“GETTING OLD??” Hmm?

Sort of a dumb question when you think about it. We’re ALL getting old. Even tiny little babies that were born yesterday.

It’s like that “old” Mitch Hedberg joke:

One time, this guy handed me a picture of him, he said “Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.” Every picture is of you when you were younger. “Here’s a picture of me when I’m older.” “You son-of-a-bitch! How’d you pull that off? Lemme see that camera… What’s it look like?”

But anyway, we are all getting old, and since the days of Ponce de Leon, and even way before him, humans have been searching for a spout of “salad days” and juvenescence — a magical elixir that will turn back the clock and transform wrinkles and gray once again into taut skin and pigment.

According to a recent study, the potion may one day become a reality, thanks to the discovery of a curious compound within pomegranates that when digested by all the wonderful things in the gut, “rejuvenates cellular function” and even reverses aging on muscles. Thus far, this has only been displayed in the bellies of worms, rats and mice, but still.

Scientists aren’t proclaiming yet that eating pomegranates by themselves bestow this incredible power to someone’s cell makeup, so let that be clear. It’s actually bacteria in our stomachs that manufacture the promising stuff.

This from Gizmodo:

The molecule responsible for this rejuvenation effect is called urolithin A, but it isn’t actually found in pomegranates. After eating the delectable juice from a pomegranate, natural substances known as ellagitannins are broken down in the stomach and then converted into urolithin A by our intestinal bacteria. And that’s when the happiness begins.

Moreover, the Swiss researchers who found the breakthrough broke the process down further and explained that urolithin A enables cells to “restore its failing mitochondria” — which provide energy within the human building block.

The result is incredible. Especially for anyone who wants to exercise and be active into their golden years.

Again, from Gizmodo:

The effect of UA on lab animals was nothing short of jaw dropping. Elderly nematode worms exposed to UA lived 45 percent longer compared to a control group. Older mice who were given the compound were 42 percent better at endurance running than their UA-deprived counterparts. We still don’t know what effect this compound will have on humans, but there’s good reason to believe it’ll work, at least to some degree.

“Species that are evolutionarily quite distant, such as [worms and mice], react to the same substance in the same way,” said study co-author Johan Auwerx. “That’s a good indication that we’re touching here on an essential mechanism in living organisms.”

So if you don’t believe that feeding your body pomegranates to make UA will do anything minus the harvest (by an expert scientist) that’s perfectly sensible. And logical. But not investing in the botanical fruit on a commodity market? Not so much?