984) – Telomerase discovered

Blackburn, Sjostak & Greider find Olovnikov’s theorized mechanism in the form of the enzyme, telomerase.

For this discovery, the trio won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2009.

(2004) – Telomerase activator TA-65

Geron patented the extraction of TA-65, a small molecule activator of the body’s normal telomerase healing mechanism.

People begin taking this via TA Sciences in 2005.

(2009)  – Dr. Ed Park’s Stem Cell Theory of Aging

Knowledgeable people may consider my stem cell theory of aging to be a statement of the obvious, as do I.  But a greater number believe that aging is more complicated than just telomere erosion in stem cells and favor other theories. To read their theories and compare them with mine, go to http://www.rechargebiomedical.com/aging.html

Of course, theories are like opinions…everyone has one.   I very much welcome your emails telling me why my theory has holes or is just plain wrong.