Can it reverse aging? I’d like to see this replicated. I found this interesting: “The clinical trial was conducted as part of a comprehensive Israeli research program that targets aging as a reversible condition.” [My emphasis]
Too many people in this country still think of aging as an inevitable condition, rather than treating it as a disease to be fought. And Biden’s ghoulish new “health” adviser thinks that we shouldn’t live past 75. Despite the description in the story, I consider him neither a “medical ethicist” or “health-care expert.”
Dr. Evil – er, Emanuel – is 63 so we only have 12 years to wait until we can start making fun of him for continuing to live.
So Biden appointed, to his Covid panel, someone who publicly argues that the elderly are better off dead. How inspiring.
His argument (There’s lives just aren’t worth the cost of maintaining) could certainly apply to most the kids in the Shriner’s Hospital commercials. Maybe we could go all Spartan and pat ourselves on the back for being so “progressive”.
I would point out to Dr. Emanuel (Rahm’s brother), that life as a Democrat is not worth living, since they’re always so miserable all the time, and so we should address their continued existence as a medical issue…
In other words, Democratics only believe in the death penalty for the crimes of living 75 years, and for being an unplanned or genetically inferior prenatal inconvenience.
They do take seriously the phrase, “life unworthy of life”, but only when they get to decide a life’s worthiness.
Our friends to the left view themselves as more enlightened and as higher evolved beings but they are prone to the most primitive belief structures and magical thinking while not even matching the Neanderthal on caring for the disabled.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe finished writing Faust, Part Two in 1831. He was 81 at the time, and died the following year. I wonder if the good Dr. Emmanuel would have put him down in 1824 (at age 75), seven years prior to finishing his magnum opus.
[PS: Goethe’s original title proposals were: Faust Two: This Time, it’s Personal, and Faust Two: Faust You, Mother Fauster!, both of which were rejected by his publisher, Bantam Press. Little known historical facts.]
“So Biden appointed, to his Covid panel, someone who publicly argues that the elderly are better off dead. How inspiring.”
Are you surprised? 0bama was the one, during the run-up to the P “P” “A” “C” A, that maybe Grandma should just take a pain pill instead of having an expensive medical procedure.
Very small sample.
The participants were given a treatment every business day for 3 months running. A typical HBOT treatment takes an hour or so, add in the time to go to the hospital, park, change into safe attire (no jewelry, metals of any kind in your clothes so as not to cause a spark), and get dressed after is about 3 hours. Every day.
And how long did the noted effect last?
The telomere lengthening should last decades, and senescent cells that get flushed are gone forever. Given the absolute ease with which such tests can be replicated (since no drug is involved, and likely almost no approvals are required), I would think they’d massively expand their research.
Well I hope the post isn’t too long:
“Overhyping the Effects of Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment on Aging”
“An interesting open access paper was recently published on the effects of hyperbaric oxygen treatment on telomere length and cellular senescence in immune cells taken from blood samples. I use the word “interesting” quite deliberately, because that is exactly and all that this research is. The paper is appropriately formal and modest on that front, but this attitude doesn’t extend to the rest of the publicity, unfortunately. When one runs a business based around offering hyperbaric oxygen treatment, one must make hay while the sun shines, and extract every last drop of marketing juice from every study funded. Hence there are media articles out there at the moment breathlessly telling us that hyperbaric oxygen treatment reverses aging. This is ridiculous, and only makes it harder for the better end of the industry to make progress.
Per the paper, hyperbaric oxygen treatment causes average telomere length to grow by ~20% and markers of cellular senescence to decrease by ~35% in populations of circulating immune cells. This doesn’t tell us that hyperbaric oxygen treatment is an amazing rejuvenation therapy, any more than the NAD+ and mitochondrial function data for exercise tells us that exercise is an amazing rejuvenation therapy. In both cases we already know the bounds of the possible. We know that these interventions don’t turn older people into notably younger people. If we’re calling exercise and hyperbaric oxygen treatment rejuvenation therapies, then the term “rejuvenation therapy” is meaningless.
What this does reinforce is the point that peripheral blood immune cell parameters can be very disconnected from the overall state of aging. We know that telomere length as assessed in these cells is a truly terrible measure of aging. Circulating immune cells are prone to large variations in the pace of celular replication in response to circumstances. Immune cells replicate aggressively when provoked by the presence of pathogens or other issues requiring a coordinated immune response. Telomere length shortens with every cell division in somatic cells: in immune cells, telomere length thus has a very wide spread across individuals, varies day to day, is just as influenced by infection status and other environmental factors as it is by aging. It is just not all that helpful as a measure of aging, and downward trends with age are only seen in the statistics for large study populations.
It seems plausible that the same is true of cellular senescence in immune cells. Cells become senescent when they hit the Hayflick limit on cellular replication. Throughout much of life, the senescence of immune cells is likely more determined by replication pace (and thus immune challenges, the burden of infection) than by aging. And that is before we even get to the point that the authors of this paper used a less than standard measure of senescence, one for which it is possible to argue that it may or may not actually be representative of the burden of senescent cells in immune populations. Overall this data is all interesting, but I suspect that it tells us more about the poor relevance of the metrics chosen to anything other than the deeper aspects of immune function.
If hyperbaric oxygen treatment removed ~35% of senescent cells throughout the body, it would already be well known as a reliable therapy for arthritis, a way to reverse chronic kidney disease, a way to suppress inflammatory conditions, and an effective treatment for numerous chronic diseases of aging. In mice, removing a third of senescent cells via senolytic drugs produces reliably large and beneficial outcomes, while hyperbaric oxygen treatment does not. So clearly it is not globally clearing senescent cells – and nor should any responsible party be trying to present reductions in senescent immune cells as indicative of global senolytic effects throughout the body. What is observed here is an effect limited to the way in which the immune system is functioning. There is some evidence for hyperbaric oxygen treatment to improve resistance to infectious disease such as influenza, and that is interesting in and of itself, but I feel that much of what is going on here is an attempt by certain parties to jump onto the longevity industry bandwagon, rather than responsibly focusing on a realistic view of what can be achieved with their chosen intervention.”
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/11/overhyping-the-effects-of-hyperbaric-oxygen-treatment-on-aging/
I tend to agree. Everybody wants to believe in miracles and miracle cures. And for the second half or so of the 20th Century, people could be forgiven for thinking that humanity had cracked all the codes and learned all the secrets and the miracle drugs wouldn’t stop coming.
And then the bacteria evolved and the miraculous antibiotics lost much, even most, of their utility. Entropy increases. It was nice while it lasted.
This life-extension stuff seems too good to be true. Even the tone of the press releases hasn’t changed one iota since Bob Guccione was reprinting them in his glossy-paper science magazine “Omni” forty years ago. I wish I weren’t so cynical. But the thing about real science is, it works whether you believe in it or not. I do hope some of this stuff turns out to be real some day. It’d be nice.
The treatment seems to be effective for 2 of Aubrey de Grey’s 7 categories of aging. So it doesn’t reverse all of aging, but it definitely seems to help with some things. Although we have no idea if you could repeat the same process every decade or two with similar effectiveness.
“I consider him neither a “medical ethicist” or “health-care expert.””
I think you’re wrong about that, Rand. Like “bio-ethicist”, the word “ethicist” in “medical ethicist” has a specific meaning divorced entirely from its common one.