Ever wondered if immortality is real? If we could just stop time, and remain in our young forms forever, how would life be? What if we could reverse ageing itself? Is ageing necessarily a bad thing? Well, let’s talk about that. First of all, why do we age? Let’s find out the purpose of growing old. Unless you are an all-powerful anime demon who has lived for a thousand years, or Captain America maybe, staying young and looking the same forever is pretty much impossible. Grey hair, weakened joints, wrinkles, etc. which are considered to be the main pillars of old age, all stem from one thing – cell death. This is a natural biological process that happens to every living organism on the planet.
So now we know why we grow old. It is due to our cells dying, but why do cells die? The answer to this has been brought to us by the laws of chemistry and physics. Bigger and more complex organisms store chemical energy in order to divide, and they release heat in the process. This creates a lot of thermal motion. However, thermal motion also breaks protein bonds in a random manner, which leaves them to be oxidized. Scientists have said that even a single event of such oxidation within these proteins is enough to unfold it from its curled up structure, which is its default state. Every time this happens, more damage is caused to the cells and their key systems become weak. An example is mitochondrial damage, which would lead to the failure of providing the cell with energy to survive. When cells die too fast without being replaced by new ones, we age.
be quite cool right? No painful joints, grey hair, responsibilities of adulthood or any of that. We could basically do whatever we wanted…as long as it is in the bounds of a teenager, that is. This means that we are not old enough to drive, to marry, to drink, have children, etc. We would stay teenagers forever. The same goes for other ages too, for example if you chose immortality at age 25, you would never get to retire, relax, play with your grandchildren, etc. You would be the same 25 year old forever.
If all that sounds appealing to you that’s cool, since staying young forever may not actually be that bad. Now, let’s consider our second scenario where we don’t choose immortality and we age. This means we would go through the entire biological life cycle and get to experience everything. We would have our first sip of beer, go to university, get our first pay checks, get married, have children, retire, etc. The only potentially considered downside to this, is that death awaits us at the end. For some people, death might be a sort of price to pay for being given the life they got to live, and some might also see it as a curse. Whatever it is, science always has something interesting to show us.
There is fairly recent news that bio gerontologists in Michigan have made significant findings about anti-aging in mice, both male and female. “We have documented four different drugs that work in mice to decelerate ageing and postpone the diseases and disabilities which make ageing troublesome.” Says Richard Miller, director of the Glenn Centre and professor of pathology at the medical school. The lab reports have stated that the anti-aging drugs have been shown to lengthen the lifespan of the mice by 15-25%. “People would like to be able to swallow an anti-aging pill that would help them stay healthy and live 10 to 20 years longer,”
Miller says. “The only way to do that is by conducting research with mice, which are very similar to humans. Drugs that work in mice will often ─ though not always ─ work in people.”
The first drug that has been considered as highly effective in extending the normal lifespan of mice by more than 20 percent, is Rapamycin. It is also a short term drug which is administered to human patients in order to halt the growth of particular kinds of cancer. Another drug which has shown promising results in anti-aging therapy is Acarbose which is also used to treat diabetes. The male mice had a 22% increase of lifespan, but the females only had a 5-10% increase in lifespan when administered with the drug. Another drug called 17-α-oestradiol (a chemical variant of oestrogen) had striking effects for the males, but unfortunately none for the females. The fourth drug on the rise, is metformin which has been speculated to have great anti-aging effects in humans.
Moving on with the topic of anti-aging, we can look at another revolutionary study conducted in Tel Aviv University. “Oxygen therapy” has been found to be one of the first steps of reversing the ageing process in humans. The researchers used hyperbaric oxygen chambers to target specific cells and segments of DNA that are linked to shorter lifespans. The actual therapy itself involves breathing in oxygen in a pressurized environment and this could reverse the effects of ageing in 35 people aged above 64, according to the study.
The elderly patients were placed in a chamber with certain pressure conditions for 90 minutes per day. They did this for 5 days a week for 3 months, and observed the effect on senescent cells, which are associated with tissue and organ deterioration. They also measured and recorded the length of each subject’s telomere, which is a molecule linked to premature cellular ageing. At the end of the experiment the scientists discovered that the participants’ telomeres had enlarged by an average length of 20% while the senescent cells decreased by an average of 37%, which is the equivalent of growing 25 years younger!
“The significant improvement of telomere length shown…provides the scientific community with a new foundation of understanding that ageing can, indeed, be targeted and reversed at the basic cellular-biological level,” the study’s co-author Shai Efrati says. “Since telomere shortening is considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of the biology of ageing.” The scientists believe that the pressurized chamber triggered oxygen shortages, which caused the marvellous regeneration of cells.
However, as remarkable as this may sound, there is no proven way to show that the effects of this is permanent. All the anti-aging experiments conducted went on for a temporary period of time for a few months and there is in fact no guarantee at all, that the effects of the experiments are long lasting, or that it will work for everyone. Hence, in technical terms anti-aging and “permanent youth” as such, is not possible as of now. Not permanently, at least.
So, our main conclusion is that immortality isn’t exactly real yet. Maybe in some advanced, high-tech future the humans may stumble across the vial filled with water from the fountain of youth itself, who knows, but unfortunately that moment is not going to happen any time soon. The whole field of genetics and gerontology still has a lot of development to reach and there are many things about the universe, and ourselves as creatures that we don’t know yet. Science is still as mysterious as ever, and it’s going to take many attempts before we figure out the whole, entire story.
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