Evidence for Longer Telomeres in Women
Women tend to live longer than men for reasons that remain much debated, an example of the way in which identifying cause and effect for natural variations in longevity can be very challenging. Telomeres, the caps of repeating DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes, tend to become shorter on average with age and illness. Some forms of telomere length measurement in some tissues may be useful as a biomarker of aging, but so far this hasn't proven to be straightforward. Given these two line items we might expect to find that women have longer telomeres than men, once the details are sorted out:
It is widely believed that females have longer telomeres than males, although results from studies have been contradictory. We carried out a systematic review and meta-analyses to test the hypothesis that in humans, females have longer telomeres than males and that this association becomes stronger with increasing age. Searches were conducted in EMBASE and MEDLINE and additional datasets were obtained from study investigators. Eligible observational studies measured telomeres for both females and males of any age, had a minimum sample size of 100 and included participants not part of a diseased group. We calculated summary estimates using random-effects meta-analyses. Heterogeneity between studies was investigated using sub-group analysis and meta-regression.Meta-analyses from 36 cohorts (36,230 participants) showed that on average females had longer telomeres than males. There was little evidence that these associations varied by age group or cell type. However, the size of this difference did vary by measurement methods, with only Southern blot but neither real-time PCR nor FlowFISH showing a significant difference. This difference was not associated with random measurement error. Further research on explanations for the methodological differences is required.
Regarding the product TA-65 and other telomere-activation supplements...after all the years of selling the product, I wonder why I cannot find a single trial on clinicaltrials.gov which supports the fantastic claims of telomere activation? Can anyone help me understand why this is? And, is the idea behind TA really not "rejuvenation" at all?
thanks!
Eugene
I believe there is some complex code in a cell that defines the length of an arm of a person, or the size of the entire body, or the max. livespan of it.
But maybe there is more to it.
Its all connected to the one and only reason in evolution.
Somehow the code gets adjusted to fit its requirements.
Darvin found out that the same tipe of bird is on one island smaller than on another. He concluded that this ajustment had to do with the food supply.
Women live longer than man, I believe because old women take care for their grand children, while old man are biologically of less use to society and survival of the tribe. They cannot do anymore the tasks they did when they where jung, run, hunt, carry heavy stuff and build houses.
There must be a grand- mechanissm that makes a bird smaller . The entire bird, from beek to tow, from wing to fedder. All together in the same time.
Aging could be looked at in a comparable manner, beside looking at it always on the cell level.
How does the leg know, how long the other leg is, how does the arm know, how big the body is?
Aging could also depend on the interference of genes betwen diferent cells or organs or body parts. Maybe they talk to each other and tell when its time to change something.
Maybe its not the gene in a cell that decides what to do, but the naiboring cells that give the push to do something or not.