Scientists claim to have reversed human AGING at the cellular level

Scientists claim they have successfully reversed the human aging process in a group of older adults in a groundbreaking study.

The oxygen treatment altered the older people’s bodies on a cellular level to how they were 25 years earlier, the researchers said.

In a unique study, scientists used oxygen therapy to reverse two key indicators of biological aging: telomere shortening and the accumulation of malfunctioning senescent cells.

As humans age, their bodies experience shortening of telomeres, the protective caps of chromosomes, leading to diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Scientists at Tel Aviv University discovered that breathing oxygen while sitting in a pressurized chamber allows telomeres, the protective caps of chromosomes, to grow back. (File image)

Senescent cells, or so-called zombie cells, prevent regeneration as they accumulate in the body over time.

The study used a method called Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in an effort to prevent deterioration of these two characteristics of the aging process.

In the study, published in the journal Aging, 35 healthy adults 64 years and older were placed in pressurized oxygen chambers in Israel and breathed pure oxygen through a mask.

Sessions lasted 90 minutes each and took place five days a week for three months.

The pressurized chamber mimics a state of “hypoxia” or oxygen starvation, allowing tissues to dissolve more oxygen, which has well-known regenerative effects.

The results show that the trial allowed telomeres to grow back by more than 20 percent, while their senescent cells had shrunk by up to 37 percent.

This is the equivalent of what their bodies were like on a cellular level 25 years earlier, the scientists said.

The sessions lasted 90 minutes each and took place five days a week for three months. (File image)

“ Since telomere shortening is considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of aging biology, many pharmacological and environmental interventions are being widely explored in the hope of enabling telomere elongation, ” said Prof Shai Efrati, professor at the Tel Aviv Faculty of Medicine. University and co-author of the study.

“The significant improvement in telomere length shown during and after these unique protocols provides the scientific community with a new basis for understanding that aging can, in fact, be targeted and reversed at a basic cellular biological level,” he added Efrati.

The study is the latest in a series of trials trying to understand the anti-aging process and increase life expectancy while making people feel younger. The premise is that aging can be cured like a disease, scientists claim.

In 2015, BioViva CEO Liz Parrish flew to Colombia to receive two experimental gene therapies that she claimed could make permanent changes to your DNA to combat muscle loss and grow your telomeres.

Parrish received criticism from scientists for undergoing the experimental treatment, but claims that the gene therapy reversed the biological age of his immune cells by 20 years. He recently stated that death is optional.

Previous studies have revealed that healthy eating and vigorous exercise can also preserve telomere length, but this experiment was unique in that it outperformed natural interventions, the researchers said.

“So far, interventions such as lifestyle modifications and vigorous exercise have been shown to have some inhibitory effect on the expected shortening of telomere length,” said study investigator Dr. Amir Hadanny of the Tel Aviv Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research.

“What is remarkable to note in our study, however, is that, in just three months of therapy, we were able to achieve significant telomere lengthening, at much higher rates than any of the currently available interventions or lifestyle modifications.” .