Fantasy books and witch stories aren’t that crazy after all. Have wee been looking at a miracle and not noticing? Is this the secret to long lasting health? According a reputable study, it seems like the secret to long term health lies in youth. By consuming young people’s blood, older subjects may be able to avoid age-related diseases and live for longer periods of time.
The study conducted by the University of London was published in the journal Nature and found that older animals who had blood from younger animals injected into them showed significant overall health improvements. Researchers discovered that even animals with conditions such as cancer and heart disease were positively affected.
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“A lot of people regard aging as ‘natural’ and that therefore you shouldn’t interfere with nature. But we’ve always considered it an ethical imperative to cure illness where we find it,” says geneticist Linda Partridge, sounding very much like a mad scientist.
This British study isn’t the first to find a relationship between youth and health. In fact, there have been plenty of studies that have found similar results, even demonstrating the effect young blood has on older humans.
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The New York Post reports this human trial was conducted on 70 subjects over the age of 35 who were given plasma from participants between the ages of 16 and 25. The study reflected health improvements over a variety of diseases. Ambrosia, the company that conducted the trial, is now selling blood plasma to interested customers for a price of $8,000.
A note the main study did not itself investigate blood transfusions for human longevity purposes but rather included a discussion of blood transfusions in animal studies as part of a larger review of the state of the longevity and aging fields. Third, “blood factors” refer to specific components of blood, not to blood as a whole.
