our minds are more powerful than we
think how we think about life how we
think about aging just the tone of our
thoughts can influence the way that our
bodies degrade down to the molecular
level now have you ever wondered why
some 40 year olds look and feel like
they’re 50 and some 50 year olds look
and feel like they’re 40
well unlikely source as it is Cameron
Diaz got it right in the 2006 movie the
holiday where she said severe stress
causes the DNA and our cells to shrink
until they can no longer replicate so
when we’re stressed we look Haggard so
how many of you in this room have some
sort of life event happening that feels
stressful I see some people saying no
good for you I’m stressed right now
standing in front of you
I feel the cortisol in the room rising
so I know I’m not alone well the way
that we built our lives especially in
places like Boston where we’re busy and
we value achievement and academics
striving for that next level all of
these things lead to chronic stress and
that’s not to mention the stressful
events that happen in our lives no
matter where we are what we do things
like illness death of a loved one
financial hardship losing a home losing
a friend all of these things are major
stressors and many of them are things
that will happen to us probably at
multiple points over our lives but how
we approach these stressors how we think
about them even impacts our biology down
to the molecular level our negative
thoughts are slowly killing us let me
explain longevity expert Aubrey de Grey
has spoken widely about the seven deadly
things that lead to damage in ourselves
our bodies and our minds and I want to
focus on one of these which is
chromosomal mutations and specifically
mutations to a structure called
telomeres now telomeres are the caps
that sort of packaged in the DNA at the
ends of our chromosomes and they protect
the DNA on our chromosomes from damage
there are a lot like the plastic at the
end of a shoelace that protects the ends
from fraying their main responsibility
is to keep our DNA safe and free from
mutations now every time a cell divides
which is happening constantly it’s
happening in all of us right now as
you’re sitting or standing or
listening or thinking cells are dividing
and every time that that happens our DNA
is replicated and every time a
chromosome is replicated your telomeres
get a little bit shorter
now this matters because telomere
shortening is one of the root causes of
cellular aging and when they get too
short they start sending out signals to
our cells to stop dividing and once that
occurs you have less regeneration and
ultimately you can lead to a host of
problems which leads to disease among
other things now the good news is that
telomere length is malleable so in 2009
Elizabeth Blackburn Carol Greider and
Jack Shostak all won the Nobel Prize in
medicine for their discovery that
chromosomes are protected by these
telomeres and also by an enzyme called
telomerase which functions in a way that
maintains but also lengthens our
telomeres so what’s great is that you
know we have something that can lengthen
our telomeres but what’s bad is that we
don’t produce as much of this as time
goes on so as we get chronologically
older our telomeres shorten but the
length is also negatively impacted by
lifestyle factors things like chronic
stress negative thoughts toxic
relationships even where you live can
negatively impact your telomere length
there’s also the obvious culprits like
smoking poor diet poor exercise
everything from your marriage to the
neighborhood you live in has an impact
on your telomere length on your aging a
lot of these things are largely within
our control now there’s two aspects that
I want to talk about with regard to
telomeres one is how stress and
lifestyle impact our telomere length and
the other is how our perception of
stress how our approaches to stressors
impacts our telomere length and
therefore our aging and to talk about
this I want to highlight a study that
was done from UCLA and Stanford now in
this study they looked at a group of
women and what they found was that those
that were highly stressed had shorter
telomeres so they said okay let’s follow
them over the course of a year and we’re
gonna measure when they have high stress
events in their life and we have this
hypothesis that look greater number of
events that they have the shorter their
telomeres will be now what they found
was that for every major life stressors
that happened during that year period
there was a
kentley shorter telomere lengths
associated with each one in accumulative
fashion and while these effects were
moderated by aspects like lifestyle
choices like exercise or good sleep that
could sort of protect against this
stressful environment that people
experienced it showed that stress is
directly impacting our telomere lengths
and these findings also illustrate that
our telomeres are pretty malleable you
know sometimes we can buffer them by
engaging in certain lifestyles and that
can be really helpful and while we want
to treat aging in sort of a biological
sense and certainly I’ve talked a lot
about that we also have to think about
the mind and the mind-body relationship
is incredibly complex but we’re starting
