According to research published in well known medical journal The Lancet, covering critical information on how to “stop” aging, more than half of the infants born in the UK and other wealthy countries today will reach 100 because of higher standards of living.
Improvements in medical care, as well as changes in diet and lifestyle are all helping us live longer, but our bodies are still wearing out at the same rate. In an effort to promote “50 active years after 50″ experts at Leeds University are launching a research initiative that will invest $88 million over the next 5 years to uncover innovative solutions to make this a reality.
They suggest that options like own-grown tissue and durable implants, new medical devices and regenerative therapies will allow people to be as active in their second 50 years as they were in their first 50.
The research will focus on the areas most affected by age – joints, spine, teeth, heart and circulation. New heart valves, hips and knees are the starting point, though someday experts hope that nearly any body part that wears out with age might be replaced.
The Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering at Leeds has already completed a hip transplant that should last a lifetime.
This is far better than the 20 year maximum life expected out of today’s artificial hips. The newest hip mechanism is a combination of a durable cobalt-chrome metal alloy socket and a ceramic ball able to hold up to the 100 million steps a patient can be expected to take before their hundredth birthday.
And unlike studies that focus on stem cells or growing spare parts in a laboratory, this work uses your body’s own regenerative systems.
Professor Eileen Ingham and her team have come up with a way to help the body enhance itself. The idea is to make transplantable tissues, maybe even organs, that are made naturally by the body. This would mean no rejection, the main reason that today’s transplants wear out and fail.
Using a “scaffolding” technique, researchers have managed to make heart valves that are fully functional.
The process involves a healthy donor heart valve (from a person or suitable animal), cartilage or other vessel being washed using a cocktail of enzymes and detergents that gently strip away cells. The inert “scaffold” that remains can be transplanted into a patient without any concern over rejection. Once the inert material is in place, the body takes over and repopulates it with cells.
Animal trails, as well as work involving 40 Brazilian human patients are showing promising results.
The technology has been licensed to the NHS National Blood and Transplant Tissue Services so it can be used all across the UK on any donated human tissue. Today the NHS is investigating using this technique on donor skin for burn patients.
Of course what experts are hoping for is to be able to eliminate the need for donor organs. Technology to replace all donor tissue might take from 30 to 50 years because each product must be designed and tested on its own.
Professor Christina Doyle of Xeno Medical (the company that’s developing the technology) points out that other researchers are working on regenerative therapies grown completely outside the body, looking at how to “stop” aging with more and more vigour.
Today we have more hope than ever that those years after 50 will be healthy, active ones lived in a body of someone half that age.
Daily Health Bulletin
For A Limited Time: Click Here To Grab 5 Free Essential Health Reports Today!
