New Technologies in Research and Development

In the chapter on artificial intelligence we saw tools you can use today, and in the one on the future of health, the two roads that open up in front of us. This chapter is about what lies in between: what is being cooked up in the laboratories right now. Almost everything you will see here you cannot yet buy or ask your doctor for, but it will be knocking at your door in the coming years. There is one important exception, and it is precisely the most promising of them all: mitochondrial transplant has already left the laboratory and exists today, though it is expensive and in few hands. It is worth your knowing what all this is about before somebody sells it to you.

How a health technology is born

Every medical technology travels the same road: first an idea, then tests on cells in a jar, then in animals, and only at the end in people, in what are called clinical trials. Each step takes years and costs an enormous amount of money.

And there is the key that almost nobody tells you: whoever puts up the money decides what gets researched. That is why what gets studied is above all what can be patented and sold dear, and what is cheap, natural or in the public domain gets left aside, even if it works. It is not that those things are no good; it is that nobody recovers the investment by studying them. Keep it in mind every time you are told that something "has no evidence": very often what there was none of was somebody to pay for the study.

Repairing instead of covering up

Today's medicine almost always covers up the symptom: the pill for the pain, the pill for the blood pressure. The most promising line of research goes the opposite way: getting the body to repair what is damaged. Besides stem cells, which we already mentioned in the chapter on the future of health, the laboratories are working with exosomes — little packets that cells send one another with instructions inside — and with peptides, which are small pieces of protein that work as very precise messages.

The underlying idea is beautiful for how simple it is: instead of putting a foreign substance into the body, give it the signal it already knows how to obey.

Mitochondrial transplant: perhaps the most promising of all

Mitochondria are the power plants that every cell carries inside: they are what produce the force with which the body does absolutely everything (the chapter on how your cells work explains it calmly). When the mitochondria fail or wear out, the cell is left with nothing to work with, and out of that comes a good part of what we call fatigue, chronic illness and old age.

The idea of a mitochondrial transplant is so direct that it is surprising it was not done before: put young, healthy mitochondria into old or damaged cells. It is not about correcting a gene or replacing an organ, but about giving the body back the capacity to generate energy that it had when it was young. Of everything that appears in this chapter, this is perhaps the most promising of all.

And here is the difference from the rest of the chapter: this is already available. There are clinics opening in different parts of the world. The problem, for now, is the same one as with stem cells: it costs a fortune and it still cannot be produced in large quantities. But that is going to change. When the price comes down — and it will come down — it will be a key piece for living much longer and much better; perhaps the piece that lets us, at last, not die of old age.

About this I am going to tell you something personal. Fifteen years ago I was the chief executive of a stem-cell research company. Our goal was perfectly clear: bring the price of a treatment down to two hundred dollars, to put it within anyone's reach. We never managed it. And it was not for lack of science, or money, or will: it was because of interference from the big pharmaceutical companies. Everything this book says about how cheap cures get buried, I lived from the inside.

That is why today I follow closely a company called Mitrix Bio (https://mitrix.bio). It is very likely the one that will achieve what we could not: to deliver at a reasonable price what may very well be the cure for aging. I recommend you check on it from time to time.

And while that day arrives, do not sit with your arms folded: what you can do today for your mitochondria costs almost nothing. Sunlight, fasting, movement, cold, minerals and real food are all direct care for your power plants. This book is full of that.

Clearing out the cells that no longer work

With the years, some cells stop working but do not die either: they stay there, getting in the way and inflaming everything around them. They are called senescent cells, or more graphically "zombie cells." A very active line of research is looking for substances able to eliminate them without touching the healthy ones; they are called senolytics, and several of the candidates are compounds that come from plants.

It still remains to be found out which ones really work, in what amount and how often. But notice that the underlying idea — taking out the old and obstructive so the healthy can work better — is exactly the same as that of a good detox, which this book discusses in several chapters. What is new here is the name and the precision, not the principle.

Turning back the cell's clock

A Japanese scientist, Shinya Yamanaka, discovered that an adult cell can receive certain signals and go back to behaving like a young cell, almost newborn. That is called cellular reprogramming, and today it is among the hottest things in laboratories around the world. It is not about replacing the body part by part, but about reminding it how it was when it was young.

