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I think nowadays most health-related lifestyle recommendations are based on statistics and the possible causal explanations (biochemical pathways) are often without real empirical evidence. This is why recommendations change every few years. Before fats were all bad, now carbs are the main culprit. However, things are changing rapidly now because we more and more understand what it is going on a biochemical level in our bodies. I believe that eventually it will turn out that there are big individual differences and before a doctor can make any lifestyle recommendations he or she will need to see your DNA.

Thanks for your reply. I am trying to wrap up my evening here in Japan, preparing for tomorrow’s classes. But still I want to write a quick reply in case you have further thoughts before my Friday classes.

It seems there is ALOT of smoke about the Telomeres that I was completely unaware of until I followed up on two scientific thought leaders mentioned in the posts. I am grappling with how I can perhaps use a couple of images to convey and cause some discussion on the topic among my business management students, if they choose to take up the subject.

Finding causal relationships to issues in our environment, I think, is innate to thinking. But, when trying to present something so simply, ignoring the caveats for the “noble cause” of encouraging lifestyle changes…I think leads to disappointment among such believers…So, our textbook presents a wide cheap survey of technological and health/medical related topics for a semester of English vocabulary improvement….

This topic is only Unit 2, so as you can see, I am brainstorming on an approach strategy to apply to the other topics, and encourage optional reseach with Japanese presentations on the topics. I have to provide the initial structure.

Maybe one of my themes is “The hunt for Causal relationships” and the thinking that is required to believe them or not. I see that one cannot avoid having a sufficient education level to not only get an understanding, but more importantly question the assertions made by the Health Blog community.

The blogger “Jesse” who initially wrote on a site promoted by Pinterest has a 2.2 million viewer site where he covers “the latest health news”, taking up several issues in one column, in easy English. Probably some of my EFL learners could read his columns. Perhaps it all works out in the end. However there is such a thing as “conflict of interest” which betrays our trust in what and who we listen to….And what is the borderline between fact and wistful thinking or simplifying for the sake of “the noble cause”. I am sure my students don’t stay awake worrying about this, but the people I feel close to do.

regards,.

Joe, thanks! You are right, all the studies that found that the telomere length depends on the lifestyle are just based on statistical correlations. However, there are possible causal explanations. For instance, if you have fewer infections, fewer cell devisions are required.

I am a Univ. English learning lecturer in Japan. The textbook I am using has a chapter on Telomeres effects on the body. I have tried to track down just one of the references given indirectly  that starts you can directly effect the length of your Telomeres by changing your lifestyle.

This book review is very interesting, as the book” hype  cannot directly point to cause and effect on the telomeres length.

I am going to trustyou reviews more in the future because of the quality of your work here.

I don’t think that slower aging will decrease the numbers. Quite contrary! The main problem of a species where some members age too slow is that certain alleles will become too dominant in the species. That is, the genetic diversity decreases, putting the species at the risk of extinction. Imagine a wolf that significantly ages slower than the rest of the pack. This wolf will most likely become the alpha. If this wolf ages very slow or doesn’t age at all, all offspring in the pack will have very similar genomes after a certain time. If the pack then encounters a new deadly pathogen, the entire pack will be eradicated in no time. I believe the main function of aging is to increase genetic diversity.

I also don’t think that that the fertility rates in developed economies have anything to do with life spans. People don’t choose to have fewer kids just because they have a better life expectancy. There are a variety of socio economic reasons for lower fertility rates but they are all not directly linked to aging.

Michael, You are right that increasing life span in a by product of an improvement in the standard of living in developed economies. Sorry I didn’t make that clear. Together they influence fertility rates for socio economic reasons for which the list is long.

It doesn’t necessarily mean a species goes extinct it may just cause an decline in numbers until supply and demand come back into balance. For instance an increase in human live span where culture plays an important role has caused fertility rates to go negative in developed economies as a matter of choice. As human life span increases from where it is today fertility rates will likely drop further.

I am unsure where you disagree.

Life spans in the animal kingdom are driven by what works best for species survival.

This is exactly Mitteldorf’s point. If the life span is too long, that is, if animals don’t age fast enough, the species becomes extinct because it depletes the resources of the ecosystem.