Live slow, die young

Live slow die young
Active people could be up to 10 years 'younger' than couch potatoes, at least according to one measure of biological age. (The biological age was measured by telomere length)
Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Unit at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, looked at the levels of physical activity of 2,401 twins and assessed the length of their telomeres - the 'caps' on the ends of their chromosomes that help to protect the DNA from wearing down during the replication process that replenishes cells. Telomeres shorten over an individual’s lifetime and are thought to function as a marker for ageing. Smokers and obese people were already known to have shorter telomeres than their healthier counterparts.
The team found that, on average, telomeres in the most active group (who took more than 3 hours 20 minutes of exercise a week) were 200 nucleotides longer than that of the least active group (who took less than 16 minutes exercise a week).
“This difference suggests that inactive subjects may be biologically older by 10 years compared with more active subjects,” say Spector and colleagues in their paper in Archives of Internal Medicine 1.
Exercise is good for you
The researchers also looked at matched pairs of twins and found an average difference of 88 nucleotides between the more and less active siblings.
The group cannot be certain from this that activity levels are having a direct impact on telomere length. “We can’t prove that," admits Spector. But they think it is the most likely explanation; the researchers corrected their statistics for the impact of smoking, obesity, social status and a whole host of other possible confounding factors. "It’s very hard to think of anything else that would be a confounder that we haven’t measured,” he says.
If inactivity is to blame, Spector can think of a couple of ways in which it might work. It is known that the faster cells are replenished, the faster telomeres shrink, and it's possible that physically inactive people are for some reason experiencing a high cell turnover. Another possible explanation lies in oxidative stress — in which more reactive oxygen atoms or oxygen molecules are created and stress the cells. “It’s possible we need exercise to damp down oxidative stress,” says Spector. Alternatively, it could be that a little bit of oxidative stress is caused by exercise, but that this little bit of harm does some good to our cells.
Invisible factors
In an editorial alongside Spector’s paper, Jack Guralnick, chief of the Epidemiology and Demography Section at the National Institute on Aging in the United States, says more work is needed to pin down whether there is a causal link2.
“It’s a provocative finding,” he says. “The statistical association is there; it’s quite clear in the work.” But other diseases that weren’t corrected for could be causing the association, he says. “Proving causality in this kind of study is nearly impossible,” says Guralnick.
Spector admits that his findings will excite debate in researchers who study ageing; the idea that telomere length is directly related to ageing isn't fully accepted. “There’s still controversy,” he says. “When I write that in papers you get one in three reviewers being angry about it.”
Whether or not the results of Spector’s team are confirmed by future work, researchers say they are likely to trigger an increase in research in this area. “This is kind of an opening salvo,” says Guralnik.
At the end I would like to add that Doctors should advice their patient to go for exercise or at least for walk daily so that they have good, healthy and longer life, and reseachers also should manage to go for walk or exercise in addition to their reseach work so that they could have a long and happy life and could referesh themselves.
References:
1. Cherkas, L., et al. Arch. Intern. Med., 168, 154-158 (200.
2. Guralnik, J. Arch. Intern. Med., 168, 131-132 (200.

Best regards
Aftab Ahmad Chatha

Posted by: aftabacPosts: 271 :: 13-02-2008 :: | Reply to this Message

Re: Live slow, die young

AA
Very nice article. Thank you very much.
Regards

Posted by: yusmanPosts: 21 :: 13-02-2008 :: | Reply to this Message

Re: Live slow, die young

quote:

---

References:
1. Cherkas, L., et al. Arch. Intern. Med., 168, 154-158 (200.
2. Guralnik, J. Arch. Intern. Med., 168, 131-132 (200.

Best regards
Aftab Ahmad Chatha

---

Posted by: shakeelaPosts: 13 :: 17-02-2008 :: | Reply to this Message

Re: Re: Live slow, die young

AoA
Well, every journal has its own reference style, and it is even variable among the institute. so there is not a universal standard format for reference and we have to write it according to journal or institute.
as i picked this news from Nature and shared with you so the reference pattern is of NATURE journal and it is one of the best journal in the world.

regards
aftab ahmad

Posted by: aftabacPosts: 271 :: 18-02-2008 :: | Reply to this Message

Re: Re: Re: Re: Live slow, die young

ok it might be like this for the M.Sc students but for medical doctors the way of writing the references is not the same.

Posted by: shakeelaPosts: 13 :: 18-02-2008 :: | Reply to this Message

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Live slow, die young

well
difference is not for MSc student or medical doctors. i told you that when you write a reseach article and going to publish it then you have to follow the reference pattern of the journal in which you are going to publish your journal.
and seconldy i told you each institute also has its own reference pattern, like the reference style of Punjab University might be different from University of health sciences, so reference style is different for the journal as well as for institute.

regards
aftab

Posted by: aftabacPosts: 271 :: 20-02-2008 :: | Reply to this Message