from Hacker News

Want to reverse aging? Try reversing graying, first

by saadalem on 12/22/21, 4:43 PM with 5 comments

• by inglor_cz on 12/23/21, 8:00 AM

  Interestingly, some patients during the TRIIM trial (thymus rejuvenation by application of human growth hormone and metformin) had their hair turning dark again, though they were a minority. A new trial, TRIIM-X, is now underway, and the researches actually took photos of all the participants at the beginning in order to be able to capture potential changes in appearance.

  https://www.lifespan.io/news/lifextenshow-thymic-rejuvenatio...

  So the part about the immune system possibly mistakenly killing the melanocytes might be right.

  But the statement

  "Aging is made up of a bunch of different systems: aging of the skin, the heart, the brain, the immune system."

  strikes me as unsupported. It is entirely possible that all those processes, though superficially very different from one another, may have ony one or two or three common roots.

• by xiphias2 on 12/23/21, 1:22 PM

  There's a twin problem to reversing graying: reversing bolding. And there are solutions to it that work, the newest is finasteride. The only problem with it is that it causes impotance in 1% of the people. As it doesn't affect lifespan, getting an anti-graying solution through the FDA process takes billions of dollars and even then they can have long term sife effects that make them not worth to take.

  Curing the 7 known underlying causes of aging one by one and showing differences in serious illnesses have the option to give feedback already in Phase 1 on humans, the less expensive part of the approval process.

• by AltonWells on 12/23/21, 7:14 AM

  While complex, greying hair seems like a finite and solvable problem given enough time. Build a large enough genome database, exhaustive studies for hormone balances, and do the science…it feels “treatable”.

  Where as wholesale aging and solving for aging in general will be a totally other monster that never gets fully solved just partially treated. Extensions of healthy life and total lifetime seem fairly likely while “Freezing” aging is likely impossible.

  Interesting that corticosteroids had that effect, as well as all of the other methodologies.

  Feels like an underexplored avenue for comprehensive studies/research