It is promising and also delicate: a cell that is rejuvenated too far can lose its way and turn into a tumor. That is why this research advances slowly, and it is right that it should. Be suspicious of anyone already selling it to you.

Measuring your real age

Your ID card says one age; your body says another. The so-called epigenetic clocks try to measure that second age, the biological one, by reading certain chemical marks that accumulate on the DNA with the passage of time and of mistreatment. There are already tests sold to the public, though they still do not agree with one another and it is wise to take them with a pinch of salt.

What is valuable is not the number itself, but what it opens up: at last it is possible to measure whether a change of life — eating real food, sleeping well, moving, getting sun — is producing results on the inside, and not just wait for the scale or the years to say something.

Seeing disease before it shows its face

Another line seeks to detect problems years before the first symptom appears. The most talked about is the liquid biopsy: a blood sample in which they look for little pieces of genetic material that tumors release. It sounds marvelous, and it can save lives.

But it has its weak side, and it has to be said: finding something does not always mean it has to be treated. Fear has led many people to be operated on or medicated for things that would never have done them any harm. As always in this book, the question is not only "what did they find in me?" but "what am I going to do about it, and who profits if I do what I am told?"

Testing without animals

More and more work is done with organoids: little pieces of human tissue grown in the laboratory, the size of a lentil, that behave like a liver, an intestine or a brain in miniature. And with so-called "organs on a chip," which connect several of those tissues to see how they affect one another.

They are useful for testing whether something is toxic or useful without poisoning animals and, on top of that, on real human tissue, which in the end is what matters to you. It is one of the few areas where almost everyone agrees: less cruelty and better answers at the same time.

The world we carry inside

A good part of current research is no longer concerned with our cells, but with the trillions of bacteria that live in the gut: what is called the microbiota. It is being seen that they have to do with digestion, yes, but also with the defenses, with inflammation and even with mood and mental clarity. Everything from microbiota transplant to specific bacteria cultured for a specific problem is being researched.

In the meantime, what is already known requires no laboratory: those bacteria are cared for with real food and fermented foods, and they are destroyed with sugar, factory food and antibiotics used lightly.

Light, frequencies and fields

There is a whole field studying what light and electromagnetic fields do to the body. Photobiomodulation uses red and infrared light so that cells produce more energy; pulsed electromagnetic fields are being studied for bone, for pain and for tissue repair. This crosses directly with what is explained in the chapter on healing through energy.

It is a terrain where serious research and plenty of charlatans with an expensive machine live side by side. The rule is the usual one: ask what was tested, in whom, and what happens if it does not work.

What nobody is researching (and should be)

As important as knowing what is being researched is knowing what is not. Everything that cannot be patented is left an orphan: the substances known forever, minerals, plants, fasting, the sun. There is also repositioning — taking an old, cheap medicine, already known and safe, and studying it for another illness — which would be the fastest and most economical route there is, and precisely because it is cheap almost nobody funds it.

DMSO, to which this book devotes an entire chapter, is the perfect example: known for decades, safe, useful for a great many things, and with nobody to pay for the large studies because it leaves no profit. This is where you, informed, have the advantage over the system.

How to read a "scientific breakthrough" story

Every week a headline will come out announcing the cure for something. Ask it five questions and almost all the noise will fall away:

What was it tested on: cells in a jar, mice, or people? Most headlines are mice.

In how many people was it tested, and for how long?

Who paid for the study, and who profits if it turns out well?

Is it available today, or is it ten years away?

What did they compare it against: against nothing, or against the best that already existed?

In short

Technology is not good or bad in itself; it depends on whose hands it is in and what it is used for. What is being cooked up in the laboratories today can serve to give you back the power over your body, or to take it away from you entirely. It is worth knowing what is coming, looking at it with curiosity and without fear, and also without swallowing the tale of the miracle that is always five years away. And of everything here, follow mitochondrial transplant closely: it is the only one that already exists, and it is also the one that could go furthest.

And in the meantime, do not sit waiting. What we already know works — real food, sun, sleep, clean water, minerals, movement and calm — needs no laboratory's permission and nobody's approval. That is still the most advanced technology there is, and you already have it in your hands.