The Fountain of Youth

Our time at college is the time of our lives, a time that we will never forget, and a time that we want to live in forever. But this time goes fast, and soon we can see the graduation caps flying up from our heads, awfully quick…

How can we hold on to it?

Mayo Clinic scientists have found a way to stop the aging process, a way for us to stay in our youthful and playful years forever.

"Researcher Dr. James Kirkland said: "I've never seen anything quite like it."

"A colleague, Dr. Jan Deursen told the BBC: "We were very surprised by the very profound effect. I really think this is very significant." 

Call it the “Benjamin Button”- or the “In Time” syndrome, because to keep your youth has never been hotter than the media and movies shows now.. Be it; living your way in the sequence of getting younger and younger or in the way that you can buy your youth… is this going to happen and is this all going to be fixable now?

Well yes, but for mice…

These miraculous experiments have been successful on mice, now we must find a way to replicate these experiment-results to humans, which the scientists are very positive about is going to happen.

The mice are used in this experiment because they share similarities with us humans; we have very similar genes that can help us develop experiments like these and replicate them to us.

The Mayo scientist were able to use a drug to freeze some aspects of the aging proves. The results were reported to have prevent diseases and wrinkles in mice, by removing cells that had stopped dividing. These cells that had stopped dividing, known as the senescent cells, were removed from the body and that, the researchers showed, can delay or prevent aging and age related health issues.

These senescent cells make up to 15% of cells of an elderly person. This means that they may not have found the secret to youth but they may have found “what makes the human body age” and "the drug of the future" to keep our human population healthy.

Though, this scientific find may not be the "fountain of youth" it has an irreplaceable importance to make "us feel more vital, healthier, and allow us to stay independent for a much longer time," Mayo Clinic molecular biologist Jan van Deursen said.

Future hopes from the scientist says that "if you attack the fundamental aging process, can you attack age-related illnesses as a whole?" Kirkland wondered. "Can you delay cancer, dementias, atherosclerosis, diabetes, obesity and its complications as a group?" A very valuable attribute for preventing to loose someone you truly love, too early.

So, this is just a beginning. We have found a way to keep mice young, which gives us huge hopes that this is going to be able to be sufficient for humans too. Now, this only works for older people, which mean that we will have less diseased and healthier elders.

We may not be able to stay in our youthful and playful college years forever but soon, plastic surgeons will not longer have much to do; the face-lift will be replaced with a medicine. Our parents, our grandparents, our children, and us will live longer lives. Also, we are going to live a healthier life, a disease free life.

This research is a great step to future research and only sets the starting line for what we can accomplish with science in the future.