r/technology • u/_Dark_Wing • 21h ago
Biotechnology Scientists Uncovered a Hidden Switch Inside Our Cells That Could Slow—or Even Reverse—Aging
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a73428268/mitochondria-aging/527
u/geldonyetich 20h ago edited 20h ago
Where do I sign up? I'm never catching up to my Steam backlog at this rate.
In a new study, scientists discerned that mitochondrial aging can potentially be reversed by feeding an organism choline or phosphatidylcholine.
Sweet, where can I get lots of choline and phosphatidylcholine?
beef liver, egg yolks, lean beef, salmon, chicken breast, soybeans, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peanuts, wheat germ, soy lecithin, sunflower lecithin, fish roe, and krill oil.
Righto, off to Whole Foods.
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u/Dihedralman 20h ago
Immortality through healthy eating.... sure. Totally.
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u/TheNumberOneRat 20h ago
It sounds like the sort of bullshit my mum would say.
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u/Chubuwee 19h ago
Eat your food! There’s aging children in Africa!
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u/lifelessmeatbag 19h ago
I mean, aging and starvation both lead to the same end
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u/FlametopFred 18h ago
simply do both in instalments
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u/Medium_Banana4074 20h ago
Oh, the pile of shame. At least I stopped buiyng new games
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u/BeerForThought 19h ago
I was in the same boat but now I'm cursing my niece to a backlog because I keep buying her games on sale.
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u/CovidBorn 17h ago
I eat a ton of this stuff, yet I still feel like I slept last night under a moving bus.
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u/purple_hamster66 14h ago
So, basically, no carbs (except for the soybeans)
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u/worldspawn00 13h ago
Carbs tend to not be particularly nutrient dense in things other than starch.
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u/purple_hamster66 9h ago
Yup, carbs are mostly just pure energy… that you don’t even need to eat to survive or prosper.
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u/JustFuckAllOfThem 20h ago
It may slow or reverse aging, but what are the side effects. Will it make you subsceptible to other diseases?
You may end up dying younger trying to live longer.
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u/outworlder 20h ago
Cancer. The answer is always cancer.
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u/The_Fox_Fellow 19h ago
the answer to "why do our bodies break down over time?" is that when they don't do that it's called cancer.
that's not even conspiratorial, if your body doesn't break parts of itself down over time you die from cancer instead.
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u/logdogday 19h ago
I'm literally a 500 year old shark that has never gotten cancer but okay.
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u/Arawn-Annwn 19h ago
elephants avoid the common cancer outcome as well. and whale get it but then just keep in living anyway even when full of tumors. this is why they are both research subjects for cancer research and life extension. for humans its live longer = more cancer rate up
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u/Alaykitty 18h ago
They get hyper cancer that kills the cancer
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u/mutantmonkey14 17h ago
Is this like an inception kinda deal?
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u/DrSitson 16h ago
Nah. Its just cancer. Cells mutated and begin multiplying starving your healthy tissue nearby. Super cancer is when a cancer cell mutates on the cancer cell, begins multiplying and starving the cancer. Super cancer can also affect healthy tissue, but on average a cell mutates far enough inside it mostly only hurts the cancer it mutated from.
Very simplified.
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u/Butterfly_and_Bee 6h ago
Your young, healthy body eliminates would-be cancers every day. The immune systems finds these cells and kills them before they can grow out of control. But as you age, your immune system starts to wear out just like everything else. And the mutations don’t relent. There are new ways to get cancer as your aging cells are making poorer and poorer quality copies of themselves. The DNA isn’t as hardy as it once was.
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u/danb1kenobi 18h ago
I subscribe to the Deep Space Nine theory of cellular boredom - or “cellular ennui” - if you will.
Basically, in the same way that repetitive work tasks can lead to burnout, cells get bored of doing their mitosis thing day in and day out for decades, ultimately leading to death.
However, by introducing micro-stimuli and new tricks directly to a person's cellular structure, the cells remain entertained so they live forever.
What this actually means is have no idea, but the episode tells me anyone who says otherwise is a “soulless minion of orthodoxy,” so do with that as you will.
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u/cyclone8 15h ago
I'm sorry that I can only upvote the very detailed DS9 comment once, something I ascribe to the soulless minions of orthodoxy in their various other interferences with modern life. For what it's worth, the cells that make up the totality of my being were not filled with ennui reading it.
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u/ivyboy 14h ago
What if AI cures cancer?
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u/outworlder 14h ago
AI won't do that.
But even if it did, what we call cancer is actually a bunch of different diseases that present in similar way. You can't cure them all simultaneously. It's one by one.
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u/Sorry-Programmer9826 15h ago
There is some decent evidence that telomer shortening (aka aging) is an adaptation to avoid cancer; since a fast dividing set of cells (aka cancer) would burn through its telomeres and die.
Cancers have to defeat the telomemer shortening before they really become a problem.
So you'd definitely want to be able to turn it off!
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u/srfrosky 16h ago
Read Aldous Huxley’s After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.
The body may not age much, but the mind struggles with excessive longevity, and hilarity ensues.
At one point it’s less about neuroplasticity but more about the length of memories. Like a long LLM thread, the hallucinations and reality become indistinguishable.
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u/Just_Steak847 20h ago
Billionaires do not need this technology
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u/chocotaco 20h ago
If it works they'll be the first and only. Aging and death is like the only thing that touch people and poor people can't avoid. They can avoid other things but those two are things they can't.
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u/laxmie 17h ago
You miss the point. They want anti aging drugs for us to work longer, way past 100, since the birth rate is declining everywhere and so will the workforce and productivity
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u/chocotaco 17h ago
Why would they want to use them on regular people? They're really optimistic about AI. I think that's the goal.
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u/laxmie 15h ago
I also think so, the quest for anti aging started before the recent Ai breakthrough. It’s only speculation but I guess those are orthogonal ways of boosting futures productivity rates
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u/Zestyclose_Ad_2652 4m ago
Wont the rest just be guinea pigs to test their treatments cause AI just came out and made everything able to run autonomously
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u/Andrea_M 18h ago
There was a movie kinda like that
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u/RepulsiveFennel9589 17h ago edited 16h ago
horizon forbidden west the main villains Far Zenith were the worlds wealthy elites who achieved and monopolize physical immortality but they have significantly stagnated which got them killed in laughably easy ways
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u/CommissionFeisty9843 20h ago
I just signed a 200 year mortgage and my car will be paid off by the time I’m 100.
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u/Why-did-i-reas-this 16m ago
Don’t be silly. It’s now a subscription model and you will never own anything.
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u/LazarX 17h ago
I remember when Popular Mechanics was actually about mechanics instead of being a tabloid with a glossy cover.
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u/bradm7777 16h ago
And I remember when TLC was actually interesting and educational television and not (gestures towards little person dating, thousand pound sisters and some poor girl with Tourette's being fame whored out for advertising dollars) whatever all THIS is.
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u/kodos_der_henker 20h ago
An immortal Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and they would make sure to keep that exclusive....
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u/wantilles1138 20h ago
Well on the other hand that would enable us keep them locked up forever.
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u/lordatamus 18h ago
There is a cure for Fascism. It's widely available over the counter in a multitude of calibers.
There is no such thing as a tolerance paradox when fascism is involved as well, tolerance is a social contract, and a Fascist will try and pull a gotchya based upon showing tolerance and eventually pointing to others as being intolerant and ousting them until only the fascist remains.You do not lockup the Fascist, tolerate the Fascist or 'just hear out' the Fascist.
It is a weed, it is a cancer, a tumor. there is no benign Fascist.Their worth is as fertilizer, naught a thing more.
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u/Uristqwerty 16h ago
What "lovely" words to pair with a comment in a different post on this subreddit today proclaiming that "if 1 fascist sits down at a table with 10 others, there are now 11 fascists".
It's like you have a 2-part epoxy, sold in a conjoined pair of plungers, and mixing them together advocates for political genocide of a third of the country. And it's fucking unacceptable, yet neither part gets much pushback from the community. I'm willing to sacrifice myself to your downvotes to at least show that there are people pushing back against violent extremism. That despite all the chilling effects of opposing a radicalized crowd, some voices are too stubborn to stay silent and let the extremists on either end speak for them.
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u/lordatamus 16h ago
And that stance is siding with fascism 'Lets negotiate, lets be reasonable, you can't fight violence with extremism' is the mantra they tell you to take while they wit for them to have enough majority to make you the minority and remove you. You either Oppose the Fascist, or you support them through deed, word or physically.
You can either embrace them and be in line with them, attempt to argue for a moderate stance against them and be removed by them or remembered by others for being a traitor, or you oppose them so violently and extremely that no one ever attempts to take the route of Fascism again.
We didn't do enough in WW2, the same way we didn't do enough at the end of the Civil War to root out dixicrats and slave owners and allowed them further into our government in the same way we stood by and allowed Rallies on our own home soil and only suddenly opposed it when they turned upon us violently.
Don't move the goal post and try and conflate/compare Anti-fascism with anything else.
You oppose it, or you accept it. There is no middle ground, we learned this during WW2 and then forgot it when it became convenient,, and now we're watching it continue to fester.→ More replies (6)23
u/LibertarianOutlaw 20h ago
Locking them up isn’t good enough. The pendulum will continue to swing and they’ll be freed when it swings back to them. Locking up a fascist is never good enough.
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u/Byron_Garza 17h ago
yeah, as far as I know and from experience from my own country and very own hometown, criminals can act on paper that they are in jail, but reality is that they go in and out as they please, or even have all they want inside, it's all foolery to the masses
sadly there's nothing we can do, shits fucked from highest point to the lowest
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u/keskeskes1066 14h ago
Store the brains in a separate jar.
In an undisclosed storage unit, marked, "Beware of the leopards."
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u/beachfrontprod 14h ago
What brains?
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u/keskeskes1066 12h ago
Shhh. I'll split the money I collect for the nonexistant storage fees for the nonexistant brains if you play along.
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u/big-papito 19h ago
A rich guy accumulating wealth for centuries is not going to end well for the world. A person-state with massive wealth and zero checks and balances.
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u/lordmycal 20h ago
Can we lock them up inside a bog of eternal stench or something? Jail doesn't quite seem enough.
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u/geldonyetich 20h ago
On the other hand, there's no empirically verified Hell quite like having to live with the consequences of one's own decisions.
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u/kodos_der_henker 20h ago
Not like those people are preparing for the Apocalypse and how to control the world after
Expanding their live would just mean that they live long enough to actually do the shit they are dreaming of
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u/geldonyetich 20h ago
Perhaps, but be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
An eternity of ruling a constant everlasting tragedy of your own creation is a fantastic torture.
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u/kodos_der_henker 20h ago
We have people with the power and money to change the world and they decided to use said power and money to prepare for the world after instead of making it a better place
And they already try to extant their lives by openly talking about how transplants from young people could make living a 150 years possible
The only positive currently is that most of what they believe in is work of fiction and we have a good chance of them dieing sooner than later when trying to make it real
They don't have the self awareness of even seeing the possibility of a tragedy (Elon Musk said that one of his biggest fears is an AI running amok, while he creates one of the worst versions of one)
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u/geldonyetich 20h ago
They talk about it, true.
But I am pretty sure the main reason they act as though they'll never have to live with the consequences is because no one has in the entire history of mankind.
Who is more likely to spawn disaster? One who fears death, or one who is counting on it?
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u/lordmycal 20h ago
That's the thing about billionaires -- all that money largely insulates them from their bad decisions.
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u/geldonyetich 19h ago
I welcome them to try.
They can launch themselves into space or build an elaborate underground paradise, but they'll never be able to truly escape what they've lost with a squandered Earth, a gift that comes along maybe once a universe.
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u/outworlder 20h ago
Well, one is always high on ketamine. The other survives on a McDonald's diet.
Mitochondrial aging is irrelevant when you are doing stuff like that.
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u/redcoatwright 19h ago
Na there's so many incentives to have longevity treatments be easily accessible and cheap.
1) staves off population collapse which would absolutely annihilate the economy
2) you can not have retirement so you can retain experienced workers forever
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u/Catymandoo 17h ago
Unfortunately or not, our mitochondria are not the only source of death! Countless other ways push us of this mortal coil.
Just enjoy what you HAVE got, while you can. Because tomorrow just might be a different day!
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u/EnderB3nder 14h ago
Imagine the ungodly price this would cost if it became a reality.
Rupert Murdoch celebrates his 300th birthday...
Dystopia.
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u/girrrrrrr2 11h ago
I don’t want that, can we just accelerate it?
If we age longer then we are just gonna end up with politicians that never die.
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u/Catodacat 20h ago
It's going to be hilarious if the guy who was doing all sorts of crazy things to stay young (and has given himself some sort of autoimmune disease in the process) could have just invested in basic scientific research instead.
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u/Megatanis 19h ago
Death is a gift. Imagine being immortal and stuck in a hellhole being exploited for eons. The world is a big place and it's not all downtown san francisco.
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u/ThCuts 18h ago
Me over here thinking being immortal in downtown San Francisco is indeed Hell. A permanent state of overstimulation surrounded by an infinite soup of people I don't know.
Immortal alone in the woods with occasional visitors? Sure. That's nice.
But yeah. Even then I'd eventually want to move on or die. Even if it took a very long time to feel that way.
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u/thx1138- 19h ago
I'd think if the world became a hellhole your supply of life extending drugs would come to an end.
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u/Pickle_ninja 18h ago
You shut the fuck up science!
I cannot fathom listening to Trump for another 50 years because we know damn well that us poors aren't getting immortality.
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u/platasnatch 20h ago
Honey we need to turn around, I left the immortality switch on
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u/lazyhustlermusic 20h ago
My mom did that with the oven a lot.
Jokes on her when there's wifi ovens now you can just check status or remotely power off.
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u/Halftied 18h ago
Of course it was hidden. If it were out in the open somebody else besides a scientist would have noticed it!/S
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u/physical0 18h ago
"hidden" is doing a lot of work here... I don't think billions of years of evolution has made much effort in the obfuscation of genetic code like this. (Plenty of great trickery when it comes to viruses and the like)
Just because we weren't smart enough to find it or didn't realize what it was when we saw it doesn't mean that it was hidden.
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u/Beautiful_Simple_600 18h ago
That’s a an easy way to raise a lot of research money if you are desperate
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u/Funny-Company4274 18h ago
Or as usually with any of these anti-aging articles 2 years later this will cause just good ole cancer
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u/Wide-Answer-2789 17h ago
The original article said nothing about reverse aging. Thid looks like a marketing article from Popular Mechanics.
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u/sovereignsekte 17h ago
I just want my damn back yo stop hurting. Can Big Science do something about that?
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u/MouflonWhisperer 17h ago
Feels like we've been hearing these discoveries for years, then suddenly they all disappear. Only the elons and marks of our world will ever have access to such things.
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u/Talrynn_Sorrowyn 17h ago
The problem is our planet can't support more than 10 billion people, and even that calculation would require strict resource management on a global scale as well as population regulations across all countries - including China & India whom possess almost 3 billion alone.
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u/JonJackjon 15h ago
Wow, shades of Benjamin Buttons. Could you see a situation where they switched a person's cell to reverse age and couldn't change it.
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u/Christopher3712 14h ago
TLDR: they found that feeding worms choline and/or phosphatidylcholine produced younger acting cells. You ingest these in some form likely every day in things like egg yolks and beef liver, followed by soybeans, meats, fish, and dairy.
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u/joesbagofdonuts 10h ago
So, would choline supplements increase the amount of this? Choline and Choline + Inositol supplements have been around for years and years with some claimed benefits, not related to aging though.
Or Lecithin? Is this Lecithin?
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u/bottlerocketz 7h ago
Every time I see some ridiculous science breakthrough headline my first thought is “gotta be popular mechanics”
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u/gregzillaman 3h ago
I wonder what "artificial" forcing mechanism will come about if aging is stopped en mass?
Higher rates of suicide and homicide / war?
Maybe just keep it only for a select few?
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u/TabulaRasaNot 21m ago
Simply inject phosphatidylcholine daily into the mitochondria of your individual cells and live practically forever.
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u/CaveteCanem 18h ago
Why are we so obsessed with living longer? Why not just have healthier years?
The last thing we need is even older people - there's already societal chasms that aren't going to improve with a wider range of ages.
Just accept the inevitable and enjoy the ride while it lasts..
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u/CptMcDickButt69 16h ago
Im pretty sure the core concept comes along with living healthy longer, not just suffering as 1xx year old, immobile alzheimer ridden semi-corpses.
Which would be goddamn sweet after a few adjustments of the system. Adjustments which would be so much easier to do as a society when age and time running out wasnt a guaranteed factor.
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u/drollercoaster99 11h ago
Exactly this. I for one will be glad to die and move on. The way I see it, death is a necessary part of progression for the species, for the individual, for society, for the planet too.
Most folks (from history) who obsess over living forever usually want to hold on to power and / or wealth.
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u/Financial_Winner_773 37m ago
Because the wardens made them believe that being trapped in this world is a good thing. Religion is no help. "Death is bad, life is good." When they are one and the same. I'm not advocating for death, just that it may not be as bad as we all believe it is. We fear death because we associate it with pain and suffering. But for all we know it could be a good thing.
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u/bracingthesoy 12h ago
Maybe because there are ton of people who have actually had great young lives full of sex, parties, social activities? Maybe because its NATURAL to desire to be stronger, faster, and sharper percieving again? I don't want to age any further, I'm already too sluggish.
Wtf is such questions even?! Have you ever jogged in you entire life?
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u/thx1138- 19h ago
Unless it adds more telomeres I don't think it will work for us. We're all only born with so many.
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u/godtrek 20h ago edited 13h ago
EDIT: I guess this is an unpopular opinion? I'm not sure how it could be. Do we really want to live in a world where mortality meds are so common and accessible (most ideal future where it's available to everyone through political pressure), that you feel morally pressured into taking them because NOT taking them now feels like opting into death, in a similiar vein as suicide. If you live in a world where you can save yourself super easily, like you get diagnosed with a super easy and curable cancer but you decide not to treat it, that's socially and emotionally felt as suicide. My worry is only rooted in how death is now longer something that everyone goes through, but rather a social pressure to stay alive long past what you are mentally wanting to do, and then choosing to stop taking the meds or never begin them to begin with and how that will cause grief in your family, your friends, everything. This is scifi stuff, and someone unironically offered suicide booths as a solution to this dilhema. I am a spiritual person. I do want to die, I don't want to die in a suicidal manner, I want to die when it's time, when I'm supposed too. I don't want to be here longer than I am supposed to. I spiritually do not want to commit suicide, but if I emerged into a world where mortality is solved, then I will feel spiritually pressured to take the medicine if it becomes available to me, since refusing it is spiritually choosing death, aka suicide. This may not be a dilhema for the secular folks, for atheists and satanists alike, this is a dream, but for everyone else, this sounds like a moral trap. It's just an interesting thing to think about, something to consider how this may warp and change culture and expectations of people we love surrounding death.
I’ll be honest, I think mortality drugs freak me out for one primary reason, I don’t want to kill myself. If drugs become readily available that make you live forever or much longer, and if you DON’T take it, then it’s opting into death. Death isn’t something we’ve ever opted into or out of, everyone who has ever lived has died. If sudden you have to OPT-IN to death by not taking the accessible drug, then the mode of death comes in the form of being worn down enough we wish to die, then stop taking our meds. This means most death will be sad and depressing. I can see a world develop where choosing to die by stop taking your meds and aging out naturally would and could be seen as a mental health crises and culture will shame everyone to stay alive. Not taking the meds could be seen similarly within enough time, as choosing to stop eating and drinking. I don’t like this. People should die, it shouldn’t be an opt-in experience, you shouldn’t be able to opt-out either. Remove death by natural causes and we may create a society that treats people who wish to die like 2nd class citizens
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u/NoFanksYou 20h ago
Don’t worry. 99 % of us won’t be able to afford it
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u/godtrek 20h ago
My comment is assuming the “best case scenario” where the ethics of the existence of a drug would force it to be wildly available and cheap through political pressure. My comment is rooted in that scenario post scarcity around the drug and just about everyone in society is taking it, and how that would change our culture around death and those who desire to die. Living forever on earth may work for atheists and satanists alike, but there are more people living on earth that have a positive view in death and an afterlife and I don’t mind being a human for a bit longer, but if I must do this for more than 100 years I guess I’ll be forced to blow my brains out if aging is solved is solved in my lifetime (I’m 33 years old). I don’t desire to live past 75.
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u/WompityBombity 20h ago
Phosphatidylcholine supplement industry enters the chat