The biggest breakthrough in anti-aging medicine in our lifetime involves telomere biology.
Each time your cells divide, they copy your DNA to make the new cell. But the telomeres – the sections of DNA at both ends of a chromosome – get shorter with every copy. And the shorter your telomeres are, the “older” the cell acts.
Once the telomeres get to their shortest length, your cells can no longer divide, and damaged or diseased cells aren’t replaced. This causes a chain reaction that weakens your tissues and organs. And that can only lead to disease… and, ultimately, death.
Fortunately, there are some ways to start to slow down the rate at which your telomeres are shortening right now…
1. Lower your homocysteine levels. According to a report in the journal Atherosclerosis,high levels of this amino acid can shorten your telomeres as much as 3 times faster.
I help my patients lower their homocysteine levels by having them supplement daily with the following:
- Vitamin B12 – 500 mcg
- Folic acid – 800 mcg
- Vitamin B6 – 25 mg
- Riboflavin (B2) – 25 mg
- TMG (trimethylglycine) – 500 mg
You can find these supplements at your local health food store. If you don’t want to take them all separately, you can use the same formula I give my patients.
2. Take vitamin C. This inexpensive supplement is a powerful antioxidant. And recent studies – including one reported in the journal Life Sciences - show it can slow telomere shortening by over 50 percent. I recommend 2,000 mg per day to my patients.
3. Take SOD. Besides protecting your cells from the damage of toxins and stress, SOD (superoxide dismutase) has been shown to slow the rate of telomere shortening. I recommend 500 mg a day. You can find it at your local health food store. Or you can check out my formula, which contains SOD as well as other potent cell protectors.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears is a practicing physician and the author of The Doctor's Heart Cure. He is also a nutritional expert, a fitness expert, and is certified by the American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine. Find Dr. Sears's practical solutions and get immediate access to more than 500 of his articles by visiting www.alsearsmd.com.
For more expert recommendations on how to feel better and live longer, check out ETR's FREE natural health newsletter.]
The Language Perfectionist: A Multitude of Misuses
By Don Hauptman
Here’s another compilation of errors, all spotted during my routine reading of various print publications:
- “There’s only one institution capable of holding these leaders’ feet to the fire: the national press corp.”
The correct word here is not corp., an abbreviation of corporation, but corps (pronounced “core”) – a group of people acting under direction, as in Marine Corps.
- Letter to Editor I: “Children these days are taught that simply trying your best at an activity is all that is needed to enjoy the spoils of victory, regardless of the true outcome. These lessons are re-enforced when adults are insulated from the consequences of their actions… .”
The writer probably isn’t referring to a police activity, so he should have used the word reinforced.
- Letter to Editor II: “Having just come back from Disney World for the third time since November, I can tell you the decrease in attendance is a myth… me thinks the mouse is crying ‘wolf.’”
Unless the writer is Tarzan or Frankenstein’s monster, he meant to say methinks, an archaic form of “I think” or “It seems to me” that, nowadays, is used only in a jocular fashion.
- Ad headline: “Graphics Auction Event of the Decade (To Be Offered in Bulk or Piece Meal Basis)”
Piecemeal – like methinks – is one word, not two.
- “You have two 15-year-olds mashing in the back seat of the car – who’s the criminal here? Do we really need Big Brother to decide whether or not that needs to be judiciously pursued?”The word judicious means prudent, exhibiting good judgment. It’s possible that this is what the quoted speaker meant, but my hunch is that she thought the word has something to do with the judicial system. The correct word in this context is legally.
Note that the above are most likely not simple typos but rather what I call “errors of ignorance” – mistakes that neither the writers nor their editors caught.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
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Excellent articles
Worth the read everytime