Plant Halts Ageing

MEDICINE A new experiment proves that we can all add at least 15 years to our lives, if we eat more wasabi.

With 83.7 years, the Japanese have the longest life expectancy in the world. And a new experiment carried out by John Happer from the Las Vegas Medicine Institute in the US may have revealed the reason for their longevity.

Happer studied nine people and found out that the cells of the four, who ate a lot of the Japanese wasabi plant, showed fewer signs of ageing than the cells of the test subjects, who only consumed a little.

The sensational results, which have just been published on Happer’s website, mean that we can add more than 15 years to our lives.

The telomeres – DNA-sequences that become shorter over time – were 25 % longer in wasabi eaters.