Want to stop aging and prolong life? There are really tricks

This question seems simple, and I believe that many friends must have the answer in their hearts, isn't this nonsense, there must be ah. In fact, if you want to really delve into this issue, the relationship inside is actually a bit complicated. This time, let's expand on this interesting question.

Too long to watch

If you first want to set a personality for the following content and make a summary, then use three sentences to summarize:

1. Do humans have a chance to slow down aging? Chance!

2. Can humans live longer? OK!

3. Is it because modern life has slowed down aging because human life has been increasing? No!

What makes humans live longer?

The average life expectancy of human beings, since the industrial age, has continued to increase at the rate of living 3 months longer per year.

The trend in our country is similar, especially since the beginning of the peacetime, a sharp increase can be clearly seen, followed by a steady growth trend for both men and women.

Want to stop aging and prolong life? There are really tricks

The change curve of life expectancy of people born in different generations, dark blue is the global average, and the rest is the average of all continents. Image source: Wikipedia-ODogerall

But is this steady growth caused by better living conditions slowing the rate of our aging?

Last year, a paper published in Nature Communication made a detailed argument for the problem and concluded in the negative. Among them, the two key parameters used by the researchers are called life expectancy and lifespan equality index (self-translation, no unified translation has been seen).

"Life expectancy" is easy to understand, let's talk about the "life parity index". Simply put, this index is used to measure how different the age of death of different individuals in an ethnic group really is. If most individuals in the population die at a similar age (for example, because of the law of aging, which limits the upper limit of lifespan, and most of the population dies around the age of 80), then this index will be high. Conversely, if death is not related to age, and the risk of death is similar at different ages, then the value of this index will be low.

Subsequently, the researchers used population data from 9 different races and found that there was a strong correlation between the life parity index and life expectancy, that is, the longer the race, the higher the life parity index, and vice versa.

Moreover, such a trend is not only unique to humans, when the researchers extended the scope of investigation to other primates (such as gorillas, chimpanzees, baboons, etc.), they actually found the same trend!

This is more convincing, indicating that this trend is not because of human technology, war and other messy things, but a natural trend.

The life parity index of different creatures, with humans in gray at the bottom and other different primates at the top. Image source: References[1]

In that case, are differences in life expectancy in different species, or in different human races, due to differences in aging rates? For example, the difference in life expectancy between Asians and Europeans is due to the different rates of aging between the two populations.

Based on the results of the data model, the researchers came to a negative conclusion.

They found that fine-tuning the parameters representing the rate of aging severely altered the previously discovered association between life expectancy and the life parity index.

At the same time, the adjustment of the rate of aging cannot produce differences between different races and species. However, there are some series of parameters that can well restore the differences between different races/species, that is, early mortality!

What does this mean? It shows that the reason why human life expectancy has continued to increase is not because modern technology and living conditions have slowed down aging, but only because modern medicine and antibiotic inventions have greatly reduced the mortality rate of infants, children and young people (these groups are the group with the highest relative mortality rate in the natural environment).

Well, seeing this, basically the answer to this question is over. If you are still interested, you can continue to read the following extended content.

Can humans delay aging?

Although we know that the continuous extension of our human life expectancy in recent years may not be caused by delaying aging, then purely from the individual, is there a way for human beings to delay aging?

The answer is - yes! And one of the "typical" cases may make everyone's back chill.

There was a very brutal countess in history, who was named "Countess of Blood" and "Count of Dracula" because of her bloody crimes, she was born in 1560 as the countess of Hungary - Barthory Elisabeth.

Portrait of the Countess of Báthory. Image source: Wikipedia

Legend has it that in order to keep herself young forever, the countess only bathed in the blood of a pure maiden, and drank at least half a liter of blood before each bath, even called "inner washing".

At least 2 girls are killed for every bath, and it is rumored that more than 650 girls have been killed in the long and dark 50 years, and more and more girls have disappeared near the castle for decades, until a young girl who escaped accused her of imprisonment and murder, and she began to be investigated.

But can young blood really fight aging?

This rumor comes from an experiment that began in the 1950s. This experiment was originally intended to study symbiosis - scientists found that after connecting the circulatory systems of old mice and young mice, some of them improved their physical health and even extended their lifespan.

