Maria Konovalenko says yes:
A paper of extreme importance for fighting aging came out in the Nature journal on Thursday. A research group from Buck Institute lead by Professor Gordon Lithgow was able to prolong life of nematodes by 78% by adding one compound to the worms’ diet – a dye Thioflavin T. The authors showed that the effectof the dye was due to activation of stress resistance mechanisms, which lead to significant increase in median (60%) and maximum lifespan (43-78%). Thioflavin T is used to mark the amyloid protein aggregates inAlzheimer’s disease. Dr. Lithgow’s group showed that this compound regulates protein homeostasis, which leads to life extension in nematodes and improvement of their health later in life.
This article proves the possibility to prolong life by activating stress resistance using chemical compounds simply added to the diet.
Konovalenko points out that the word “stress” here is being used in its technical / biological sense to refer to a broad range of damage. And yet apparently this one agent, Thioflavin T, was effective against stress generally, leading to this significant increases in lifespan.
In principle, a change in diet here brings about a major increase in life span. If there is a something we can add to the human diet that will have anything like the impact that Thioflavin T has on these worms…we’re talking about a huge marekt for some ambitious supplement distributor.
