A lot of us are at least a little scared or worried about aging so it makes sense that people wish to slow down the process as much as possible or even reverse it!
If you relate to this statement, you will be happy to learn that, according to a new study, sea squirts may just be able to do just that!
The study was published by researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Stanford University, Shanghai Jiao tong University as well as from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and showed that featuring these sea organisms, scientifically known as Ascidiacea in your diet can reverse some signs of aging.
Plasmalogens are naturally all over our bodies, especially in the brain, heart and immune cells but as humans grow older, the amount of these organisms unfortunately decreases.
With that being said, the scientist team involved in this research looked into whether or not boosting the plasmalogens levels can slow down or even reverse aging by adding plasmalogens to the diet of aged lab mice.
They learned that the supplements did indeed have positive effects when it comes to their physical symptoms and learning abilities.
The corresponding author of the study, Professor Lei Fu, stated that “Our research suggests that plasmalogens may not just stop cognitive decline, but may reverse cognitive impairments in the aging brain. Additionally, aged mice fed with the plasmalogens grow new black hair that is thicker and glossier than aged mice not fed the supplement.”
The experiment consisted of training mice to use a Morris water maze, which is a pool of water with a platform made for resting.
It is known that mice do not like to swim so after 5 days of training, mice were able to swim directly to the platform to escape the water, knowing exactly where it was.
However, older mice in the control group struggled to remember where the resting area was after the same training period.
The older mice fed with plasmalogens, on the other hand, showed cognitive performance much more similar to younger mice, finding the platform much quicker than the older mice that hadn’t been fed with plasmalogens.
After all, an unfortunate result of aging is inflammation in the brain that affects one’s cognitive ability and it looks like this inflammation was significantly decreased in mice that were given plasmalogen supplements so the lab mice were able to do better in memory and learning tasks.
