Has anyone had their telomeres tested?

What kind of a test is it? What is it for?

I think it’s a blood test. Telomeres are thought to be predictive of how close you are to death. You can reverse it though. I’ll see if I can find the video I’ve seen about it.

Telomeres are the ends of your DNA. each cell in your body. Stress shortens and frays them and leads to premature death. Previous question

http://www.spectracell.com/clinicians/products/telomere-testing/

I think this is the program I saw. I saw it on TV a while ago. I’m having trouble running the video, but I think it’s my internet connection. If it’s the right one I found it very interesting.

It doesn’t interest me. Why not simply make changes anyway? Sensible lifestyle changes are valuable whether your results are negative or positive.

The link I posted didn’t seem to show a price. How much is it, @JLeslie?

@jca I googled a little and found this. I have no idea how legitimate or reliable that company is. If you google “telomere testing price” a few websites come up. The link I gave here is a home test and costs $125 for the telomere only test I think.

@Adagio I think you make a good point, but sometimes objective knowledge is helpful. For instance, I basically believe I am high risk for heart attack. I should, in my mind, do things that are likely to prevent heart disease. Even without any tests, heart disease kills one in three women and many people in my family have heart attacks or heart disease very young. “Eating healthy” is not good enough to just know as a basic idea, because things like testing my cholesterol has given me information that changed how I eat. I am not like the majority. Most people for instance can eat quite a bit of cholesterol and their numbers are fine. I can’t. For me, cholesterol I take sends my numbers right up. I only know because I’ve tested it several times. I’ve narrowed down these things.

The thing I found interesting with the telomeres is one thing they looked at was stress level. People under high stress (they used people who take care of elderly parents or sick relatives) had short telomeres. The thing was, once the stress was relieved their telomeres grew again. The researchers didn’t know if it was a flexible or reversible thing, but it seems it is. I think people aren’t great at perceiving how stress is affecting them. This is only one aspect of why I am curious about the testing.

Please let us know if you do this, now I’m somewhat curious.

I think the problem with a test like that is there’s no way to prove it’s accurate. No way to prove you’re not just getting ripped off. If it says you’ll live till 80 and you live till 80, then bingo, it’s correct. If it says you’ll live till 80 and you die at 70, then they could say “well, you must have done something to make things worse, and therefore you cut 10 years off your life.” If it says you’ll live till 80 and you live till 90, they could say “well, you must have done something to mitigate your circumstances and therefore, you added 10 years to your life.”

Good point @jca. And if they said you were going to die within 2 years, wouldn’t you just stress yourself out enough to fulfill their prophecy and die within 2 years?

Just do like my mom. She’s been saying every year since she was in her 50’s that it was her last year. She’s 87 now. And besides allergies she is in pretty good health. I think its keeping her alive. LOL

@jca @chyna I doubt it tells you how many years until you die. Plus, you can change your telomeres.

@Pandora Sounds good to me.