John Cleese: I use stem cell therapy in bid to stay young
HE WAS forced to go back on tour with a one-man show to help cover his eye-wateringly expensive divorce bills. But John Cleese is also spending his wealth on stem cell therapy in a bid to stay young.
The Monty Python and Fawlty Towers comedy legend has been having the treatment for years and he credits it with helping him look younger than his 79 years.
Cleese, who is starring in a second series of the BBC1 comedy Hold The Sunset, said: ‘I do stem cell therapy… I’m serious. I think stem cell therapy i s the most extraordinary thing and of course, I’m sorry to say, it’s not cheap.’
Speaking on Steve Wright’s BBC Radio 2 show on Friday, the fourt i mes- married star explained: ‘Stem cells are basically cells at such an early stage of development that they haven’t decided what sort of cells they’re going to become.
‘ So if they are introduced into your body, the body doesn’t recognise them as foreign objects so it doesn’t reject them, and they go around your body saying, “Do you need our services today?”
‘The knee says “I need you over here”, and they go over and turn
‘I think it’s extraordinary – but it’s not cheap’
into knee cells and help to repair the damage.
‘ I’ve been doing that for some years and the astonishing thing is that you don’t hear much about it. I look younger than my age and it’s entirely down to stem cell therapy and not because I’m a wonderful person, which I am, but that doesn’t affect my looks.’
Stem cells – often called the building blocks of life – are cells that have the ability to develop into different cell types. They can also help repair damaged tissue.
Researchers can take stem cells from adult tissue such as bone marrow but the most controversial type are embryonic stem cells, which come from human embryos that are three to five days old. Stem cells are used in bone marrow transplants to fight certain blood-based cancers and doctors also use them to treat sporting injuries.
Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo reportedly had stem cells injected into his knee in 2016 to help overcome an injury.
Stem cell therapy has become fashionable in Hollywood as an anti- ageing tool. Actor Charlie Sheen has admitted to using it to heal an old shoulder injury but several A-listers are rumoured to use stem cell injections to promote a more youthful appearance.