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Narrator: Since before recorded history began,
people have been searching for ways to live longer.
But it has only been in the last thirty years that science has made any real progress
in understanding the fundamental question surrounding how we age and what can be done about it.
The primary cause of aging is really pretty simple.
We age because our cells age, and our telomeres get shorter.
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for breakthrough research
on telomeres and their effects on aging.
What can we learn from the newly discovered link between telomeres and aging?
Dr. William H. Andrews has worked in the biotech industry for 31 years,
the last 19 years focused solely on the aging process.
Dr. Andrews earned his Ph.D. in Molecular and Population Genetics
and is presently the founder, President, and CEO of a biotech company
focused exclusively on identifying compounds that affect aging in human cells.
Dr. Andrews is one of the world's leading researchers on telomeres
and was one of the principal discoverers of both the RNA and protein components of human telomerase.
He is presently a named inventor on more than 60 U.S. issued telomerase patents.
Dr. Andrews has recently teamed up with Isagenix founder,
and Master Nutritional Formulator, John Anderson,
who is credited with creating some of the world's most effective nutritional formulations
over the past 30 years.
Their goal is to use this Nobel Prize winning research on telomeres and aging
to create the ultimate nutritional system for promoting telomere health.
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Recently we have discovered that the science of human aging is really pretty simple.
We age because our cells divide and our telomeres get shorter.
What's a telomere?
Well, to answer that, let's zoom into a human's 100 trillion cells.
Every cell contains a nucleus with genes and chromosomes.
If you zoom in further, you see that the chromosomes
are made up of DNA molecules that are 100 million bases long, coiled up like a slinky.
There are long, repetitive sequences of DNA at the end of each of our chromosomes.
These sequences are called telomeres.
When a cell divides, the genetic material inside that cell needs to be copied.
This is called DNA replication.
During this process, enzymes that replicate a strand of DNA
are unable to continue replicating all the way to the end, which causes the loss of some DNA.
In the ends, if you remember, are where the telomeres are.
At birth we have about 10,000 bases,
but as we age and our cells divide again and again, we lose those bases.
And at 5,000 bases we begin to die of old age.
As telomeres get shorter, humans begin to experience the general effects of aging,
loss of muscle, failing memory, poor eyesight, lack of energy, and slower recovery after exercise.
The bottom line is this, when cells divide, telomeres shorten
and bad things happen when telomeres get short.
As an analogy, think of DNA as a long row of bricks
and of DNA replication as a bricklayer walking backwards on top of a brick wall,
laying a new layer on top of that row.
When the end of the wall is reached, the bricklayer
finds himself standing on top of the bricks he's supposed to replicate.
But since he can't put down a brick where is feet are,
he steps back and falls off the wall, leaving the very end of the wall bare.
As a result, the new copy of the wall is shorter.
Just like this brick wall was copied imperfectly, our DNA is unable to copy itself perfectly.
When a strand is replicated, the new strand is shorter than the old strand.
>> Initially, we thought there wasn't anything we could do to affect the aging process.
Now we know there are some things we can do, like some lifestyle changes,
specifically decreasing toxins in our body, addressing obesity, and improving our nutrition,
plus reducing physical, mental, and oxidative stress,
which are all key to slowing down the aging process.
But perhaps even more significant than this,
scientific research has concluded that the next big step to maintaining a youthful body
is to find strategies to actually lengthen our telomeres,
essentially turning back our biological clock.
>> Research we completed in 1997 established that humans
also have an enzyme called telomerase that can lengthen telomeres.
This research was so significant
that in 2009 it was awarded the Nobel Price physiology or medicine.
Let me explain this research further.
We know that there must e a way for our bodies to re-lengthen telomeres,
because our reproductive cells do not exhibit telomere shorting and show no signs of aging.
The reason these cells are essentially immortal is because
reproductive cells produce an enzyme, called telomerase.
Telomerase acts like an assembly line inside our cells
that adds nucleotides to the ends of our chromosomes, thus lengthening our telomeres.
