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Every time a cell in your body replicates, a streak of your youth crumbles into dust. This occurs through the shortening of telomeres, structures that “cover” the tips of our chromosomes.
Now, scientists in Israel say they were able to reverse this process and extend telomere length in a small study involving 26 patients.
Participants sat in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber for five 90-minute sessions a week for three months, and as a result, some of their cell telomeres were extended by up to 20%.
This is an impressive claim – and something that many other researchers have attempted unsuccessfully in the past. But of course it is worth noting that this is a small sample and that the results will need to be replicated before we get too enthusiastic.
However, the fact that hyperbaric oxygen therapy appears to affect telomere length is a compelling link that is worth investigating further.
Lead researcher Shair Efrati, a doctor at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience, explained to ScienceAlert how the inspiration behind their experiment was a little out of this world.
“After the NASA twin experiment, in which one of the twins was sent to space and the other remained on Earth, showed a significant difference in their telomere length, we realized that the changes in the External environment can affect the cell nucleus changes that occur with aging, “Efrati said.
Telomeres are repeating fragments of code that act like the DNA equivalent of the plastic or metal tip covering the end of a snare.
They copy themselves along with the rest of the chromosomes every time a cell divides. However, with each replica, tiny bits of code from the tip of the sequence fail to fit into the new copy, leaving the newly minted chromosome a touch shorter than its predecessor.
As anyone who has lost the shoe lace cap knows, it doesn’t take long for the shoelace to lose its integrity. Likewise, shorter telomeres place sequences further down the chromosome at greater risk for dangerous mutations.
These mutations coincide with changes that predispose us to a number of age-related conditions, not the least of which are diseases such as cancer.
This doesn’t necessarily mean we age because our telomeres shrink, but there is a connection between telomere length and health that researchers are keen to investigate further.
“Longer telomeres correlate with better cellular performance,” Efriti explained.
There are many ways to accelerate the erosion of our telomeres. Failing to sleep adequately could do so, as well as eating too much processed food and possibly even having children.
Slowing the loss takes a little more effort, but engaging in regular exercise and eating right are good bets if you want your chromosomes to stay on as long as possible.
A real result would be to completely flip our chromosomal hourglass and return lost telomere sections. The fact that the high turnover tissues that line our gut do so naturally using an enzyme called telomerase has fueled research over the years.
There have been many milestones in the attempts to achieve this task. Gene therapy in mice has shown that it may someday be feasible in humans. More recently, the stem cells of a super-centennial woman have had their telomeres completely restored outside of her body.
Some studies have discovered the potential for small increases of perhaps a small percentage with the provision of dietary supplements such as vitamin D.
But while there are many publicized promises to reverse aging in living humans already on the market, the reality of the science-backed therapies we can use to give us telomeres in a 20-year-old has been disappointing.
That’s why the latest study is attracting so much attention. Far from a measly two to three percent, this latest study found that telomeres in white blood cells taken from 26 subjects had regained about a fifth of their lost length.
The key, apparently, is hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) – the absorption of pure oxygen from sitting in a pressurized chamber for extended periods; in this case, five 90-minute sessions a week for three months.
HBOT has drawn controversy in the past for claims that it could treat a number of conditions. It is usually the kind of therapy you would give to a diver who has risen too fast from the depths of the ocean, or to kill oxygen-sensitive microbes in a wound that simply won’t heal in any other way.
But oxygen-rich environments are also behind a strange paradox, in which the body desperately elicits a series of genetic and molecular changes that typically occur in a low-oxygen one.
In this study, the researchers were able to show that the genetic changes caused by HBOT extended telomeres and also had a potentially positive effect on tissue health.
A slightly smaller sample of volunteers also showed a significant decrease in the number of senescent T cells, tissues that make up a vital part of our immune system’s targeted response against invaders.
If you sit in a small tub every day for a quarter of a year it’s a matter of preference, but future research could help make the whole process a touch more efficient, at least for some.
“Once we have demonstrated the effect of reverse aging on the study cohort using the default HBOT protocol, further studies are needed in order to optimize the individual-specific protocol,” Efrati told ScienceAlert.
In a press release from the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, Efrati says that understanding telomere shortening is “considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of the biology of aging.”
As significant as telomere shrinkage may be, the failure of our biology as we age is undoubtedly a complicated matter involving much more than pieces of lost chromosomes.
Reactivation of telomerase is also a trick used by tumors to keep up with the growth curve, making this holy grail a potentially poisoned chalice that we need to understand better before drinking too heavily.
Interestingly, research like this will help us develop a better picture of the aging process.
This research was published in Aging.
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