How Loss of Stem Cells Affects Aging

Over the past few years the term 'stem cell' periodically shows up in the news. If you've heard of it you probably know that there is great controversy about whether to do research in this area of medicine.

However, lost in the controversy are the real facts about these important cells in the body. To help clear up some of these misconceptions, read on to learn the facts that will help you understand what this whole idea really means for your health and longevity.

The Controversy

First, let's get past the controversy. People against stem cell research are typically against research in embryonic stem cell research. This is research using stem cells taken from human embryos.

The fact is that every person alive constantly makes their own stem cells from the moment they're born. These are called adult stem cells. They act throughout life as 'internal rejuvenators' help your body repair and renew itself.

What Are Stem Cells?

Stem cells are master cells released from bone marrow that have the ability to become virtually any other type of cell in the body. They can transform into bone, blood, connective tissue, organ and even nerve cells.

This means that, each organ and tissue in your body can use stem cells to rebuild and regenerate. Many studies show that their job is to help your organs and tissues maintain proper functioning and repair them when they become damaged or diseased.

Unfortunately, as with many natural functions in our bodies, our ability to generate new stem cells decreases as we get older. This is one reason why we tend to heal more slowly with age.

As this is being written researchers everywhere are hoping to unlock the secrets of creating more stem cells. The reasoning is that if we can figure out how to effectively add more stem cells, people will gain huge improvements in their health.

Even just injecting stem cells into the body has this effect. There are people who travel overseas pay very large amounts of money to have this very thing done. One example from the recent past was entertainer Don How who went to the Orient and paid $30,000 for such a treatment.

Unfortunately, these treatments only provide temporary improvement at best. This suggests that simply dumping a huge amount of externally-sourced stem cells into your system isn't effective for long-term improvement.

Other Research

This topic is so important, the NIH has an entire site devoted to it. You can view it by clicking here. This link takes you to the page that talks about adult stem cells and how they work.

To learn even more about what stem cells do and the latest research findings, use the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.pubmed.gov). Enter "Adult Stem Cell" in the search box and click the "Go" button.

You can narrow your search by adding a "+" and whatever else you'd like to find. For example, the search "Adult Stem Cell + Diabetes" gives you 18 different research abstracts describing various stages of research regarding the effects of stem cells on this disease. Be aware that these are abstracts of scientific research papers and will likely be somewhat difficult to read.

What You Can Do Now

For now there is no medical treatment for enhancing stem cells short of simply injecting stem cells into the body. Although this does help in the short run, it's not a long-term solution.

The best approach is to make sure your body is as strong and healthy as it can be. You can do this by eating well for your metabolic type (customized, individualized nutrition), as well as making sure you manage stress well, get enough exercise, fresh air, sunshine and sleep.

It looks like the old wisdom had it right!

 

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