Shorter telemers reduce the risk of cancer but shorten your overall lifespan. (Less DNA to replicate when it gets damaged) but yes causal factors as well, point being symptoms versus causes.
Discussion
Oh okay, that does sound kinda familiar
Wait but it sounds like telemeres can get longer. Really? Doesn't that mean we can live forever by inducing that purposefully?
Sort of, but it has it's own problems because as you add lifespan you add replication and with each replication cycle come the risk of harmful mutation.
We know this because we bred mice to live longer (so we could do more long term experiments) and the mice with lengthened telemers, had higher rates of cancer. There's not really a good work around for random genetic mutation.
Very interesting! Was it as simple as just breeding the lineages that lived longer selectively? I can imagine possible work arounds for the increased replication error - freeze t-cells, or stem cell therapy, or induced autophagy.
I am not certain. Brett Weinstein broke that story and lost his tenure at evergreen college over it. Kind of crazy.