to be able to interrogate that and what
we’re finding is that attitude matters
one study that tackled this looked at
how people perceived a stressful
situation so negative thinkers they tend
to view unfavorable situations with a
threat response so when that happens
your blood vessels constrict your
cortisol spikes and it stays up it
persists now high cortisol dampens your
telomerase expression and that’s bad for
your telomeres and bad for your aging
and unsurprisingly pessimism is also
correlated with shorter telomeres and
this was done in two independent cohorts
so looking at the other side of the coin
what we find is that people who see
something stressful as a challenge to be
tackled you get blood flow into your
brain blood flow into your heart you get
this spike of cortisol that energizes
you to tackle this challenge and then it
falls off and your telomeres are just
fine so what these data show is that
perception of stress has a direct impact
on our telomere lengths and those who
reshape their thinking under stress are
able to improve their telomere
maintenance which means that just by
thinking differently we can impact our
biology just by thinking differently we
can impact our biology and to underscore
this I want to briefly tell you about a
fascinating study that was done out of
Yale now this study looked at 660 people
ages 50 and above and they asked them a
series of questions and prompts and they
scored people based on their responses
on having either low or high positive
self perceptions of aging they followed
up 23 years later and what they found
was those who had a positive high
positive self perception of aging lived
seven and a half years longer than those
with a low positive self perception of
aging they had seven and a half extra
years of life correlated with this
perception difference and they
controlled for age gender socioeconomic
status loneliness pretty powerful
results so they followed this up with
another study of younger people average
age of thirty six and a half years and
they found a similar result that
negative perceptions of aging actually
almost doubled the likelihood that
someone would have an incident of a
cardiovascular event in the next 38
years so even the way that we think
about stress even the way that we think
about aging this matters because it
impacts our decisions which impacts our
behavior which impacts our biology and
our pace of Aging our health span and
ultimately our lifespan so next time you
have a stressful event take a deep
breath go for a walk and remember that
it really is mind over matter thank you [Applause]
think how we think about life how we
think about aging just the tone of our
thoughts can influence the way that our
bodies degrade down to the molecular
level now have you ever wondered why
some 40 year olds look and feel like
they’re 50 and some 50 year olds look
and feel like they’re 40
well unlikely source as it is Cameron
Diaz got it right in the 2006 movie the
holiday where she said severe stress
causes the DNA and our cells to shrink
until they can no longer replicate so
when we’re stressed we look Haggard so
how many of you in this room have some
sort of life event happening that feels
stressful I see some people saying no
good for you I’m stressed right now
standing in front of you
I feel the cortisol in the room rising
so I know I’m not alone well the way
that we built our lives especially in
places like Boston where we’re busy and
we value achievement and academics
striving for that next level all of
these things lead to chronic stress and
that’s not to mention the stressful
events that happen in our lives no
matter where we are what we do things
like illness death of a loved one
financial hardship losing a home losing
a friend all of these things are major
stressors and many of them are things
that will happen to us probably at
multiple points over our lives but how
we approach these stressors how we think
about them even impacts our biology down
to the molecular level our negative
thoughts are slowly killing us let me
explain longevity expert Aubrey de Grey
has spoken widely about the seven deadly
things that lead to damage in ourselves
our bodies and our minds and I want to
focus on one of these which is
chromosomal mutations and specifically
mutations to a structure called
telomeres now telomeres are the caps
that sort of packaged in the DNA at the
ends of our chromosomes and they protect
the DNA on our chromosomes from damage
there are a lot like the plastic at the
end of a shoelace that protects the ends
from fraying their main responsibility
is to keep our DNA safe and free from
mutations now every time a cell divides
which is happening constantly it’s
happening in all of us right now as
you’re sitting or standing or
listening or thinking cells are dividing
and every time that that happens our DNA
is replicated and every time a
chromosome is replicated your telomeres
get a little bit shorter
now this matters because telomere
shortening is one of the root causes of
cellular aging and when they get too
short they start sending out signals to
our cells to stop dividing and once that
occurs you have less regeneration and
ultimately you can lead to a host of
