Science / Health
You Can Ensure the Longevity of Your Children Before They Even Exist
How lengthy telomeres might help
What if you knew when you would die? That would be scary. We can’t say how long we will live, albeit we can estimate by using a sundry of factors to determine the potential of our lifespans.
However, there is a way of ensuring the longevity of your children, even before conceiving them. The Idea revolves around Telomeres, and the longer they are in an individual, the longer the individual lives for².
What Are Telomeres?
Telomeres are nucleotide sequences at the end of linear chromosomes, which ensure the integrity of chromosomes by preventing the DNA repair system — the mechanisms by which a cell maintains the integrity of its genetic code from mistakes³.
How Might They Ensure Longevity?
The longer our telomeres get, the more they prevent the DNA repair system from making mistakes and thus ensuring longevity. We inherit our telomere length from our parents, and the older our parents are, the longer their telomeres¹.
So across the reproductive lifespan of an individual, the later in life they reproduce, the more longevity they ensure for the child.
Every single time our cells divide, the length of our telomeres gets slightly shorter. Cells keep dividing as long as we are alive, so there comes a time when our telomeres get so short that they can’t prevent the DNA repair system from making any further mistakes, and if it happens in our vital organs, you can guess the outcome².
However, in the sperm, telomeres get longer with age. And since we pass our genetic information to the next generation with our sperm, the next generation inherits longer telomeres if we reproduce at an older age¹.
Telomeres in the blood samples were longer in individuals who were born when their fathers were relatively older. Not only that, but telomere length was longer in individuals with paternal grandfathers who became fathers at an old age¹.
Inheriting longer telomeres can be lucrative for biological functions that require rapid cell growth like — the immune system, gut, and skin¹.
So the best way, or one of the ways, to ensure the longevity of your children who don’t even exist as of right now is to reproduce at a later stage in life. Of course, delaying fatherhood can increase the likelihood of miscarriage, but the pros of delaying fatherhood really outweigh the cons.
Can I Increase the Length of my Telomeres?
If you want to ensure your longevity for now and wonder if there is a way to increase telomere length, then fear not! There is a way to increase the length of your telomeres.
The most effective way our telomeres get longer is through a process called telomerase. Telomerase is an enzyme that repairs telomeres⁴.
Studies have shown that lifestyle changes can increase the length of your telomeres⁴.
Research has shown that psychological distress can severely decrease the length of your telomeres⁴. Stress reduction methods such as meditation, good sleep, exercise, and engaging in activities like gaming can ensure lengthy telomeres.
Furthermore, a healthy diet is the most fundamentally crucial thing you need to consider. Foods that are rich in antioxidants protect our DNA from oxidative stress, thus protecting our telomere length. Antioxidant foods include green grapes, cloves, peppers, and kale.
So the best take from this is to live a stress-free lifestyle, have a good diet, and reproduce at an older age to ensure the longevity of yourself and your children, who don’t even exist when you are reading this.
Sources:
[1]: Children with older fathers and grandfathers ‘live longer’ — BBC News
[2]: Can a Blood Test Determine How Long People Will Live? — ABC News (go.com)
[3]: Telomere Length — an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
[4]: How to Increase the Length of Your Telomeres Through Lifestyle Changes — The Guerrilla Diet
