6 months backwards 20 years old? University of California: 65-year-old regains youth after blood replacement

You never know how crazy humans can be for longevity. Western aristocrats in the 17th century poured the blood of young people into their bodies because they thought it would keep them young. Moreover, this seemingly counterintuitive method has still convinced many European and American rich people to this day, and for this reason, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to renew their blood.

In 2016, the Stanford University research team even announced the establishment of a special "blood replacement" company, Ambrosia, to provide and replace young plasma for the rich. According to public data, no less than 100 rich people signed up to participate. So why this seemingly absurd method can make these rich people believe so much, it also starts with the "blood replacement" experiment of Conboy, a professor of biology at the University of California.

17 years ago, Professor Conboy conducted an animal study of "blood replacement", in which he sewed together the blood circulatory systems of old and young mice, allowing blood exchange between the two. After the two mice shared blood, many physiological indicators of the old mice showed different degrees of rejuvenation, while the bodies of the young mice showed aging.

After the results of this research were published, many believed that this mechanism was also applicable to humans, so some biogeeks directly applied it to real people before this research was completed in human clinical trials. But recently, Professor Conboy once again conducted a real-life experiment on "blood replacement", and found that the reason for making the body younger is not the replacement of young blood, but the intervention of young blood dilutes the "aging factors" in the old blood.

In this study, Professor Conboy recruited a total of 8 volunteers of different age groups, 6 elderly people (average age 69 years old) and 2 middle-aged people (average age 49 years old). In the six-month experiment, the volunteers were given an albumin saline solution once a month to dilute their blood, but only one volunteer lasted for 6 months.

After the blood was diluted, the eight volunteers were assessed for blood biomarkers, and the results far exceeded the researchers' expectations. The research team found that the "markers of aging" in the body of several elderly volunteers showed significant younger changes after blood thinning.

After analyzing the aging indicators of 507 proteins in their bodies, Prof. Conboy found that at the cellular level, the expression of the proteins in the elderly volunteers was almost 20 years younger. And through the detection of the diluted blood of the subjects, the research team also found that a variety of degenerative disease indicators related to aging in the blood have been reduced to varying degrees.

With the emergence of this breakthrough, it has also been proved that the reversal of physiological age can indeed be achieved within a certain range by thinning the blood. However, it does not seem realistic to use this method on a large scale, and the research team also said that this technology will now only be applied to patients with blood diseases. Of course, there are not a few similar research results in academia in recent years.

For example, last year, the Saudi royal family announced that it would spend 6 billion each year on research to combat "death"; Bezos invested 20 billion in research on "Wright" similar anti-aging technologies in 2019. The current situation, in the academic world for more than ten years, is completely unimaginable. Because in traditional cognition, the aging process of the human body is considered to be irreversible for a long time.

Until Harvard biology professor Schinkel and his team accidentally discovered "wlife" substances that can change the structure of mitochondria in 2013. According to the data, after the mice were ingested in the study, many physiological indicators such as muscles were rejuvenated to varying degrees, and the physiological age also regressed by 2.3 times. The emergence of this substance has also attracted many bigwigs to its platform, such as the well-known Buffett, Li Ka-shing and others are the first to eat crabs.

The discovery of this substance, like the research results announced by Professor Conboy recently, has attracted widespread attention in the academic community. In the following years, with the help of Kyoto University and the Mayo Experiment, as well as the help of domestic and foreign capital and biotechnology company Lightweijian, "wlife" has entered China from Europe and the United States all the way. According to estimates from platforms such as JD.com, such a market may break through the 100 billion range within a few years.

Nowadays, in the study of fighting "death", the academic circles of various countries have already shown a flourishing scene of prosperity, whether it is Cambridge University's "somatic cell reprogramming" technology that makes 53-year-old female cells 30 years younger; or Tel Aviv University in Israel through hyperbaric oxygen, Reducing the aging cells of 65-year-old skin by about 20% shows that we are drifting further and further along this unknown road.

In 2005, the well-known academic journal "Science" published 125 academic questions in different fields to scientists around the world, one of which was: "How long can humans live?" In this regard, many experts in the scientific community have expressed their opinions, believing that with the rapid development of science and technology, the average life expectancy of human beings will exceed 100 years in the near future.

Now, 17 years have passed, and more and more relevant results have appeared one after another, which also confirms from the side that the century-old era that these scientists yearn for may be coming. What are your different views on this?