problems which leads to disease among
other things now the good news is that
telomere length is malleable so in 2009
Elizabeth Blackburn Carol Greider and
Jack Shostak all won the Nobel Prize in
medicine for their discovery that
chromosomes are protected by these
telomeres and also by an enzyme called
telomerase which functions in a way that
maintains but also lengthens our
telomeres so what’s great is that you
know we have something that can lengthen
our telomeres but what’s bad is that we
don’t produce as much of this as time
goes on so as we get chronologically
older our telomeres shorten but the
length is also negatively impacted by
lifestyle factors things like chronic
stress negative thoughts toxic
relationships even where you live can
negatively impact your telomere length
there’s also the obvious culprits like
smoking poor diet poor exercise
everything from your marriage to the
neighborhood you live in has an impact
on your telomere length on your aging a
lot of these things are largely within
our control now there’s two aspects that
I want to talk about with regard to
telomeres one is how stress and
lifestyle impact our telomere length and
the other is how our perception of
stress how our approaches to stressors
impacts our telomere length and
therefore our aging and to talk about
this I want to highlight a study that
was done from UCLA and Stanford now in
this study they looked at a group of
women and what they found was that those
that were highly stressed had shorter
telomeres so they said okay let’s follow
them over the course of a year and we’re
gonna measure when they have high stress
events in their life and we have this
hypothesis that look greater number of
events that they have the shorter their
telomeres will be now what they found
was that for every major life stressors
that happened during that year period
there was a
kentley shorter telomere lengths
associated with each one in accumulative
fashion and while these effects were
moderated by aspects like lifestyle
choices like exercise or good sleep that
could sort of protect against this
stressful environment that people
experienced it showed that stress is
directly impacting our telomere lengths
and these findings also illustrate that
our telomeres are pretty malleable you
know sometimes we can buffer them by
engaging in certain lifestyles and that
can be really helpful and while we want
to treat aging in sort of a biological
sense and certainly I’ve talked a lot
about that we also have to think about
the mind and the mind-body relationship
is incredibly complex but we’re starting
to be able to interrogate that and what
we’re finding is that attitude matters
one study that tackled this looked at
how people perceived a stressful
situation so negative thinkers they tend
to view unfavorable situations with a
threat response so when that happens
your blood vessels constrict your
cortisol spikes and it stays up it
persists now high cortisol dampens your
telomerase expression and that’s bad for
your telomeres and bad for your aging
and unsurprisingly pessimism is also
correlated with shorter telomeres and
this was done in two independent cohorts
so looking at the other side of the coin
what we find is that people who see
something stressful as a challenge to be
tackled you get blood flow into your
brain blood flow into your heart you get
this spike of cortisol that energizes
you to tackle this challenge and then it
falls off and your telomeres are just
fine so what these data show is that
perception of stress has a direct impact
on our telomere lengths and those who
reshape their thinking under stress are
able to improve their telomere
maintenance which means that just by
thinking differently we can impact our
biology just by thinking differently we
can impact our biology and to underscore
this I want to briefly tell you about a
fascinating study that was done out of
Yale now this study looked at 660 people
ages 50 and above and they asked them a
series of questions and prompts and they
scored people based on their responses
on having either low or high positive
self perceptions of aging they followed
up 23 years later and what they found
was those who had a positive high
positive self perception of aging lived
seven and a half years longer than those
with a low positive self perception of
aging they had seven and a half extra
years of life correlated with this
perception difference and they
controlled for age gender socioeconomic
status loneliness pretty powerful
results so they followed this up with
another study of younger people average
age of thirty six and a half years and
they found a similar result that
negative perceptions of aging actually
almost doubled the likelihood that
someone would have an incident of a
cardiovascular event in the next 38
years so even the way that we think
about stress even the way that we think
about aging this matters because it
impacts our decisions which impacts our
behavior which impacts our biology and
our pace of Aging our health span and
ultimately our lifespan so next time you
have a stressful event take a deep
breath go for a walk and remember that
it really is mind over matter thank you [Applause]
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