The Code of Eternal Youth; Man’s Search for Immortality

By Dave Woynarowski, MD, CPT

Every culture and every generation has sought the Fountain of Youth. Scientists now believe that they are closer to finding it than ever before.

Famous stories surrounding seemingly immortal people date back thousands of years as with Methuselah and continue centuries later with Ponce De Leon.

Meanwhile human progress was slow to follow and actual advances in the average human lifespan really only started to show up as the result of public health measures in the last 100 years.

Nonetheless as we developed the science to understand a bit more about what we are, research began to unravel the Secret Code of Aging.

In the mid 1960’s Leonard Hayflick proved that cells have a finite ability to reproduce before they “get old” and die. Now understand that cell death eventually means human death because as cells die organs become weaker, less disease resistant and have fewer functioning cells to handle the “loads of living”.

Scientists postulated that under ideal conditions a person could reach a maximum lifespan of 120 years.

Many years later it was discovered that a small piece or “end cap” of DNA was the key to healthy cellular replication. Sadly with each replication this end piece, called a “Telomere”, gets shorter and shorter.

While there is an enzyme called Telomerase in humans (and other species), this enzyme which lengthens the telomere does not keep pace with the damage and the cells become unable to replicate and die.

Stress, smoking, drinking, pollution, poor nutrition and so on contribute to the acceleration of cell death probably through the very same mechanism.

The natural starting point for addressing cellular aging began with tying to find something that “turns up the telomerase” making it more active at repairing the Telomeres.

Approximately 2 years ago a publicly available all natural supplement known as TA-65 was released. Simply put, it lengthens telomeres and is the only safe natural and available compound that does so.

Again, notice it’s a supplement - not a drug!

Thus began a kind of experiment as people in the producing company (Geron and TA Sciences) began to take the compound.

Soon members of the general public were included and the rest as they say is history.

While the actual number of people who are on TA-65 is a closely guarded secret the number is at this point small.

Here are the reasons:

1. Up until now it required considerable optimism from a scientific data point. The information was considered “relevant and interesting” but not proven. That has all changed very recently and new data about to be published is sure to take the world by storm.
2. The molecule, while all-natural, requires a special extraction process and huge amount of raw material making it very rare and very expensive.
3. People who were on it immediately recruited friends and family to get on it as well because the benefits show up almost immediately according to most users. This meant that the company did not need to advertise to keep up its customer base until the science could be taken to the next step.