The ends of your chromosomes are sensitive to a variety of environmental factors | Hacker News Reader

The ends of your chromosomes are sensitive to a variety of environmental factors

arstechnica.com

41 pointsshawndumas14 comments

After working in an agency setting while trying to run several small projects on the side, I can see why work-related stress would turn hair white and bring about countless wrinkles prematurely.

With that said, alcohol may help to a degree, but with the stressors of everyday life it's too easy to get carried away. For awhile I was drinking nearly every night of the week. I would drink in an attempt to forget about the failures of my career and the debts I had taken on as a result. Only to find that those worries were still very realistically there the next day, and I had lost time that would otherwise have been spent working or improving myself, thanks to drinking.

Now, due in-part to meditation, a closer circle of friends and peer supporters, and a lot of reading, I haven't touched more than a single beer in two weeks. And it feels great because it allows me to get more done.

Congratulations on this change!

The article is misleading. Longer telomeres don't mean longer life. Telomeres in mice are 4 times as long as those found in humans and they are particularly susceptible to damage from oxidative stress.

Noting that the experiments described in the article were performed on yeast, can anybody better versed in biology convey a better idea on how applicable to humans these results are?

As described in the article, we both have telomeres, but as far as I know the comparison ends there.

Other research has already found an association between caffeine intake and lower incidence of cancer in humans. http://www.cancerletters.info/article/S0304-3835%2808%290066... So the research doesn't seem to transfer at all.

Well, this article states that caffeine shortens telomeres, and shortened telomeres are a hallmark of aging. Lengthened telomeres are associated with cancers. This seems to imply that the research done in this article (on yeast) correlates with the research you linked.

As a guy who's done some homebrewing, yeast can handle alcohol concentrations which if placed in a mammal bloodstream would result in instant death. Its a matter of about 1.5 orders of magnitude not a minor difference. That has certain implications for what their cellular insides can tolerate vs ours.

So something in the cellular structure of yeasts "shields their innards" a lot better than cells in our body. A moderate booze fest to the deep innards of a yeast cell might for a mammal cell be achieved by merely sniffing an open beer bottle. It would require further research.

Its a particularly bad combo, using yeasts and alcohols to extrapolate to humans. Like "randomly" selecting a halophile to extrapolate human salt tolerance, or "randomly" selecting a thermophile to extrapolate human temperature tolerance.

I see no similar obvious reason not to extrapolate caffeine/yeast combo to humans other than the usual multi-cellular vs unicellular issues.

Noting that the experiments described in the article were performed on yeast, can anybody better versed in biology convey a better idea on how applicable to humans these results are?

Yes, I'd like to know too.

Which, if any of these genes that regulate telomere length are also present in humans?

FTA: "and alcohol (and acetic acid) lengthen [telomeres]."

funny, these findings seem to contradict this study:

"Shortened telomeres in individuals with abuse in alcohol consumption" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21351086

As someone who's addicted to both, I can't really tell if this revelation is good, bad, or otherwise.

Just drink Irish coffee and one will cancel the other's effects.

Meditation is seemingly helpful wrt telomerase. http://www.academia.edu/4326346/The_link_between_mindfulness...

I looked at the study and everyone involved smoked and drank to some extent, and the meditation had some improvement on depression/anxiety/worry all of which are usually blamed for cig / booze use. At least some subjects were likely self medicating themselves and its highly likely the semi-dramatic change in reported attitude would lead to semi-dramatic change in self medication. However booze/cigs use after the experiment was not charted which is highly unfortunate.

It seems highly likely meditation reduces self-medication due to improved mental state, and reduced self medication as per this article study has some direct effect on telomerase. So indirectly it sounds like a believable testable falsifiable hypothesis but its hardly been proven.

I may have found the wrong study. I know of a few so I'll go back and see if the others were better.

Edit: better study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057175/#S29titl...

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