You who like to watch The Oprah Winfrey Show certainly no stranger to the face of Dr. Mehmet C. Oz. He was so good at explaining the particulars of health and medical complex with a very simple and popular. No wonder the book he wrote with Dr. Michael F. Roizen 2007 entitled You Staying Young: The Owner's Manual to Extending Your Warranty best seller number one New York Times.
This book has been translated into Indonesian, and has just been published by Publisher Qanita (Mizan group) under the title Staying Young: Kick to get around to Youth Work Genes Throughout Life. Interestingly, in this book have discussed two things, namely telomeres and mitochondria, both part of the cell that affect how quickly our aging process.
About the telomere, it turns out this year, three researchers who investigate: Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn, and Jack Szoztak, a Nobel Prize of Medicine. They are judged meritorious discover how chromosomes are protected telomere and telomerase enzyme so that the process of aging can be slowed. Telomere is often compared with the plastic on the ends of shoelaces (aglet) who hold to the rope shoe that does not decompose (Kompas, 6 / 10).
In the book You Staying Young, Oz and Roizen writes: "Every time our cells divide, telomeres will shorten, as the end of shoelaces are obsolete because it is too often used. When the patron at the loose ends of chromosomes, DNA and tasseled laces and you will become more difficult to use. That's what causes cells to stop dividing and growing. When the cells can no longer help realize your cell suicide program (apoptosis) is activated, which will affect the condition of aging. However, your body also has a protein called telomerase, which automatically equip and restructure the ends of chromosomes so that cells of the body (and you) stay healthy. "
That short telomeres of which can occur due to a stressful life. "Pressure is the weight of life can greatly affect the way cells divide, or stop dividing. With meditation, you will be able to repair telomeres and slow down aging, "said Oz and Roizen.
Mitochondria as generators
What about the mitochondria? If telomere contained in chromosomes in the nucleus of cells, mitochondria are outside the cell nucleus. In the single cell of our bodies there are hundreds of mitochondria, which serves to change the nutrients from food into forms the body of energy utilized in carrying out its functions.
"They act as a major driver of metabolic processes. Function and dysfunction conditions they became the backbone of the construct theory of aging, "wrote the two American doctors, who compared the mitochondria with body building power plants.
If mitochondria sliced horizontally, it would seem like a maze pattern, and in one there are dozens mitokondrion deoksiribo-nucleic acid strand (DNA). When mitochondria convert food into energy forms, they produce oxygen free radicals-molecules cause of the inflammation that is harmful to the mitochondria. Like the old production, mitochondria spew more of an aging industrial waste into the environment.
More and more free radicals will be much more damage to mitochondrial DNA so that they do not work efficiently. Mean mitochondria do not get most of the energy derived from burning sugar and oxygen. As a result, decreased levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the main energy source, although our bodies get adequate nutrition intake.
Damage caused by inflammation that occurs in the cell body and this causes some mitochondrial disorder associated with aging, including clogged arteries that cause heart attacks. Mitochondrial damage also occurs in people with diabetes because mitochondria affect the ability of the pancreas to produce insulin.
Popular explanation of mitochondria above Sangkot praised by Prof. Dr. Marzuki, Director of the Eijkman Molecular Biological Institute, a research and has written hundreds of papers on this body cell apparatus. "It's true that similar mitochondrial generator producing electricity and energy in our bodies," he said when met yesterday.
According Sangkot, research on the most ATP made in mitochondria that has produced two Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in 1978 to Peter Mitchell (who discovered the model of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the theory of osmotic chemical commonly known as the Proton Motive Force) and the 1997 for Paul D Boyer, John E Walker, and Jens C. Skou which proves the process of ATP synthesis.
"Mitochondrial ATP produced is used by our bodies for movement, body heat, and growth / regeneration. Slowing the aging process can be intervened by increasing the efficiency of ATP production, among others, by the consumption of vitamin K, vitamin C, and coenzyme Q10, "said Sangkot.
Research and theory on the relationship Sangkot mitochondria and aging process of which have been published in the journal Lancet, March 25, 1989. "I and some other researchers found that human mitochondrial activity continued to decline with increasing age. The maximum age limit of the highest human is 120 years old. Want long-lived even longer? Inhibition of mitochondrial damage, "he said.
Whatever the role of mitochondria can not be considered less important than the telomere. Only opportunity to obtain recognition as the Nobel Medicine, according to Sangkot, is much more difficult because the molecular biology of mitochondria is much more difficult and complex than telomere. Although he was one of the pioneering theory of association of mitochondrial damage and aging, busy life as a leader since the Institute Ejikman turned on again in 1990 to make other researchers such as Doug Wallace (USA) leading.
It is a relief Sangkot, the journal Nature in 2004 had published his findings on transgenic mice that experience premature aging because mitochondria DNA synthesis is inhibited. Yazuo Prof. Kagawa, figures ATP synthesis, send new year cards and stated his theory proven.
Also for the collection of paper on mitochondrial years 1974-1995 which he submitted to Monash University, Melbourne, 1997 for higher doctorate (DSc) of his, two professors who judged it to acknowledge the contributions Sangkot in explaining the association of aging with mitochondrial damage.
Not impossible there will be a Nobel Prize of Medicine for research link mitochondria and aging, with or without Sangkot. Also becoming a veil of mystery aging parted
