The aging process is thought to be something completely inevitable in humans, despite how undesirable it is. Biological aging is generally due to damage of the cells over time, which can be controlled by a series of both genetic and environmental factors – for example, lifestyle choices such as smoking can drastically affect how old a person looks. A healthier lifestyle is thought to slow the aging process, but very little can be done to reverse the aging process. When we are young, our bodies have the ability to regenerate cells at quite a fast rate, yet we lose this ability over time.
However, Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for aging has shown some promise in not only slowing but reversing the aging process. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves putting patients in a medically controlled environment in which the patient will then receive 100% pure oxygen to breathe, as opposed to the approximately 21% oxygen we receive in natural air. The reason why it has been thought to assist is that our regenerative ability is related to our blood oxygen supply, and as we grow older, we are more likely to have issues with our hearts or veins which can deprive our organs of the oxygen they would need to regenerate quickly.
According to a new study oxygen therapy for anti aging has potential. It does this in two separate ways: by reversing the shortening of telomeres and reversing the accumulation of old or malfunctioning cells. To explain, telomeres are the protective ends of chromosomes. When we grow older, these telomeres get shorter and shorter, but in hyperbaric oxygen therapy, aging was found to be reversed by the HBOT keeping telomeres up to 38% longer. There was also found to be a decrease in up to 37% of useless cells.
The study which demonstrated these results was conducted as part of a research problem about aging in Israel, which is attempting to treat aging as a reversible condition. In the study, 35 healthy people, all over 60, were subjected to 60 hyperbaric sessions over 90 days. Blood samples were taken from each patient before, during, and after treatments, as well as for a period after the experiment had taken place. Their samples were then analysed for the presence of immune cells in the blood.
The study found that the telomeres were between 20 and 38% longer, depending on the type of cell, and the number of senescent cells had decreased by quite some margin – between 11 and 37%, again, depending on cell type. These two factors are some of the major aspects of biological aging.
Until now, the only way to affect biological and cellular aging as far as we were aware of was to make changes to one’s lifestyle, such as less alcohol, no smoking, a healthy diet and intense exercise. However, this would only slow the process down rather than reverse it, and the study showed that only after three months of HBOT, they could increase the length of telomeres at a rate that could not have been achieved through any lifestyle changes we know of thus far, which means that we may now have access to a way to reverse the aging process.
