Telomeres, trauma, and mindfulness
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What is the overall focus of the episode on telomeres, trauma, and mindfulness?
This is an ABC podcast. Hi, it's All in the Mind, I'm Lynn Malcolm with a highlight programme from 2019 for RN Summer. Today, the powerful connection between our sense of well being and Both in our mind.
An intervention that is mindfulness based and compassion based. that is social culturally adapted and is trauma sensitive. Targeting African refugees that live in Israel
and every cell in our body. Our chromosomes that contain our genes. Have at the tips of them Telomeres. They protect the genes from damage. They also act as a sensor to stress in the cell.
Професор Аллиса Епл афор Професо Амет Бернстен. Both were guests at the twenty nineteen Happiness and Its Causes conference in Sydney. First, to a recent scientific understanding of how we can live younger, healthier and longer. In 2009, Elizabeth Blackburn, along with graduate student Carol Grider, was one of the first Australian women to win a Nobel Prize. Her work showed that in single-cell organisms, chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. So what are telomeres? Alyssa Eppel is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California.
Our chromosomes that contain our genes. have at the tips of them Telomeres, which are protective caps, they protect the genes from damage. They also act as a sensor to Stress in the cell. When there is a lot of stress in the cell, like oxidative stress, for example. They tend to shorten prematurely. Telemes shorten over time. When our cells divide. And while they can be repaired by the enzyme telomerase, the rate of shortening depends on our genetics and our lifestyle. And these telomeres are in every single cell in our body. Right. So they're particularly important in the types of cells that actually Replicate and reproduce and replenish tissue. So those are some of our cells we call post mitotic. They don't divide anymore.
And some of our cells that make up, for example parts of the cardiovascular system. and the immune system, these divide throughout our life. And we really want to take good care of our telomeres so that our cells can keep dividing and the tissue is replenished and it can stay young and healthy.
Alyssa Eppel is also a health researcher and has been fascinated by how the body is affected by the way people think, behave and live. She teamed up with Professor Elizabeth Blackburn to co-author the book The Telomere Effect, which describes how the original research on telomeres applies
to human beings. Now we started off studying stress many years ago and we found that Healthy people under chronic stress had Premature shortening of their telomeres and lowered levels of the enzyme telomerase that protects telomeres. And since then, we and others have extended this finding. And discovered that it's a very common state in any chronic condition. Characterized by chronic stress. So most psychiatric disorders are associated with shorter telomeres. And actually most chronic disease conditions are associated with shorter tailomeres. So then the question became. Well, did the telomere shortening precede and predict the disease, or did the disease shorten the telomeres? And it turns out in meta-analyses, in reviews of many studies, that telomeres in midlife in our blood
precede and predict the onset of diseases of aging. So we think they play a causal role.
How do telomeres protect our genes and act as stress sensors?
And in fact, for people with genetic disorders where they have Very little telomerase, they develop diseases very early in life. And the telomerase is the enzyme that protects the telomeres. Right. So telomerase is an enzyme inside our cells that can actually rebuild telomeres to be longer. And this is the enzyme that Liz Blackburn and Carol Grider discovered and got the Nobel Prize for.
So what are the factors that determine the length of the telomeres and can that be changed?
We know that what we start off with at birth is very important. We get Very big differences between people at birth. And part of that's genetics, and part of that is prenatal environment when there's a lot of stress.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the overall focus of the episode on telomeres, trauma, and mindfulness?
0:02–4:31
2
How do telomeres protect our genes and act as stress sensors?
4:31–9:19
3
Why does chronic stress cause premature telomere shortening and disease risk?
9:19–13:29
4
Which lifestyle choices (diet, exercise, sleep) can help preserve or lengthen telomeres?
13:29–17:29
5
How was a mindfulness‑based, trauma‑sensitive intervention designed for African refugees in Israel?
17:29–20:43
6
What did the early pilot study reveal about the intervention’s safety and effectiveness?
20:43–23:27
7
What personal transformation did a refugee experience after the mindfulness program?
23:27–26:08
8
What are the next steps for scaling mindfulness‑based trauma recovery worldwide?
26:08–28:50