According to Greek mythology, when you consume ambrosia, the blood running through your veins is replaced with ichor, a golden fluid. Ambrosia, consumed only by gods and goddesses, grants immortality.
Ambrosia is also the name of a startup that aims to combat aging. Rather than golden fluid flowing through the veins of gods, the company's product is the blood of the young actual blood, donated by adults up to age 25 which it will inject in customers 35 and older who have $8,000 to spare.
The question remains: Do young blood injections actually work? Are we just a needle prick away from sweet, fresh-faced longevity?
"I know what you're thinking," said Ambrosia founder Jesse Karmazin in an interview. "Is it all just, like, Silicon Valley tech people?"
It's true: Silicon Valley has a fascination with immortality. Investors have poured billions into longevity research and startups. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel, the billionaire Facebook board member and adviser to Trump, has invested millions into anti-aging medicine. Ambrosia hasn't raised any capital yet, and Karmazin told me that the company has no affiliation with Thiel.
Actually, Karmazin said, Ambrosia's client base is "a real mix of different types of people."
Karmazin said that it's mostly Americans currently undergoing the treatment, with slightly more men than women. He said the company has treated doctors, lawyers, biotech CEOs, someone with a theater background and other individuals from a variety of different industries.
A quote from Jesse Karmazin
Ambrosia currently has two clinics, one in Florida and one in San Francisco. "The treatment is large: It's two liters, which is a pretty significant amount of blood. It's like four pints if you use the American measuring system."
Still, for $8,000 a pop, blood injections are meant for customers who tend to have a little more disposable income. Ambrosia may not be affordable for everyone, but the pricing is reportedly at cost for now; Ambrosia isn't making any money from it yet.
The company gets its spritely plasma from blood donors. It buys blood from blood banks, an industry Karmazin noted is both heavily regulated and expensive.
Karmazin said that the company has both subjective and objective evidence that its treatment is conclusive. He mentioned clients who looked younger after the treatment, as well as people having more energy, sleeping better and feeling stronger. He also noted that people have had "dramatic improvements in Alzheimer's disease."
From an objective standpoint, Karmazin said the Ambrosia treatment can improve cholesterol, amyloid levels plaques in the brain and cancer risk.
"I want to be clear, at this point, it works," Karmazin said. "It reverses aging. We're pretty clear at this point. This is conclusive. We are probably done with the clinical trial. It worked so well, we're going to start treating people. We're pretty amazed with this. Yeah, no, it works, there's really no question whether it works or not."
"I want to be clear, at this point, it works," Karmazin said. "It reverses aging. We're pretty clear at this point. This is conclusive. There's really no question."
But the lack of science casts doubt on Karmazin's confidence.
Evidence on the Ambrosia website includes a handful of links to both human clinical trials and mouse experimental studies. Of the six total human clinical trials included, one is sponsored by Ambrosia. The study was first received in June of 2016. The longest trial dates back to September 2014. The trials aren't yet completed. Some of then haven't even started enrolling yet. And they're small one has just 18 people. Phuoc V. Le, an assistant professor in the school of Public Health at University of California Berkeley and associate professor of Internal Medicine at UC San Francisco School of Medicine, said a clinical trial of this size is "minuscule" and just a first step to make sure there aren't any adverse reactions.
"Something like this needs to have large clinical trials for years before they can make claims as hefty as what they're making," Le told Mic. He added that "this is years and years away" and that that is something consumers need to be aware of. "This is an unproven remedy."
A quote from Phuoc V. Le
Nir Barzilai, a professor of endocrinology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the director of Einstein's Institute for Aging Research, also agreed that Ambrosia's treatment can't be called conclusive just yet.
There would have to be clinical trials where some elderly participants receive infusions of something else rather than the blood from younger people because the placebo effect in such trials is high, he said.
Derek Huffman, assistant professor of molecular pharmacology and medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said in an email that the willingness to treat individuals with transfusions for aging at this point is, in his view, "a distortion of the studies it is based on, and an example of an idea getting too far ahead of the science." He added that "this is not to say that this burgeoning area of science is not promising, and that related strategies will not one day come to fruition to successfully target aging, but they will require a much more targeted and fine-tuned approach than is being suggested here.
