Throughout history, humans have always dreamed of reversing the effects of aging and live longer. Tales of immortality and the powers of living forever have always been intertwined in folk tales and fairytales in almost every culture.
While aging is the most natural process, humans have always fought against it through science, medicines, or even searching for that mystical cure of the Fountain of Youth.
Now, Israeli scientists have said that discovered a solution to reverse biological aging by administering pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber.
A study that was published last November 18 in the journal Aging, scientists showed how the aging process could be reversed through the two key biological clocks in humans that is related to aging and illness just be administering high-pressure oxygen in a pressurized chamber.
As humans grow older, there is a division of cells and the DNA known as telomeres found at the end of chromosomes grow shorter. When the telomeres become too short, the cell will no longer be able to replicate and will soon die.
Though the shortening of telomeres keep rogue cancerous cells from multiplying at a fast pace, this also results in genetic aging. Because of this, the geriatric cells known as senescent cells are not able to divide and accumulates throughout our lives is one of the key causes of aging.
A clinical study was done wherein 35 people with ages 64 and above were given hyperbaric oxygen treatments (HBOT) for an hour and a half each day, five times a week for three months. Blood samples were taken from the patients before the treatment began, in the first and second months of the trial, and two weeks after the trial finished.
Throughout the three-month treatment, the patients weren’t given any lifestyle, medical or diet changes but their blood tests revealed a major increase in the length of their telomere cells, as well as a decrease in the number of their senescent cells.
The researchers concluded that this study exhibited proof that aging can be reversible.
Prof. Shai Efrati of Tel Aviv University told the Jerusalem Post that:
“Researchers around the world are trying to develop pharmacological and environmental interventions that enable telomere elongation. Our HBOT protocol was able to achieve this, proving that the aging process can in fact be reversed at the basic cellular-molecular level.” He also added that the groundbreaking study “gives hope and opens the door for a lot of young scientists to target aging as a reversible disease.”
Apart from reversing the aging effects, the oxygen treatment was also seen to improve the patients’ attention span, ability to process information, and their executive functions.
Naturally, people attempt to slow down aging by modifying their lifestyle by eating healthy and exercising regularly, Chief Medical Research Officer Amir Hadanny at the Shamir Medical Center says that “some inhibit effect on telomere shortening” and that the hyperbaric oxygen treatment is more effective.
Haddany added that “in our study, only three months of HBOT were able to elongate telomeres at rates far beyond any currently available interventions or lifestyle modifications.”
“Today telomere shortening is considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of the biology of aging. We are not [just] slowing the decline – we are going backwards in time.” Prof. Shai Efrati of Tel Aviv University told the Jerusalem Post.
This study is just the beginning to a new, radical approach to medical problems and medicine for the future.
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