The Benjamin Button effect: Scientists can reverse aging in mice. The goal is to do the same for people

In the laboratory of sub-atomic scientist David Sinclair at Harvard Clinical School, old mice are re-evolving into youth.

Using proteins that can transform an adult cell into a basic microorganism, Sinclair and his group reset the maturing cells in mice to previous forms of themselves. In his group's most memorable leap forward, distributed in late 2020, old mice with poor vision and damaged retinas could suddenly see again with vision that now and then equaled that of their offspring.

"It's a long-term reset, as you can see, and we think it could be a general cycle that could be applied to the whole body to reset our age," said Sinclair, who has spent the last 20 years focusing on manners. switching wastelands of time.

"Provided we change aging, these diseases shouldn't occur. Today we have the innovation to be able to go into our 100s without having to stress about malignant growth in your 70s, coronary heart disease in your 80s and Alzheimer's disease in your 90s. " Sinclair told the crowd at Life Itself, a wellness and health event presented by CNN.

"This is the world that is coming. It's really a question of when, and for a large part of us, it will happen in our lifetimes," Sinclair told the crowd.

"His research shows that you can change adolescence to make lives younger for longer. He needs to impact the world right now and make adolescence a disease," said Whitney Casey, a funder who is working with Sinclair on the Organic Age Test for Do-It-Yourself .

While current drugs tend to infect, they don't address the underlying reason, "which in most diseases matures on its own," Sinclair said. "We know that if we change the age of an organ like the brain in a mouse, the diseases of adolescence disappear. The memory comes back, the dementia is no more."

"I believe that later on, delaying and switching maturation will be the most effective way to treat the diseases that afflict the vast majority of us."

Reset button

In Sinclair's lab, two mice sit side by side. One is the image of youth, the other dark and weak. However, they are siblings, born from a similar litter - only one was genetically engineered to mature faster.

If that were possible, Sinclair asked his group, could the opposite ever be achieved? Japanese biomedical analyst Dr. Shinya Yamanaka has now engineered human grown skin cells to function as early stages or pluripotent basic microorganisms, suitable for forming into any cell in the body. The 2007 publication won the researcher a Nobel Prize, and his "stimulated pluripotent undifferentiated cells" long ago became known as "Yamanaka factors".

Be that as it may, adult cells completely changed back to undifferentiated organisms by Yamanaka factors lose their personality. They cannot remember that they are blood, heart, and skin cells, which makes them ideal for resurrection as "cells of the day", however terrible they are when revived. You don't need Brad Pitt to turn into a kid in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" at the same time; you believe he should age in reverse while still remembering what his identity is.

Labs around the planet have jumped at the problem. A review distributed in 2016 by specialists at the Salk Foundation for Organic Examinations in La Jolla, California, suggested that maturation could be abrogated in heritably mature mice that were briefly exposed to Yamanaka's four essential factors without eradicating phone personalities. .

Be that as it may, this research had one drawback: Under certain circumstances, the altered mice developed destructive cancers.

"The antitoxin is just a tool. It could very well be any substance, really it's just a method to make sure the three qualities are turned on," Sinclair said. "They're usually only turned on in extremely juvenile forms of undeveloped organisms and then turn off as we age."

Incredibly, according to mice infused with these three cells, damaged neurons in each case revived the development of new axons, or projections from the eye to the mind. Since that unique review, Sinclair said his lab has altered maturation in the muscles and minds of mice, and is currently working on regenerating the entire mouse body.

"One way or another, the cells realize that the body can reset itself, they actually know which properties they should have had when they were young," Sinclair said. "We believe we're using an old regeneration system that several creatures use - if you cut off a lizard's appendage, the appendage will grow back. A fish's tail will recover, a mouse's finger will come back." "

This revelation shows that there is a "duplicate amplification" of energy data in the body, he added.

"I call it the data maturation hypothesis," he said. "Lack of data causes mature cells to not remember how to work, not to remember what kind of cell they are. In addition, we can currently use a reset change that restores the cell's ability to view the genome accurately again." like it's juvenile."

While the progressions in the mice took quite a long time, the recharged cells don't freeze in time and never age (like vampires or superheroes, for example), Sinclair said. "But it's as long-lasting as maturation seems to be. It's a reset, and then we see the mice age again, so at that point we're simply redesigning the interaction."

Science definitely knows how to slow down human puberty

Sinclair said his focus on whether genetic mediation, which will make the animated mice similar for individuals, is in the early stages. It will take a long time for the human preliminary steps to be taken, broken down, and, if protected and fruitful, increased to the quantity required for the government's blessing.

While we believe science will determine whether we can also reset our qualities, there are many alternative ways to release back the maturation system and reset our organic timers, Sinclair said.

