- So we've been shooting these videos for a couple of months now and I don't know if you've noticed but my skin is pretty much flawless. I mean, look at this glow, I'm just radiant, aren't I? Do you wanna know what my secret is? It's my young blood, and old people, they're after it. Oh god. Our society is obsessed with being young, you've got anti-aging supplements, fasting diets, wrinkle creams, face lifts, laser treatments, Botox, and the latest weapon in the fight against aging is teen blood. The idea is simple: you inject old people with blood from young people, it may sound crazy but it's actually happening, and it's even gaining enough traction to get mocked on HBO's satirical comedy, Silicon Valley. - Is Bryce your assistant? - No of course not, he's my transfusion associate. - Which is? - Are you really not familiar with parabiosis? - Can't say that I am. - Well the science is actually pretty fascinating. - But is the science around this really legit? So the idea that young blood might help reduce the signs of aging isn't totally out of left field. A lot of research comes from parabiosis studies. This is a super old technique that involves sewing two animals together so that they share blood. I'm gonna just take a moment and pause to let that image sink in of two rats connected at the hip. Rats have hips, right? Alright, now back in 1956, researchers paired old rats with young ones to study aging. And it was pretty messy, to say the least. Some of the rat pairings didn't get along and bit each other's faces off. Some pairs just randomly died. But for those that did survive, researchers did find some anti-aging benefits. Basically, the bone density of the old rats starting matching the bone densities of the young ones. Okay, so parabiosis studies have come a long way since then both in terms of technique and what we know about blood and aging. Studies in the '70s show that older mice paired with younger mice ended up living longer than the control groups. Now fast forward to the 2000s where some parabiosis studies have shown that blood from young mice improves liver and muscle cells in aging mice. It also restored damaged spinal cords, formed new neurons in the brain, and reversed thickening of heart walls. That's pretty cool, right? So all this indicates that young blood does have some anti-aging benefits, in rodents. Now despite what some headlines might claim, we don't know if these benefits translate to humans. I mean, I'd like to think that there's a pretty big difference between mice and humans. That's why we need human trials, but it's not like anyone's gonna sew an old man to a teenager, that's just awkward. But lucky for us, researchers found that plasma alone from young mice has shown anti-aging benefits for the brain, like better memory and learning, and in case you're curious, plasma's the clear liquid part of blood and it contains things like water, proteins, enzymes, and antibodies. Okay, so this means that we could do human trials without having to sew two humans together. Yay! We can just transfer the plasma, a process that we've been doing for awhile to treat things like liver failure, severe burns, and major infections. And now we're starting to see these anti-aging trials being offered to the public, but for a price. For the fee of $8000, a company called Ambrosia, which is based in Monterey, California, is running a clinical trial that involves infusing people over the age of 35 with blood plasma from people 25 and younger. Now it's not quite like the clip from Silicon Valley, they're getting the plasma from blood banks. They're testing people before and one month after the transfusion and they're measuring a bunch of stuff in the blood associated with various diseases and aging. Now this trial has been raising some eyebrows. For starters, it's accepting anyone over the age of 35, and I've been repeatedly told by my producers here that 35 is not exactly elderly. The trial also isn't narrowly targeted, participants could be healthy or have a mixed bag of health concerns which might make it hard to get any real conclusive results. The trial also doesn't have a control or a placebo group. Normally during clinical trials, there's a group that receives a fake treatment like a sugar pill instead of the actual medicine. Researchers compare results of the experimental group with the placebo group to see if the experiment actually had a significant impact. But when you're charging people $8000, it's not like you're gonna give a group a dummy treatment. But young plasma trials aren't just for rich people hoping to look and feel younger. They're also looking at treatments for stroke, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's. Take Alzheimer's, for example. It's the disease that affects brain function leading to memory loss, confusion, and disorientation. It usually happens to old people. For this trial, Stanford scientists have recruited 18 patients with Alzheimer's and will infuse them with young blood plasma once a week for four weeks. They'll run blood tests, brain scans, memory tests to see if the transfusions are safe, and help improve brain function. So in conclusion, in some cases, young blood helps aging mice but we don't know if the same holds true for people. We're still waiting on the results from these human trials. And there are still more questions out there. What is it in young blood that helps combat aging? How does it work? Are there unintended consequences, like too much cell growth or cancer risk? So given all this, I wanna know how comfortable you are with this. Would you give your grandma some of your young blood? How much would you charge her? Let us know in the comments below. I'm definitely charging my grandma endless pies, like old lady, I gave you my blood, I want peach cobbler when I get home from class tonight.