"what would happen if I banked my own blood and transfused it back to myself 40 years later"
And of course, my next thought was "of course that has been thought of, and tried, and the reason we don't all know about it is because it must not be helpful."
But you're telling me that, in fact, nobody thought to try this ? It is 2014/2015 when someone got around to trying this out ?
Transfusions seem unlikely to work at this point based on evidence to date, probably because the factors involved are very short-lived. E.g. transfusions failed to move the needle in mice:
There is a human trial for transfusion of young blood to Alzheimer's patients but this is probably not going to tell us much, because it is so specific, and because the mouse transfusions didn't work.
It could also be a feedback process - components in older blood induce responses in younger organ tissue that releases components into younger blood that is then transferred to the older organism
July 11, 1991, episode "Blood Feud", the last episode of season 2. The scene is around the 7 minute mark. The implication is that the blood transfusion has made him feel young again.
There's actually a few references like this throughout the seasons of the simpsons.
It's honestly weird to me this wasn't tried in the early days of performing blood transfusions. I mean honestly the study wouldn't even be ethically questionable. You find patients that need routine blood transfusions and track their health over a period of time, you then administer blood transfusions from sources where you can control for the age of the blood donor.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was never even thought of because people seem all too willing to think of the body as "just a machine".
Given that we literally urinate out neurotransmitters, and that young people tend to be happier (it's actually called the happiness U-bend, in that 18-21 year olds are as happy as 70 year olds, and 50 years old is the lowest point in peoples reported happiness) so we could just be shooting people full of--quite literally--happiness. Given that severe depression can lead to myocardial infraction, I don't doubt general depression also has long term health effects. Also I don't think antidepressants would benefit, just because they generally make people "not feel" rather than "happy".
If memory serves me it was tried, many times soon after blood transfusions become known to the public. Many rich in europe claimed the blood transfusions from the young rejuvenated them in many respects.
I do not remember where I read this any more 10+ years ago now.
No, Simpsons wasn't first. See the movie "Being there" with Peter Sellers - the wealthy but aged and ill king-maker in this imagined U.S. gets regular blood infusions of 'young blood'.
It is 2014/2015 when someone got around to trying this out ?
Sure you are "stupefied" if you don't read the article:
Clive McCay, a biochemist and gerontologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was the first to apply parabiosis to the study of ageing. In 1956 ...
Whatever controlled freezing method they propose for cryogenics ... although they also propose draining all the blood out first, so ... perhaps that's not relevant ?
I think they did the experiment in the 50's with mice, but they didn't understood transplantation and rejection so well back then, so many mice had serious problems.Now we can prevent those.
Also i think you'd have a hard time to get money for any "anti aging" research up until recently.
I'm not sure about the veracity of this story, but aparently pope Innocent VIII tried boold tranfussion from young boys to kkep him young in 1492. The pope and donor died in the process, probably by incompatibility.
The HIV, Hep B and Hep C infections probably wouldn't improve one's life span much.
In the early days blood was in short supply and safety wasn't guaranteed. So logically, it was only used in patients that really needed it. Transfusions are safer today (there may be viruses we don't know about...) but blood is still in short supply and there are still rare but life threatening transfusion reactions.
blood doping has been a cycling past time since the 70's. Lance's novel approach was the medical write-off on drugs which were OK'd due to their use in his then ongoing cancer treatments.
Many, many times I have considered:
"what would happen if I banked my own blood and transfused it back to myself 40 years later"
And of course, my next thought was "of course that has been thought of, and tried, and the reason we don't all know about it is because it must not be helpful."
But you're telling me that, in fact, nobody thought to try this ? It is 2014/2015 when someone got around to trying this out ?