Telomeres and Aging
. . . . a growing number of cancers and other chronic conditions have been attributed to infectious agents. For example, the bacterium Helicobacter pylori causes ulcers and stomach cancer, and Chlamydia [Chlamydophila] pneumoniae has been implicated as a cause of artery-clogging plaques. Both hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus (HCV) can lead to liver cancer, and human papillomavirus is responsible for most cases of cervical cancer.
Anthony S. Fauci,
Director, National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases
1998, the year I had my heart attack
For most of my life I believed that the aches and pains of old age are caused by old age itself. Not so. The aches and pains of old age are caused by the accumulation of chronic infections. The purpose of this book is to explain how we get them and how they affect our health.
To a much lesser extent, this book is about how to get rid of chronic infections.It will be up to you and your doctor to get rid of the infections.
Telomeres evolved to protect us from cancer. (This is a complete non sequitur, but I'm leaving it here so I won't for get it.)
Telomeres
According to one theory of aging, our cells have counters called telomeres that limit how many times each cell can replace itself. Some researchers believe that we would run out of telomeres and die at about 115, even if nothing else was wrong with us. That would be dying from old age.
What happens though, is that we start to fall apart long before we run out of telomeres. Some of us become asthmatic, develop acne, and start to have migraine headaches while we are still in out teens. By our thirties, many of us are overweight and we can't run or swim as well as we did a few years earlier. Our health goes downhill at an accelerating rate as we get into our forties and beyond. On www.cpnhelp.org, they call this phenomenon the falling apart syndrome.
I think the reason we start to fall apart before we run out of telomeres can be traced back to chronic infections.
Much more to follow.