SURPRISING RESULTS FROM ISRAELI H.B.O.T STUDEY
November 18th 2020 was a day like any other for most of us, but it might turn out to be a date to remember because it was, quite possibly, a day when the world changed. A day when a group of researchers recorded something that had never been seen before. To explain this I would, fifirst, like to take you back a little while.
A little over four billion years ago life, in the form of single cell organisms appeared on earth.
These cells reproduced by dividing into two so that where there was once one cell, there would then be two and so on. No proud mother cell to grow old as daughter cell grew up, just two halves of what was once one! It therefore follows, however strange it might seem, that many of the single celled organisms we have around us now, bacteria for example, might reasonably be considered to be as old as life itself and could quite reasonably be considered to be ‘biologically immortal’. Creatures that, whilst they might be killed in their trillions every day, never grow old!
About one billion years ago something, also rather important, happened. Some cells started to stick together so that, after division, instead of the two halves going their separate ways they, well, stuck together, forming colonies of cells that faced the trials of existence together, as a team.
These colonies were the precursors of all macroscopic multicellular life on earth. All the plants, trees, rabbits, you and me (an organism that might, quite reasonably, be considered a highly sophisticated colony of about 37 trillion cells!)
As each of the cells of our multicellular ancestors divided, their DNA was copied, but the copying process lead to a slight shortening of the chromosomes by virtue of a small section of the telomeres (the redundant tips of the chromosome) being lost at each division. (I like to think of a chromosome as being like a boot lace with the telomere at the end being like the plastic tip, there to stop the boot lace from fraying.)
As the tips of the chromosomes (the telomeres) were lost they were replaced by an enzyme called telomerase.
At some point, probably not much later, a mutation occurred that was one of the most important evolutionary developments of all, because it condemned virtually all multicellular life forms to certain death. This mutation caused a reduction in the supply of telomerase in nearly all of the cells such that as the cell divisions, necessary for life, took place, the telomeres got shorter until cell division was no longer possible (known as the Hayfifiick limit). As if that wasn’t bad enough, as this shortening process continued, so the precision with which the DNA of the dividing cell was copied, into the two new cells, dropped off leaving the victim organism increasingly prone to weakens and diseases like cancer, (in humans for example) cardiovascular problems, all sorts of degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and so on. The list is endless and so, Voila, ageing was invented! It means that as you age you are gradually turning into disorganised mush. Of course this process can only go on for so long before you are no longer viable and, well you know the rest!
So, intelligent reader, you might well ask, why did evolution take us down such a terrible, destructive path? An adaptation that basically, well no; literally, condemns us all to death!
The answer, that has eluded many, is actually quite simple.
What was a curse for the individual was a blessing for the species. Those species or groups that exhibited an optimised, pre programmed, rate of individual self destruction, could have a constant turn over of individuals within it’s population thus facilitating rapid adaptation to environmental changes, be they the appearance of new diseases, the appearance or disappearance of food sources, changes in weather conditions, you name it and all the other changing opportunities and challenges of life. This enabled them to out-compete any species without this adaptation and so that’s how the ‘natural’ status quo was established with the new replacing the old, all controlled by a preset lack of telomerase resulting in a steady, inexorable shortening of the chromosomal telomeres! An adaptation that facilitated the rapid evolution that has lead to the natural world as we fifind it today!
A natural world in which all we can do is, perhaps, philosophically accept our fate. At least that was the case until the aforementioned date, because on that date the results of an experiment, carried out in Israel, were published. An experiment where the usual attrition of telomeres in human cells, in living humans, was not just stopped, but actually reversed! Perhaps I should write that again, reversed! They took old people and extended their telomeres by over 20% so that their cells now looked and acted like those of a much younger person! Whether these people will now go on to live longer healthier lives remains to be seen, but all available evidence would seem to indicate that, that might be a reasonable expectation!
During the study participants were given regular hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatments whilst any change in their telomere lengths were periodically tested over a three month period. For those who might be interested, here is a direct link to the published results and methods etc:
https://www.aging-us.com/article/202188/text
I would also like to make it clear that I was as surprised at the incredible results and signifificants of this study as you probably are now and had no involvement in it in anyway. I have also never met or had anything to do with any of the people involved.
You may also fifind the following independent articles interesting:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyskeratosis_congenita
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/hayflflick-limit
So I’m starting to wonder, maybe we are going to have to start having a lot less babies and maybe I need to get a whole life pension!
37 trillion cells ( otherwise known as Mark Angelo Lusardi )
Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber 