Human Ageing Reversed in ‘Holy Grail’ Study, Scientists Say

Human Ageing Reversed in ‘Holy Grail’ Study, Scientists Say
independent.co.uk

Might actually be related to life extension through calorie restriction in this regard. This paper re calories restriction mentions:

> caloric restriction improves whole body energy efficiency by inducing the biogenesis of mitochondria that utilize less oxygen and produce less reactive oxygen species (ROS). https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

Starving the body of oxygen might trigger some of the same genetic pathways as starving it of food, basically.

As telomeres become shorter, cell division becomes slower and metabolism decreases. This means that an older person's cells will reproduce at a slower rate than a younger person's in general. If we suppose that every cell division poses an equal chance at producing a life threatening cancer, then slower cell reproduction at a higher age would likely be beneficial.

Of course this is just speculation, but likely there is _some_ health benefit to telomere shortening otherwise we would not have evolved to do it.

FWIW: high concentration O2 is known to be toxic in other ways. It causes lung inflamation at least (oxygen is, after all, highly reactive and tends to break up lots of different molecules). I think there's a real possibility that this does more harm than good.

Certainly having wealthier people live forever now would be bad from a social perspective. Time is really the biggest factor in acquiring wealth and influence. If that goes unchecked then that power can become out of control. Realistically I dont think it was that different thousands of years ago.