From ancient times to the present, human beings have always longed for immortality and eternal youth. For example, more than 2,000 years ago, Qin Shi Huang sent Xu Fu to the East China Sea to find the legendary "elixir of immortality", the monster in "Journey to the West" risked being killed by Sun Wukong just to be able to eat a bite of Tang monk meat, and the Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty frantically refined Dan in pursuit of longevity and immortality, and there are many more such examples.
According to the current science and technology of mankind, immortality is still unattainable, but it is still more feasible to delay aging. Scientists around the world are exploring and looking for substances that can delay aging, and mainland scientists said in a sub-journal of Nature that they found that a key metabolite present in deer antler velvet, uridine, can effectively delay the aging of human stem cells and promote the regeneration and repair of many tissues in mammals.
The study was led by Zhang Weiqi's research group from the Beijing Institute of Genomics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who have been focusing on and studying the mechanisms and interventions of human aging and related diseases. Simply put, it is to find the answer to three questions: How old are human beings? Why do humans age? How to make humans older and slower?
Whether it is a lower organism or a higher organism, each species has a certain ability to regenerate. Regenerative capacity is the process of restoring or replacing damaged, diseased, or aging tissue. In general, the original vertebrates such as salamanders have much stronger regenerative ability than mammals, and in mammals, deer antler velvet is the only organ that can be fully regenerated, so Zhang Weiqi's research group selected salamanders and deer antlers as research objects and conducted metabolomics analysis of them.
They found that there are similar metabolic expressions between these highly regenerative tissues, and there are significant metabolic differences between poorly regenerative tissues and high regenerative tissues, suggesting that there may be some key regulator that affects regenerative capacity.
After combing through the metabolic pathways one by one and several experiments, Zhang Weiqi's research group finally determined that uridine is the core metabolic substance that determines the ability to regenerate, and after the addition of uridine, prematurely aging stem cells will be reprogrammed into young stem cells with higher regenerative ability. Uridine also performed well in animal experiments, and the multi-tissue repair ability of mice after supplementation with uridine was greatly improved, especially muscles and hearts, and mice showed stronger grip and longer running distances.
In addition to directly strengthening tissue repair and regeneration, uridine can also improve regenerative capacity by regulating metabolism and inhibiting inflammation. The multi-pronged approach opens up new avenues for metabolic interventions in tissue repair and regeneration in humans.
Although this research is a huge breakthrough for Chinese scientists in the field of anti-aging, it is still in the laboratory research stage, and there are still many problems that have not been solved. For example, for different ages, is there a difference in the anti-aging effect of uridine? Does uridine extend the healthy lifespan of humans, and how much can it be extended? Is there an optimal dose of uridine? These questions need to be answered one by one experimentally and clinically. Compared with using uridine as a substance to prolong life, it seems more reliable to promote good health through a reasonable diet. Private messages or leave a message in the comment area "Xianfang" keyword to get an anti-aging recipe.
In today's highly developed medicine, the pace of human research on anti-aging will not stop. I believe that the above problems will soon be solved, and it is expected that uridine will shine in the field of anti-aging in the future.