Beer: an Age Restriction or a Restriction of Age?

-Might as well start drinking when you're old according to current research: 

The natural process behind aging involves the shortening of our telomeres. The shortening of the telomeres leads to various issues, most dealing with established age-based diseases. Andrea Baccarelli, an M.D Ph.D and the head of the center for molecular and genetic epidemiology, proved that regular consumption of alcoholic beverages speeds up the process of aging at a cellular level. After the end of every cell cycle, these telomeres are shortened more and more because of the end replication of chromosomal DNA. When these telomeres get too short, it acts as a signal for cell death. In this sense, telomeres serve as a biolocical ticker for our human cells. The smaller/shorter a telomere is, the more limited the survival of the cell.

-Remember how its commonly thought that stress leads to grey hairs and aging? Reseach studies have shown that a more stressul environment coupled with bad choices can lead to telomere shortening more quickly because of oxidative stress and free radicals. Oxidative stress comes from an imbalance in our ROS's (reactive oxygen species, or reactive molecules containing oxygen)  and our ability to detoxify/repair the reactions and disturbances that are caused. Iny my opinion, this telomere shortening most likely comes from the disruptions that can occur with cellular signaliing in oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is most common in diseases like cancer, parkinson's disease, alzheimer's etc... A lot of the age-related diseases are involved with the development of oxidative stress. I did more research on free radicals and found that it has to do with the accumulation of free radicals (unpaired electrons, atoms, etc..) and that this accumulation leads to aging. 

One year later, It was found that low levels of alcohol increase led to an increase in the risk of breast cancer. The authors of the study show that the increase is associated more strongly to a sharp increase when there is a little to some increase of increase. The authors of the study have not been able to find the causal explanation between alcohol consumption and breast cancer. Researchers believe it has to deal with circulatory estrogen levels. 

In the same year it was found that heavy drinking led to an increased rate of pancreatic cancer. 

"Findings from the prospective study presented herein strongly support the hypothesis that alcohol consumption, in particular heavy intake, also is an independent risk factor for pancreatic cancer, the fourth most common cause of cancer mortality [death] in the United States," the authors conclude.

Researchers aren't able to completely connect alcohol consumption to increased cancer rates with a complete evidence. However, I feel that the explanation falls with cell signaling, as most people in cancer research believe today. I think study done with telomere shortening and increased alcohol consumption provides more evidence towards that. I will definetly keep doing  research on this, and keep this in mind the next time I go to a pub!

beer and telomere shortening