In a cell that expresses telomerase, telomeres are lengthened as soon as they shorten.
It's as though every time the telomere *** inside our cell ticks once,
telomerase pushes the hands of the clock back one tick.
Returning to the analogy of the bricklayer that can't lay the last brick on the brick wall,
telomerase would be like an angel that flies in and puts the last brick in place.
The telomerase gene exists in all our cells.
That's because the DNA in every one of our cells is identical:
a skin cell, muscle cell, and liver cell all contain exactly the same genetic information.
So, if the cells that create our *** and egg cells contain the code for telomerase,
every other cell must contain the code as well.
>> In 1997, we inserted the telomerase gene into normal human skin cells grown in a Petri dish.
When they observed that the telomerase enzyme was being produced in these cells,
we then assade the telomere lengths, we noticed that the skin cells were essentially becoming immortal.
There was virtually no limit to the number of times the cells could divide.
When the lengths of the telomeres were assade and we got the results in,
we observed that the telomerized cells had actually lengthened their telomeres
rather than seeing the telomeres get shorter.
The critical question, then, was whether or not the cells were becoming younger.
A few years later, another lab inserted the telomerase gene,
the same gene we were using that already had very short telomeres.
These cells were then grown into the skin of the back of mice.
Now, in this experiment they had old mice, young mice, and telomerized mice.
When looking at the old mice, we noticed that the skin was getting wrinkled.
It blistered easily and we noticed some gray hair.
As for the young and telomerized mice, there was virtually no difference.
When we looked at the gene expression patterns between the young
and telomerized mice, we noticed that the genes being expressed were virtually identical between the two.
This created very exciting possibilities for us,
because it was the first evidence showing that telomerized cells actually returned to a young morphology.
They look young.
They express the same genes as young cells and this is where the impact of telomerase on aging
is truly going to have a lot of potential and excitement.
>> This leading edge science has created exciting possibilities in the field of anti-aging,
possibilities that were only dreamed up until the impact on telomerase on aging was discovered.
The reason most of our cells don't express telomerase is that the gene is repressed in them,
however, if the appropriate compound, the right botanical, phytonutrient, or combination is found,
science may be able to assist the body to de-repress telomerase,
turning on the gene that's already present in every cell in the human body.
I lead a team of scientists pursuing this line of research.
And we are virtually the only scientists pursuing it.
We have made significant progress in understanding the underlying science behind telomerase induction.
We have studied and tested more than 300,000 drugs, chemicals, and compounds
to document their effect on supporting telomere health.
My biotech company developed the only high-throughput screening system in the world
that is capable of screening for telomerase inducers.
Our recent collaboration with John Anderson's 30 years of formulating experience,
and our strategic alliance with Isagenix' decade of proven transformational results,
is yielding results beyond anything we have ever experienced.
It won't be surprising to see many companies trying to enter this space
and begin marketing products how to support telomeres.
But I know from my research not all telomere products are the same.
One company is leading the way with a complete system
that not only addresses the causes of aging,
but also provides a credible product system to effectively support healthy telomeres.
As the search for a viable method to activate telomerase and lengthen telomeres continues,
each of us must do what we can to adopt a healthy lifestyle and support our telomere health
with the hope that one day that magic bullet will exist.
The good news is, there are strategies that you can immediately employ
to provide telomere support that may slow the aging process.
The first step to improve your chances of living longer and healthier
is to control factors that are known to affect aging,
such as toxicity, obesity, poor dietary and exercise habits, and oxidative stress.
The next step is to assist the body with science-based, targeted nutrition to provide telomere support.
I have dedicated my life to exploring the science of aging and how we might slow the aging process.
Like you, as I get older, I want to look and feel half my age.
I want to compete in a 100 mile race at 100 years old.
This remarkable research may one day reveal the secret of living a longer, healthier life.
I am grateful for the opportunity I've had to share it with you.
Narrator: Contact the person who shared this video with you.
Discover which Isagenix product system is best for you.
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