"The best tips are basically: Focus on plants as food, eat infrequently, get enough rest, lose your breath for 10 minutes of exercise three times a week to keep up with volume, don't sweat the small stuff, and get a decent rally," Sinclair said. .

This multitude of behaviors affects our epigenome, the proteins and synthetics that sit like spots on each quality and stand aside, telling the quality "what to do, where to do it, and when to do it," as the Public Human Genome Research Organization suggests. The epigenome literally turns qualities on and off.

What controls the epigenome? Human behavior and the current situation play a key role. Suppose you were born with a hereditary predisposition to coronary heart disease and diabetes. But because you've been exercising, eating a plant-based diet, getting healthy rest, and dealing with your stress for most of your life, it's possible these traits could never have been initiated. According to experts, this is the way we can take control of a part of our hereditary destiny.

The positive effect of a plant-based diet on our well-being, close and caring relationships and sufficient activity and rest is proven and factual. Calorie restriction, whatever it is, is a more dubious approach to prolonging life, specialists say.

Focusing on individuals was less informative in any case, partly in light of the fact that many focused on weight reduction rather than life expectancy. Anyway, for Sinclair, reducing dinner was a critical consideration of resetting his own clock: Ongoing tests show he has an organic age of 42 in a body that was conceived some time ago.

"I've been doing the natural test for 10 years at this point, and I've been getting younger for the last 10 years," Sinclair said. "The biggest change in my natural clocks happened when I ate on rare occasions - now I only eat one feast a day. That had the biggest effect on my natural chemistry."

Extra ways to go back in time

Sinclair integrates various devices into his life in light of research from his lab and others. In his book, Life Expectancy: Why We Get Old and Why We Don't Need To, he put together a piece of what he does, going through the kind of "thorough long-term clinical testing" that is expected to have a "full understanding of a large number of likely outcomes." in fact he added: "I have no idea, I suppose it's even the right thing to do."

With that caveat, Sinclair shares his tips: He cuts back on his starches and sugars and gave up treats in his 40s (despite the fact that he admits to a taste once in a while). He eats a lot of plants, tries not to eat various well-developed creatures and keeps his body weight at a low ideal.

She works out by taking tons of steps every day, walking higher than the elevator, and visiting a recreation center with her baby where she lifts weights and runs before hitting the sauna and dipping into the super cold pool. "I have my baby body back," he said cheerfully.

When discussing the cold, science has long thought that cooler temperatures extend the lifespan of many species, but regardless of whether that's true, a recent report suggests it may have descended into the human genome. In any case, it appears that cold can increase earth-colored fat in humans, the type of fat that bears use to keep warm during hibernation. Earth-colored fat has been shown to further develop digestion and combat weight.

Sinclair takes daily D and K2 nutrients and children's headache medication, along with supplements that have been shown to extend lifespan in test-tube yeast, mouse and human cells.

One tweak she uses after discovering its benefits is 1 gram of resveratrol, a cancer-preventing substance found in the skins of grapes, blueberries, raspberries, mulberries and peanuts.

He also takes 1 gram of metformin, a staple in the drug supply used to lower blood sugar in individuals with diabetes. He added it after tests showed it could reduce irritation, oxidative damage and cellular aging, in which cells are damaged but go down in the dust and remain in the body as a kind of failing "zombie cell."

However, several researchers debate the use of metformin, emphasizing the unusual cases of the development of lactic acidosis and the absence of information about its capabilities in the body.

In addition, Sinclair takes 1 gram of NMN, or nicotinamide mononucleotide, which is transformed in the body into NAD+, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. As a coenzyme that exists in every living cell, NAD+ assumes a central role in the body's organic cycles, such as controlling cellular energy, expanding insulin sensitivity, and switching mitochondrial breakdowns.

As the body ages, NAD+ levels decline substantially, dropping to about a fraction of youth levels by middle age, adding to age-related metabolic diseases and neurodegenerative problems. Various investigations have shown that restoring NAD+ levels safely affects overall well-being and increases lifespan in yeast, mice, and dogs. Preliminary clinical trials to test the particles in humans have been underway for a very long time, Sinclair said.

"These enhancements and the way I live are meant to turn on our anti-aging safeguards," he said. "Currently, assuming you do that, you're not guaranteed to go back in time. These are just things that disrupt epigenetic damage and these other horrible signs of puberty."

“In any case, the real development, in my opinion, was the ability to simply say to the body, 'I don't remember all of this. Simply be youthful again' simply by flipping a switch. At the moment, I'm not saying it's going to be another 20 years in every respect,” Sinclair said.

"Still, I'm hopeful that we can copy this extremely fundamental cycle that exists in everything from bats to sheep to whales to humans. We've done it in a mouse. I can't see why it shouldn't work in an individual."