Scientists claim to invent a new process that reverse-ages blood cells

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/28/scientists-claim-to-invent-a-new-process-that-reverse-ages-blood-cells.html

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Are a long standing feature of alt med, and something of a hot topic over on that end at the moment. This “reverses aging” thing being one of the big magic claims, one that’s repeatedly been disproven. They also apparently cure vaccine induced autism, cancer, asthma, and can be used to treat COVID-19. It’s about as credible as Peter Thiel’s infusions of sweet, sweet millennial blood.

Aging is kinda of a sketchy journal, their peer review and publication practices have been heavily criticized. And they don’t appear to be a reliable source or major journal. This is pretty typical of the anti-aging field.

It does appear to have shown that. But it doesn’t deal with hyperbaric oxygen treatment. They used gene therapy/genetic engineering to accomplish it. Looks like most of the study was done in cells in vitro (ie in a petrie dish). And the tests of live mice didn’t reverse aging or extend the life of healthy mice, but extended the life of mice with a pre-mature aging disorder. The applications to human aging are theoretical, and seem to come from Scientific American not the study. I’m willing to bet that study was about treatments for the disorder in question, not age reversal.

Which would make sense for the Salk Institute, who are pretty credible and do a lot of work on childhood diseases.

It doesn’t seem to be related in anyway.

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That they have come up with a way to create deeply hollow movies packed with a greasy existentialist veneer I can believe.

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Seems bit counter-intuitive that exposing an organism to an oxidizer at high concentrations increases life span, given that oxidization more commonly shortens life span.

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Shortening of telomeres with each cell division is thought to be a protection against cancer - it puts a limit on uncontrolled multiplication. Lengthening of telomeres: what could possibly go wrong?

As for a poison having salutary effects, see “hormesis”. One theory is that just the right amount of oxidative stress activates cellular repair mechanisms.

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Yeah everything about this claim stinks of Woo, seems designed to sell BS therapies to gullible suckers

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watch the stocks of chamber manufacturers rise as the 1% rush to order their Personal Hyperbaric Therapy Chambers.

What color would you like your chamber to be, so it does not clash with your parlor. Would you like to upgrade to our suede liner?

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would it even do any particular good to de-age your blood cells? seems like there’s a whole lot of body that isn’t blood.

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How about the in-chamber smoking accessory?

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My dad once went for an hbot treatment for his ms. There was some improvement but the effect didn’t last very long. So maybe there was some effect on nerve function but no real change in his condition.

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And here I thought you could increase your lifespan by using a standing desk (or the emulator from the boing boing store).

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just seems longer

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Good way to kick the habit.

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These dudes are committed to the idea that HBOT chambers must be beneficial, and it only remains to find out in what way.

The study was led by Professor Shai Efrati of the Sackler School of Medicine and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at TAU and Founder and Director of the Sagol Center of Hyperbaric Medicine at the Shamir Medical Center; and Dr. Amir Hadanny, Chief Medical Research Officer of the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research at the Shamir Medical Center

So there was this from 2015.

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in a %100 pure oxygen atmosphere that should burn off some of those grey hairs

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Mike Collins, the Apollo astronaut, while discussing the Apollo 1 disaster, wrote that a cigarette will burn down to the filter in a couple of seconds, in two atmospheres of pure oxygen.

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Does it change legless stigmatics into dragons?

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Place your beloved in our patent Thermo-baric Chamber and, within a couple of hours, they with be the life and soul of the party.

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Erm. Sorta?

Much medicine is stressing your system in a way that you should survive, and some other form of life (cancer, bacteria, fungus) should not. I don’t think adding oxygen magically restores telomeres: if this happens at all, maybe it is because our cells with less telomeres have died so our average has improved.

You are right in the general sense - all life is complexity, and eventually yields to entropy. In the long term, thermodynamic always wins. Adding oxidiser probably kills stuff. But life is not long-term, and taking advantage of local conditions is what life does. So, for example, there was a proposal to make the atmospheres in hospital wards 40% oxygen. This might help patients recover, and and it would also help keep surfaces sterile. I can see that working.

I doubt oxygen makes you young again. I doubt thermodynamics would allow that. But the marketing case - go, spend your pension fund on a hyperbaric chamber before you get too gaga - that is clearly going to work, dammit.

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