to stay young forever kind?

Well science says maybe…

okay science doesn’t actually say that. but science has started to notice that blood,

specifically young blood might have rejuvenating properties. Which is just crazy interesting.

But exactly why that is, no one is certain.

Yet one new study points to a new, unknown molecule. In this study published in Nature

Communications, scientists found that young blood could heal broken bones. Alright so

this gets a little.. um… gross. but scientists conjoined the circulatory systems of pairs

of mice in a process called parabiosis, which means living besides. Basically scientists

stitch together the tissues of two mice, so an old mouse and a younger mouse would share

a blood supply.

I know, it totally seems like an antique thing, and it’s kind of old. Clive McCay of Cornell

University first pioneered this technique in the 1950s. but for some reason it’s experiencing

a resurgence. Yeah I know… a little too much like frankenstein.

But what’s interesting, besides the whole sewing together mice thing, is that the researchers

think this means that young blood cells secrete some molecule or protein that helps heal the

body. And as an organism ages, they lose the ability to make this molecule.

Previously it was thought that GDF-11 a molecule that circulates throughout blood was the fountain

of youth. But a recent study contradicts that finding. This new study published in the journal

Cell Metabolism found that as mice aged, the more of this molecule circulated in the bloodstream.

And as researchers injected aging mice with this molecule, the worse their muscles repaired

themselves. So who really knows right…

But even though scientists are still figuring that out, other studies show that there is

really something powerful about young blood. Other studies like one published in the journal

Nature Medicine found that young blood recharged the brains of older mice. Researchers ran

mice through standard laboratory tests after they received an infusion of plasma from young

mice. They did much better on the tests than older mice without young blood coursing through their veins.

Curiously, that improvement was gone if the blood had been heated before hand. Which again

suggest there’s something going on with the proteins in young blood. Because heat

denatures protein, or basically when they get heated up, they lose their shape and don’t

work as well. Kind of like ice cream melting on a summer day.

Other studies also showed how young blood pumps up older brains. In one study published

in the journal Nature, after being exposed to young blood, the brains of older mice looked

more like that of a younger mouse. Nerve cells in their hippocampus were better at forming

connections, which is basically what learning and memory is.

But wait there’s more. In a similar Frankensteinian experiment, researchers stitched together

older mice with a young mouse. They found that the young blood rejuvenated the hearts

of the older mice. The older mice suffered from cardiac hypertrophy, a condition which

thickens and swells the heart. After four weeks of getting young blood from the other

mouse, their hearts shrank to a normal size!

All of these studies sure make you want to drink a nice tall glass of young blood eh?

Okay, well, I know, all these studies have been in mice, but researchers are already trying to

see what happens in humans. In October of 2014 researchers at Stanford University gave

transfusions of blood plasma donated by people under 30 to older volunteers with mild to

moderate Alzheimer's. The results? We don’t know quite yet.

So maybe Dracula had it right all along, but I guess you could say… more research is needed.