Le noted that for vulnerable populations, such as people suffering from stroke or early-onset Alzheimer's or dementia, they can't and don't want to wait, so it's dangerous for Ambrosia to make promises of reversal or amelioration of their conditions that are inconclusive, and at a considerable cost.
"For example, if I had early-onset dementia and I lived in Palo Alto and I'm a retiree and I'm living off of social security but I saved up $8,000, and I've seen my parents die of dementia, and saw how bad it was, I might consider spending essentially my savings on something that is unproven," Le said. "Although they are selling it as, not a cure-all, but potentially life-altering and so I worry that it's clearly not coercion but I worry that that people will fall into this trap of spending big bucks and not getting approving benefits."
It's also important to consider the ethical implications of companies like Ambrosia. As Karmazin mentioned, the company gets it plasma by purchasing blood from blood banks. If this type of treatment were to scale up, and companies had millions of people using it, the demand for young blood would be astronomical.
"Could we see a day when young people are selling their blood on the open market for companies like Ambrosia?" Le hypothesized. "And then what do we do in terms of balancing the public good? Meaning, if I were a patient in a hospital and I required plasma because I have a really bad medical condition, but maybe the Red Cross can't get any, because people would rather sell their blood to a company than to donate their blood because it's a limited public good."
Le compared this commodification of blood to the organ black markets in developing countries, noting how this can disproportionately coerce and hurt the poor while benefiting the wealthy. Someone can donate their kidney to a rich person and, as he noted, the type of individual to do this is someone extremely impoverished.
If large clinical trials do bear out, great. But Le believes there could be more benefits yielded from that type of research than just an outpatient elective treatment like Ambrosia. He said that we should f
igure out what is in plasma that actually confers the benefits, and potentially try and isolate that.
Le said that perhaps medical experts can make plasma synthetically, from animals or in a way that doesn't commodify a public good like blood. That way, it "can provide benefit not just to the rich or to the extremely desperate but also make it available equally to all people."
Go here to read the rest:
Inside Ambrosia: Could infusions of millennial blood make you young again? Scientists have doubts. - Mic
- Sunlight May Help Protect Men From Kidney Cancer - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- Heart Disease - April 14th, 2010 [April 14th, 2010]
- The pH Miracle Living Diet Can Change Your Life - April 18th, 2010 [April 18th, 2010]
- Garlic Good For Stomach and Colon Cancers - April 22nd, 2010 [April 22nd, 2010]
- Smokeless tobacco products like snuff also cause cancer - April 25th, 2010 [April 25th, 2010]
- Prevention of Acupuncture Infection Needs More Focus - April 29th, 2010 [April 29th, 2010]
- Squamous cell carcinoma and Epstein Bar - May 3rd, 2010 [May 3rd, 2010]
- Prostate cancer therapy can increase risk of heart disease and death - May 7th, 2010 [May 7th, 2010]
- Protect Your Baby's Smile - May 11th, 2010 [May 11th, 2010]
- New Insights Show Ginseng Fights Inflammation - May 15th, 2010 [May 15th, 2010]
- Acupuncture Delivers Some Pain Relief - May 19th, 2010 [May 19th, 2010]
- Natural compounds in carnivorous plants could fight human fungal infections - May 23rd, 2010 [May 23rd, 2010]
- How to Treat Diabetes Without Medication - May 27th, 2010 [May 27th, 2010]
- Testosterone May Make Women Less Trusting - June 3rd, 2010 [June 3rd, 2010]
- Brain Develops Differently in Fragile X Syndrome - June 7th, 2010 [June 7th, 2010]
- Gaia Herbs achieves industry breakthrough in herb potency, safety and traceability - June 11th, 2010 [June 11th, 2010]
- Doctors are addicted to "every drug under the sun" - June 15th, 2010 [June 15th, 2010]
