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New research indicates that hyperbaric oxygen treatments can reverse the ageing process.

New research indicates that hyperbaric oxygen treatments can reverse ageing.

In our quest to discover the fountain of youth, a new study from Tel Aviv University indicates that hyperbaric oxygen treatments (HBOT) in healthy ageing adults can stop the ageing of blood cells and reverse the ageing process. The researchers found that a unique protocol of treatments with high-pressure oxygen in a pressure chamber can reverse two major processes associated with ageing and its illnesses: the shortening of telomeres and the accumulation of old and malfunctioning cells in the body.

The study, published in Aging, was led by Professor Shai Efrati of the Sackler School of Medicine and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at TAU and founder and director of the Sagol Centre of Hyperbaric Medicine at the Shamir Medical Centre; and Dr. Amir Hadanny, chief medical research officer at the Sagol Centre.

The team has been engaged in hyperbaric research and therapy for many years and in the past their work has shown improvement of brain functions damaged by age, stroke or brain injury. “In the current study we wished to examine the impact of HBOT on healthy and independent ageing adults, and to discover whether such treatments can slow down, stop or even reverse the normal ageing process at the cellular level,” says Professor Efrati. The researchers exposed 35 healthy individuals aged 64 or over to a series of 60 hyperbaric sessions over a period of 90 days. The findings indicated that the treatments reversed the ageing process in two significant ways: the telomeres at the ends of the chromosomes grew longer instead of shorter, and the percentage of senescent cells in the overall cell population was reduced significantly.

“Today telomere shortening is considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of the biology of ageing,” says Professor Efrati. “Researchers around the world are trying to develop pharmacological and environmental interventions that enable telomere elongation. Our HBOT protocol was able to achieve this, proving that the ageing process can in fact be reversed at the basic cellular-molecular level.”

“Until now, interventions such as lifestyle modifications and intense exercise were shown to have some inhibiting effect on telomere shortening,” Dr. Hadanny adds. “But in our study, only three months of HBOT were able to elongate telomeres at rates far beyond any currently available interventions or lifestyle modifications”.

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