Real patient experiences

Is a sprint between two 90-year-olds an ageist spectacle?
If we couldn’t see their faces and didn’t know their ages, we wouldn’t think this was very athletic. Someday soon, we will not consider age to be very important and the existence of a contest between two genetically-damaged individuals will not be elevated to a noble spectacle but will seem exploitative.
Alpha dogs enjoy longer telomeres
It would seem that social rank has it’s privileges. This study of hyenas showed that the most dominant members had the longest telomeres. Perhaps telomere length is a measure of fitness or perhaps the higher rank confers less stress. But probably it’s a little of both.

Chromosomal damage is inevitable and desirable; it’s the repair that causes problems
Thankfully, telomere shortening causes them to mutate and mutation triggers self-destruction. What we want is to preserve the critical stem cells.

Telomere research is more dubious than you can imagine
“To our knowledge, this study is the first that focused on the analysis of rTL [relative telomere length] in a variety of human tissues.”
Shorter telomeres associated with Alzheimer’s Disease
Here is an article linking shorter telomeres in the hippocampal region with Alzheimer’s.
