The body’s “Fountain of Youth” could lie in the brain
Instead of traipsing through Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León might have been better off turning his search inwards. More specifically, he should have turned his attention to a region of the brain called the hypothalamus. At least that’s what research carried out on mice by scientists at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University suggests. They found that the hypothalamus controls many aspects of aging, opening up the potential to slow down the aging process by altering signal pathways within that part of the brain.
Located just above the brain stem and found in all vertebrate brains, the hypothalamus is roughly the size of an almond in humans and is responsible for numerous functions, including growth, development, reproduction and certain metabolic processes.
Previous work by Dongsheng Cai, M.D., Ph.D., professor of molecular pharmacology at Einstein, and his colleagues had shown that inflammatory changes in the hypothalamus can lead to various components associated with metabolic syndrome, a combination of medical disorders that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
This led Dr. Cai to suspect that the hypothalamus may also play a key role in aging, prompting him to study hypothalamic inflammation by focusing on a protein complex called NF-
Instead of traipsing through Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León might have been better off turning his search inwards. More specifically, he should have turned his attention to a region of the brain called the hypothalamus. At least that’s what research carried out on mice by scientists at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University suggests. They found that the hypothalamus controls many aspects of aging, opening up the potential to slow down the aging process by altering signal pathways within that part of the brain.
Located just above the brain stem and found in all vertebrate brains, the hypothalamus is roughly the size of an almond in humans and is responsible for numerous functions, including growth, development, reproduction and certain metabolic processes.
Previous work by Dongsheng Cai, M.D., Ph.D., professor of molecular pharmacology at Einstein, and his colleagues had shown that inflammatory changes in the hypothalamus can lead to various components associated with metabolic syndrome, a combination of medical disorders that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
This led Dr. Cai to suspect that the hypothalamus may also play a key role in aging, prompting him to study hypothalamic inflammation by focusing on a protein complex called NF-