For years, human beings have dreamed of finding the fountain of eternal youth, something that will be practically impossible to achieve. Despite this, science continues to study formulas that, although not eternal, may help people rejuvenate.
Now, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley (United States) publish three interesting papers on the subject in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." Their experiments have been carried out with rats and they have observed that administering two dietary supplements rejuvenates them.
Supplements used with acetyl-L-carnitine and an antioxidant: alpha lipoic acid. They fed them to elderly rodents and obtained surprising results: their memory capacity improved and the energy-producing organelles in their cells functioned better, at the same level as in younger animals.
They explain that the rats subjected to this diet show more vigor and are much more active than other animals of the same age that were not fed the supplements. Likewise, the authors observed a reversal in memory loss.
In fact, these researchers already have patented the combination of dietary supplements, which they have commercially called "Juvenon." The product is already in the clinical experimentation phase.
In one of the works they show that supplements stimulate energy production in cells. They point out that the deterioration of the mitochondria is an important cause of aging, but the two substances act at this level by destroying free radicals and stimulating the activity of the enzyme carnitine transferase, which decreases with age. The combination of acetyl-L-carnitine and alpha-lipoic acid restore the activity of said enzyme.
The second experiment compared rats aged 2-4 months with another group of 24-28 months. They were all fed the two supplements. After a month, they found that the elderly rats were much more active than before. The third study was similar, although what they evaluated was the mental function of the animals, observing that memory function improved significantly in the elderly animals.
