As seen on Oprah :), a new state-of-the-art blood test “Biophysical250” is available for a price tag ranging from $1500-3400 that actually determines the length of your telomeres, and thus give doctors an idea of how a certain individual is aging.

What are telomeres?

The chromosomes are often compared to shoelaces and telomeres to the plastic wrapping found at both ends. They are repeated sequences of nucleotides whose function is to maintain the integrity of our genetic code while the cell is dividing. This is mainly because during DNA replication, primers don’t attach to the very end of the strand. Instead, they often ‘miss’ a few nucleotides on both ends and if that were the case, then our genetic code would eventually vanish. This is why telomeres are very important.

Normally, as human beings, our telomeres start off with 8,000 base pairs which decrease each time the cell divides by 30-200 bp each time and may go as low as 1,500 bp in elderly people. Eventually when telomeres become too short, the cell stops dividing, becoming inactive ‘aging’.

An interesting hypothesis about telomeres is that stress is thought to play some kind of role in the determination of their length. In other words, the more stressed out you are, the shorter your telomeres become as you age. Needless to say, once stress has been coped with, it is thought that the rate at which telomeres shorten decreases dramatically which might be essential to longer healthier lives.

For more information, click HERE

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One Response to “Aging Marker”
  1. rama saad says:

    In cancer cells, telomerase , the enzyme responsible for repairing the telomeres , is very highly expressed thus contributing to un controlled poliferation.

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