Deans' stroke musings: Telomeres: What are they, and how do they impact aging?

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Telomeres: What are they, and how do they impact aging?

What has your doctor done to maintain your telomeres? NOTHING? Then you don't have a functioning doctor who could easily read up and implement telomere interventions.

telomeres (17 posts to November 2012)
telomere caps (1 post to January 2022)
telomere length (3 posts to April 2022)

Telomeres: What are they, and how do they impact aging?

Telomeres are sections of DNA that are found at the ends of chromosomes and seem to play a role in aging.

Telomeres are the "caps" that protect the ends of DNA strands from being destroyed by a cell. They are made up of areas of repeated DNA sequences combined with specific proteins at the ends of chromosomes — the tightly wound structures of DNA and proteins inside cells. Telomeres play a role in how fast cells age, though exactly how isn't totally clear.

Organisms without circular chromosomes — including humans, other animals, plants and even single-celled protists — have telomeres. Telomeres act as barriers, preventing DNA from being degraded and corrupted.

If our cells did not have telomeres, cellular machinery "would chew away the ends of the chromosomes and into essential genes," said Jan Karlseder (opens in new tab), a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California and the director of the Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at the Salk Institute. The cell might also attach the end of one chromosome to the end of another, which he said would be "a disastrous event" for a cell.

"Since our chromosomes are linear pieces of DNA, a structure called the telomere has evolved that protects the natural ends of the chromosomes from being recognized as DNA damage," Karlseder told Live Science.

Each time a cell divides, some part of the repeating sequence in a telomere is lost. When telomeres become too short to function effectively, a cell either dies or stops dividing. So because most cells cannot regenerate their telomeres, they become shorter as people age. The rate at which telomeres shorten has also been associated with rates of aging.