2024-03-15 08:51:25
A Florida scientist who spent 100 days underwater claims there are still huge health benefits from being under the waves – nine months after he returned to land, writes Mail Online.
Former Navy diver Joseph Dituri spent this record-breaking amount of time in an underwater hotel 30 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, in a high-pressure environment that he says changed the age of his body at a cellular level.
When Dituri surfaced last June, he announced that blood tests had shown a 50 percent reduction in all inflammatory markers in his body, 17 times more stem cells than before the layoff, and longer telomeres — structures of the chromosomes, which according to scientific theories are related to the extension of life.
“I am now 56 years old. My biological age was 44 when I went below the surface. When I came out of the water, my biological age was 34 years old,” Dituri told reporters in Orlando. “So my telomeres got longer and, in fact, I got younger when I was underwater,” summed up the University of South Florida professor, who has in biomedical engineering, and is a retired US Navy officer.
At the end of human chromosomes are so-called telomeres, which look like the plastic tips at the end of shoelaces. Every time cells divide, telomeres shorten. Once they are used up, the chromosome unravels and the cell dies. So the idea is that keeping them long will help cells live longer, slowing down the overall aging process.
This idea of longevity has yet to be proven in human experiments, but other researchers are working on gene therapies to lengthen telomeres in hopes of slowing the aging process, BTA reported.
Dituri claims that his telomeres are not as long as they were when he first came out, but that they are still longer than they were before the submersion.
He also reports that his cognitive abilities have improved during his time underwater.
Dituri believes his rejuvenation is due to living in a high-pressure or “hyperbaric” environment.
In modern medicine, the hyperbaric chamber usually contains pure oxygen, but in the case of the underwater hotel, the mixture is closer to that of ordinary air, and the pressure is twice that of normal atmospheric pressure.
The health benefits of hyperbaric chambers have been well documented since a British doctor built the first one in 1662 – more than 100 years before the discovery of oxygen.
In many cases, however, proponents of the healing effect of hyperbaric therapies rely more on sporadic evidence than on high-quality clinical studies.
However, the medical literature shows that some people have received profound, almost miraculous benefits from hyperbaric therapy.
Doctors treated patients with the 1918 Spanish flu with hyperbaric therapy, bringing them back from the brink of death only by placing them in chambers filled with pressurized air.
“I mean, come on! This is already known. So why not treat, for example, the post-COVID complications”, urges Dituri.
He added that research needs to be done, but that the data already provided should be enough evidence that there is something worth investigating.
Specifically, he said, scientists need to investigate the “mechanisms of action” — what happens at the molecular level that leads to positive health effects.