The quest for eternal youth has driven humanity to do some pretty crazy things over the centuries. Honestly, a few wrinkles are really nothing to bathe in pig’s blood over. But if you’re fed up spending hundreds of dollars on those anti-aging moisturisers, this cocktail of growth hormones and diabetes meds might be right up your alley.
It’s worth pointing out that this was a very small, short-term study, so we’re a long way off from this treatment being up for public consumption, but it’s hard to not be excited. The subjects were turning back their body clock at double speed – by two-and-a-half years on average, across a year-long trial.
Dr. Greg Fahy, who authored the study – and even tested the technique on himself first – used a three-drug combo to reboot the ‘thymus’, AKA the gland that keeps your hormones and immune system doing their thing. It starts dying as soon as you hit puberty, so giving it a boost could theoretically give you all the peppiness of a 13-year-old, no fountain of youth required.
We’ve been pursuing anti-aging treatments since humans first discovered they weren’t keen on the whole grey hair and death thing, so basically forever. Uploading your consciousness to the cloud seems to be the current fashion in immortality technology, but that isn’t stopping some scientists from trying to find non-cybernetic solutions.
Whether it’s injecting old people with teenagers’ blood (gross), stretching out your DNA (uncomfortable), or trying to copy whatever it is naked mole rats do (straight up bizarre), rich people really will stop at nothing to keep their gravy train going.
Alternatively, we could just give up on this reality and take our everlasting life elsewhere, San Junipero-style. Things are getting pretty bad, so yeeting yourself into a virtual reality after you cark it doesn’t sound like a bad option. At least if you die in the game you don’t have to worry about dying in real life?
And as an alternative to that alternative, we can always turn to Photoshop for our anti-aging needs. Digital de-aging has been used by Hollywood for at least a decade, and with Faceapp bringing that power to the masses, there’s nothing stopping you from using the baby filter for the rest of your life. Hey, it might not stop your old bones creaking, but at least you’ll keep your Insta looking fire.