The Secret to Long Life Learned from Lobsters
I learned something a few weeks ago about lobsters that both amazed and excited me. It turns out that lobsters are part of an exclusive group of animals we call “biologically immortal.”
Check out this Wikipedia link.
UPDATE 2024: a new breakthrough in the research to live forever shifts into mitochondrial health and function, plus deuterium. It's not all about just telomere length it turns out. Cold water shark, such as Greenland shark, can live for like 250 to 510 years (we know, not so long as lobsters, but still quite impressive).
Greenland sharks are more closely related to humans than lobsters. Both Greenland sharks and humans belong to the phylum Chordata, which means they share a common ancestor that possessed a notochord (a flexible rod-like structure that provides support). This places them in the same major evolutionary group, whereas lobsters belong to a different phylum altogether (Arthropoda), which includes insects, spiders, and crustaceans.
Greenland sharks hold an even more fascinating key to our own quest to live forever.
The upshot? Greenland sharks have a really low deuterium levels, which make their mitochondria produce more ATP and fight off cell death and disease extremely well, and thus helping them live a super long long time. They have low levels of deuterium, how? By clearing the deuterium waste out of their cells through a complex urea cycle. Human's can't do this, we actually suck at clearing deuterium waste. To make things worse, human commonly eat a diet of high deuterium foods and consume low elevation WATER (which is a source high in deuterium vs high elevation, like snow melt, water).
A massive break through in longevity science and medical treatment is on the way for humans soon to have bullet proof cells. But how soon? Let's ask Dr. Cohen in the coming year as he is closely involved in such research and science on just this very topic.
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The facts are that lobsters, only die if they get eaten or injured from a predator, or get a rare disease, but never from old age. They don’t have a built in life expectancy in their cells. Because of this lobsters constantly get stronger, bigger and more virile as they age. Older lobsters are actually more fertile than younger lobsters and if left alone they will continually grow and live for centuries.
Lobsters, like many other decapod crustaceans, grow throughout life, and are able to add new muscle cells at each molt. This is why every once in a while you’ll hear about someone catching a giant lobster of over 100 years that weighs almost 40 pounds.
So what is their secret?
It turns out it that in lobsters, telomerase, the enzyme that helps rebuild and maintain telomeres, stays active their whole life keeping their telomeres long and stopping cells from every dying!
For those not aware, telomeres are fragments at the end of our DNA that protect cells information as they divide and replicate. In simple terms, telomeres are our biological stop watch that determines how long your cells (and you) will live—and how healthy you will be. Telomeres are long when we are born and short when we die. You can learn more about telomeres by exploring the following links: here, here and here.
So while lobsters have the ability to keep their telomeres eternally long. Humans do not. In humans, telomerase production is turned off causing our telomeres to get shorter with time, creating older cells that resulting in all the changes we see in our body and mind as we age. Interestingly enough, there are some cell lines in humans such as sperm that do have telomerase activity and can stay young forever. This is why an 80 year old man can still father a new born.
And it is this secret that can help you live and longer and more productive life.
We now know that by maintaining the length of our telomeres you can literally slow down and even reverse the aging process. That bears repeating. Lengthen your telomeres as the lobsters do and you u will actually grow younger!
You can imagine that this incredible discovery has led to a race to develop products and technologies that will activate telomerase in man. And I am happy to share with you that one product is now available. A highly concentrated extract of astragalus called TA65 has already been proven to activate telomerase, lengthen telomeres improve health and performance as well as reverse many of the effects of aging such as wrinkles and gray hair. And a number of technologies are on the horizon. The use of viral vectors that specifically turn on telomerase could be available in the next five years.
Unfortunately, as incredible as the effects can be the current price of TA65 is not in the budget for most people. But there are some things you can do in your lifestyle and other supplements that you can take that will significantly preserve telomere length and your health and youth.
I’ll share more about this with you next week.
In the meantime, if you are somebody who feels that $575 a month is worth gaining 3 to 5 years of youth yearly than please contact me to learn more about TA65.
1. Klapper W, et. al. “Longevity of Lobsters is Linked to Ubiquitous Telomerase Expression.” FEBS Lett. 1998; 143-6.