Can healthy lifestyle changes help prevent accelerated aging?

To address the question, “If chronic stress can decrease telomerase and cause telomeres to age more quickly, could healthy lifestyle changes prevent this from occurring?” my colleagues and I recently conducted a study with Dr. Blackburn, Dr. Peter Carroll, and others to see if the program of comprehensive lifestyle changes described in The Spectrum, including stress-management techniques and support groups, might help prevent accelerated aging.

We think it did.

Participants were asked to eat and live on the healthiest end of the Spectrum. They were tested at the beginning and again after three months. We found that their telomerase level (which repairs telomeres) actually increased significantly, by almost 29 percent. Increases in telomerase activity were also associated with decreases in low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and also with decreases in stress.

This is the first study showing that intervention can significantly increase telomerase and, thus, telomere length. If a new drug were shown to achieve these results, it would be worth a billion dollars, but you can accomplish this virtually for free simply by making the comprehensive lifestyle changes described in the book The Spectrum.