There have been some exciting breakthroughs at Harvard Medical School on aging.
One of the first things the article I read talked about was a cold-water fish that appears to never die from natural causes. The fish die from injuries or being eaten, not from aging. As a matter of fact, some of the fish are hundreds of years old and are still frisky!
The researchers found by adding genes into a laboratory dish of adult human cells that they could convert the adult cells back to cells which were similar to those of a human embryo.
In worms, they introduced a handful of genes and found that the worms lived 5 times longer. These worms were as active as they had been in their “worm youth” until they were near the end of their life. This meant both the worms life span and health span were extended.
In mice, researchers inserted 3 genes into mice and the researchers found it protected the mice from becoming obese, developing diabetes, kidney or heart disease. That’s just from adding 3 genes!
In mice that were going blind, the researchers inserted 3 genes (I guess they like the number 3!?) into the mice’s eyes and this fully restored their vision!
So…I’ll take 3 of those and 2 of those for longevity!
(Reported Harvard Health Guides, 2023)
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