So, it turns out Ponce de Leon might have been going about his quest for eternal youth all wrong. He thought it’d be a fountain, some secret miracle hidden away in a New World untouched by man. But the real answer, as it so often does, lies within. Scientists have found a section of the brain in lab mice that appears to release a protein that tells their bodies to age. And, what’s more, by blocking that particular protein complex (it’s called “nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells,” and reading that out loud actually causes you to instantly age three years) and injecting the brain with a different hormone, scientists have been able to slow mice’s aging by 20 percent.
The immediate ramifications of this discovery is what it could do for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, but it’s one of the first major breakthroughs for scientists who study aging and how to slow it down. Basically, if we fiddle around with our brains, we can not only elongate our lives, but perpetuate our youth. Like Wolverine. Or Helen Mirren. Or this guy …