But this is hardly the credit of blood, after all, the circulatory systems of both mice are connected, and we certainly have reason to suspect that it is caused by contact with the healthy organs of young mice.

After infusing old mice with young mouse blood, their lifespan is extended. Image source: https://www.nature.com/articles/517426a

Moreover, in follow-up experiments, scientists also found that some mice often die quickly, with a mortality rate of up to 16%. In addition, recent experiments have shown that transfusions of blood from young people seem to increase the risk of death in older people (although other experiments have shown no signs of increased risk).

But the scientific understanding should be that such experiments have only been conducted in mice, and any claims that young human blood helps fight aging are unproven.

And this method has great uncertainty, ethical problems, and no safety at all - the substances in the blood are too complex, there may be various viruses or other pathogenic agents lurking, and the transfusion of this blood may infect new diseases, and some researchers even believe that fighting aging in this way leads to an increased risk of cancer.

Of course, because this rumor has a strong demagogic power, it has a large potential market, and has not only recently published many related papers, but also been welcomed by many scammers - at one time in the United States, under the guise of doing experiments, to provide young blood for people in need, $8,000 per blood, these "experiments" do not have a control group at all, as long as you pay money can participate in the "experiment".

The scientific community in the United States directly denounced this experiment as a new-age counterfeit drug scam, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) directly stopped this behavior.

FDA warning message on Twitter. Image source: screenshot of the original Twitter article

So do I suggest that everyone go for a blood exchange? Of course not!

So why am I mentioning this stubble? Because of the anti-aging mechanism of exchange transfusion, with more and more research results, it has been shown that it may be related to exercise!

For example, in a paper, researchers found that the older mice were divided into two groups, A and B, and a movement wheel was placed in the cage of the A group of mice, forcing them to run often, while the B group mice did not care, let them be lazy, and after a period of time, the health of the A group mice was significantly better than that of the B group mice, especially its brain response, and many abilities even returned to the level of young mice.

After exercise, group A mice became in better health. Image source: References [2]

More surprisingly, the researchers also found that when the plasma of group A mice was transfused into group B mice, the brain improvement of group B mice was similar to that of mice who exercised themselves!

Is this the legendary "man sits at home, and goji berries come up from heaven?" "As soon as this result came out, it immediately pointed out a direction, that is, it is possible that a certain anti-aging substance in the blood is activated by exercise, so that this anti-aging ability can be transferred."

Next, after some tossing, the researchers finally found a protein called GPLD1, which is a protein produced by the liver and can enter the blood circulation, and they found that the content of this protein was higher in group A and young mice, and this protein was also elevated in the elderly who exercised for a long time.

In addition, the researchers also found that if the livers of group B mice were allowed to produce this protein in excess, it did have anti-aging effects.

Seeing this, are you going to have an intracranial orgasm? Think about it, in the future, you can lie in bed and drink fat house happy water, brush American dramas, as long as you get a shot of GPLD1 from time to time, you can stay young forever... The picture is too beautiful for me to see.

However, in fact, this result is still a long way from the final application, after all, there are many obvious omissions that have not been solved at least yet. Like what:

Is it only GPLD1 that plays an anti-aging role, and will it rely on other components in the blood?

Does excessive GPLD1 have other side effects on the body?

Even if GPLD1 can restore brain function, does it accelerate the aging of other organs, such as the liver?

Therefore, the imagination is very full, but in the face of the skinny reality, everyone still work hard, exercise more, after all, the money is saved, isn't it fragrant?

Bibliography:

[1] Colchero F, Aburto J M, Archie E A, et al. The long lives of primates and the ‘invariant rate of ageing’hypothesis[J]. Nature communications, 2021, 12(1): 1-10.

[2] Horowitz A M , Fan X , Bieri G , et al. Blood factors transfer beneficial effects of exercise on neurogenesis and cognition to the aged brain[J]. ence, 2020, 369(6500):167-173.

Produced by: Popular Science China

Author: Hao Hao Hua, popular science creator

Executive Producer: China Science Expo

The cover image and some of the images in this article are from the copyright gallery