The Secret of Youth is in Your Thoughts
- Apr 6, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 5, 2024
Written by: Flávia Rigonato Rodrigues, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Neuroscientists have discovered one of the greatest secrets to stay young longer — our thoughts. Telomeres die faster when we have bad thoughts and live longer when we have good thoughts.
Telomeres — what are they?
Telomeres are the ends of chromosomes, like those plastic tips of the shoelaces. They are very repetitive parts of DNA — their main function is to protect the genetic material that the chromosome carries. Over the years, they get shorter and shorter. Science suggests that when this telomere reaches a certain size, the cell stops multiplying, and the cell dies. Telomeres do not contain genetic code but protect DNA and are important to every cell division.
What causes telomeres size to decrease?
Among the factors that shorten telomeres — and thereby harm long and healthy life — are abdominal fat and people's anger and mistrust, pessimism, negative thoughts and those sorrows, resentment that we cannot get rid of.
Your thoughts can shorten your telomeres; therefore, your bad thoughts can make you old faster.
Elizabeth Blackburn won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2009 thanks to her important research and discoveries related to telomeres and telomerase, which still contribute greatly to the population's health. Together with Elissa Epel, Blackburn has developed research to verify what harms and benefits telomere growth and consequently impacts telomerase production (the enzyme that creates new telomeres from the biochemical sequence itself). Among the many discoveries (several of them described in the book "The secret is in the telomeres") proves that mental stress shortens the telomeres, and more than that, they showed that stress is directly influenced by our thoughts.
According to researchers, we produce about 65,000 thoughts per day, and 90% of these thoughts are repetitions of previously produced thoughts. That is, we have a very great tendency to row and be stuck with thoughts, and worse, this rumination is even greater with thoughts that do us harm. This rumination is extremely harmful because stress remains in your body, generating toxins. In addition to rumination, other mental habits highly harmful to our telomeres, according to the authors, are pessimism and hostility to oneself. These behaviors can be very painful and direct sources of stress and, consequently, anxiety and depression.
What do we have to do?
We need to improve our thinking patterns; we need to protect ourselves from the emotional vulnerability caused by the lack of self-management.
We must practice regular physical activities, self-compassion — be kind to yourself, value your qualities and decrease guilt and internal critic, and wake up with joy, think positively about the day, and be grateful for another day of possibilities.
Our thoughts have great strength and directly impact our health. Watching and using them to our advantage can be a highly beneficial strategy for your health and quality of life.
As the wise Buddha said, "Neither your worst enemies can do as much damage as your own thoughts."
Happy thoughts!
Flávia Rigonato Rodrigues, Executive Contributor, Brainz Magazine
Flávia Rigonato Rodrigues is an ESL Brazilian teacher. She’s been teaching English for almost 30 years and runs her own school called Business Talk® English and Immersion.
Apart from teaching in a classroom, she takes people to hotels for a whole English-speaking weekend.
She’s a postgraduate in psycho pedagogy and also neuroscience and behavior.
She’s recently become a TEDx Speaker.
Her main focus is about FLA-Foreign Language Anxiety and mindfulness meditation to help people speak a foreign language with no barriers.
