Exploring The Fountain of Youth

//From Tales to Reality//

The secret to eternal youth, something that has been explored in many works of fiction. I’ve grown up with countless stories about pursuing the secrets to being young forever. It seemed almost cliché after a while where the forces of good and evil would counter each other to decide the fate of the world. I previously talked about rolling back the years on fertility age and it seems the theme of life and extension are making even greater strides. Rolling back the years on an aged body was a great discovery and if successfully implemented during clinical trials would greatly change the state of pregnancy treatments. The body still ages but what if we discovered the key to almost pausing aging in the body entirely?

//Swimming in Discovery//

Discoveries come from all over and this time it is an African Killifish that is revealing the phenomenon of complete growth pause for extended periods of time. The process known as diapause is observed in young fish that suspends all growth without any noticeable impact on the eventual life that is to be lived. It’s a survival mechanic that allows the fish to remain in a protective state within low survivable conditions. This is a process that can be used for extended periods of times, years in fact. Diving a little deeper, researchers were able to determine the genes responsible for this process. It’s a fascinating piece of discovery and I encourage you all to read through the full paper.

//Rolling Back Our Years and Pausing//

Once again, understanding of other life forms opens up potential implementation within human developed treatments. If eventually incorporated for human use, could we finally realise a new boundary in human lifespan? Diet, lifestyle and mental health are contributing factors to lifespan. Supplementing genetic functionality to pause the clock on aging would be a mind blowing change to society. Linking back to birth rates, this would certainly open the window for pregnancy significantly and it would have a tremendous impact on general population sizes.

//Exciting Prospects//

Perhaps researchers will be able to discover new applications of the diapause process and responsible genes. Eternal or at least extended youth is a prospect many have thought about in fantasy but I would be interested to see if it could be used to carry our targeted preventive growth. Could this be the next step in manipulating the body to battle illness such as Cancer? Where could we strategically implement such use to help people who live in harsh conditions? While I may not see such developments in my lifetime, I am sure that the average lifespan in our world will change eventually with the power of science.

Sources

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6480/870
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapause