Have Scientists Discovered the Secret to Eternal Youth?
The Fountain of Youth has yet to be found, but scientists may have just discovered the next best thing. A new technique developed by researchers at Cambridge University’s Babraham Research Institute can turn back a person’s biological clock by about 30 years.
As much as we love the idea of looking 30 years younger, you stand to gain more than just youthful looks with this recent development. It holds great hope in terms of regenerative medicine and may have the power to aid in repairing damaged cells in a variety of diseases.
How does it work? By rejuvenating skin cells. The roots of this discovery date back to Babraham’s work on epigenetic aging back in 2007. It was then and there that the scientist Shinya Yamanaka figured out how to transform normal cells into stem cells. This was an incredibly important discovery because Yamanaka’s findings showed that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent, which means they can develop into a number of different types of cells or tissues in the body. His discovery landed him the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
As a result of his discovery, Yamanaka created an entire process for reprogramming or redeveloping cells, which is called maturation phase transient reprogramming, or MPTR.
His concept of MPTR was the key component of the recent Babraham study, in which scientists started the process of turning skin cells into stem cells by using skin cells from a 53-year-old. However, before letting the process run its complete course, the scientists decided to cut it short, which resulted in a revolutionary discovery.
Rather than turning the old skin cells into stem cells, they found that by cutting Yamanaka’s MPTR process short, the skin cells ended up turning into a younger version of themselves. And we aren’t talking just a couple of years younger, but an unthinkable 30 years younger.
Throughout our lives, our DNA acquires chemical tags that are used to determine the age of our bodies, referred to as our epigenetic clock. The collection of all the genes expressed in our bodies, called the transcriptome, is another way of determining the body’s age.
New Findings
This study at Babraham found that both the epigenetic clock and the transcriptome profiles of the 53-year-old cells they reprogrammed had the same profile as 23-year-old cells.
Not only did they look younger, but they functioned younger, too. They created more collagen than the cells that did not go through the shortened MPTR process. And, on top of that, when the cells were put into an artificial wound, they showed to heal more quickly than the cells that did not go through reprogramming.
While it’s great to know that these scientists have found it’s possible to look 30 years younger, their findings go much deeper than that. This discovery has given hope for the future of regenerative medicine. Scientists believe that this form of cellular therapy can help with giving strength to weakened bones, healing wounds, restructuring damaged tissue, and healing strained ligaments and tendons.
The other major win from this research was that it showed that cells can be reprogrammed without losing their original function. That’s thanks to the halting of the reprogramming before it reaches the stage of transitioning into a stem cell.
The technique discovered by these scientists has also been used on genetically modified mice and results prove that it can aid in rejuvenating the pancreas, which can mean big things for combating diabetes.
Scientists are hopeful that aging diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cataracts may also stand to benefit and improve with this anti-aging cell therapy. There is a great future ahead in this work and this new approach is promising for targeting a variety of effects that aging has on the body.
Tony Robbins is a huge proponent of stem cell therapy and has undergone a version of it himself to help with his excruciating shoulder pain – an issue for which doctors told him he had no option besides surgery, rehab, and a long recovery. Stem cell therapy is a big theme in LIFE FORCE, so this may be the first, but won’t be the last you hear about it from Tony.
Big in the world of stem cell therapy is also Dr. Robert Hariri, aka Dr. Bob. He teamed up with Dr. Peter Diamandis, co-author of LIFE FORCE, to found a company called Fountain Life, which serves almost as a personal health coach for people who are looking to find the most advanced approaches to treating health challenges. Together, Tony, Dr. Bob, and Dr. Peter have opened six Fountain Life Centers in the United States as well as the Fountain OS app that guides you along your health journey.