- Like Humans, Chimps Ape Their Betters - June 19th, 2010 [June 19th, 2010]
- Exercise in Adolescence May Cut Risk of Deadly Brain - June 23rd, 2010 [June 23rd, 2010]
- BP is burning rare sea turtles alive, blocking efforts to save them - June 27th, 2010 [June 27th, 2010]
- Exercise Helps Reduce Falls in Young and Old - July 1st, 2010 [July 1st, 2010]
- Scientists Spot Gene Variants That Predict Longevity - July 7th, 2010 [July 7th, 2010]
- Mediterranean Diet Helps Protect Aging Brain - July 11th, 2010 [July 11th, 2010]
- Diabetes Medicines - July 15th, 2010 [July 15th, 2010]
- Cutting Calories May Boost Aging Brains - July 23rd, 2010 [July 23rd, 2010]
- Meditation Appears to Boost Attention Span - July 31st, 2010 [July 31st, 2010]
- Constipation May Lead to Other Problems - August 12th, 2010 [August 12th, 2010]
- A healthy heart slows brain aging - August 12th, 2010 [August 12th, 2010]
- 7-year-old girl dies after Botox injections - August 16th, 2010 [August 16th, 2010]
- Infidelity Rises When She Makes More Than He Does - October 11th, 2010 [October 11th, 2010]
- Confused About Coconut Oil? - October 11th, 2010 [October 11th, 2010]
- Widely Used Plastics Chemical Linked to Testosterone Boost - October 11th, 2010 [October 11th, 2010]
- Monitoring of Kidney Health Urged for Injection Drug Users - October 11th, 2010 [October 11th, 2010]
- A Stone-age prescription - October 11th, 2010 [October 11th, 2010]
- Researchers Reluctantly Admit Mediterranean Diet Beats Diabetes Drugs for Controlling - October 11th, 2010 [October 11th, 2010]
- Simplified Framingham Model May Miscalculate Risk for Millions - October 11th, 2010 [October 11th, 2010]
- New and Undefined Diseases - October 11th, 2010 [October 11th, 2010]
- Experimental Treatment Could Fight Muscular Dystrophy - October 13th, 2010 [October 13th, 2010]
- Acids in the Mouth Cause Tooth Decay - October 19th, 2010 [October 19th, 2010]
- Everyday chemicals cause infertility, cancer and birth defects - November 7th, 2010 [November 7th, 2010]
- American Diabetes Association Alert Day - November 7th, 2010 [November 7th, 2010]
- Medical science discovers remarkable yet simple way to instantly increase your willpower - December 21st, 2010 [December 21st, 2010]
- Good Attitude Boosts Health As Much As Formal Education - December 21st, 2010 [December 21st, 2010]
- Smiling helps prevent aging, wrinkles - December 21st, 2010 [December 21st, 2010]
- Dying cancer patients subjected to expensive, meaningless cancer screening tests - December 21st, 2010 [December 21st, 2010]
- Green and orange vegetable consumption - an indicator of longevity - December 21st, 2010 [December 21st, 2010]
- Amino acids are latest in growing list of nutrients shown to extend life span - December 21st, 2010 [December 21st, 2010]
- Hospitals to begin publicly reporting preventable infections, deaths they cause - December 21st, 2010 [December 21st, 2010]
- Can you mix fruits and vegetables at one meal? - December 21st, 2010 [December 21st, 2010]
- Green tea blocks lung cancer - January 9th, 2011 [January 9th, 2011]
- Radiation Exposure Raises Likelihood of Second Cancer - January 11th, 2011 [January 11th, 2011]
- Doctors should be not allowed to tell patients they are seriously - January 21st, 2011 [January 21st, 2011]
- No More Arthritis and No More Pain - January 21st, 2011 [January 21st, 2011]
- For One Man, It's All About Prevention and Wellness - February 14th, 2011 [February 14th, 2011]
- Sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and type II diabetes - February 14th, 2011 [February 14th, 2011]
- Interview with a Nutritarian: Mark - February 14th, 2011 [February 14th, 2011]
- Memo to Men: To Live Longer, Take Better Care of Your Body - February 14th, 2011 [February 14th, 2011]
- Toxic chemical carcinogen found in water supplies nationwide - February 20th, 2011 [February 20th, 2011]
- High Nutrient Diet Reverses Diabetes - February 27th, 2011 [February 27th, 2011]
- Australia to outlaw thousands of plants, including national flower - March 11th, 2011 [March 11th, 2011]
- Salt increases heart attack and stroke risk, even if blood pressure is normal - March 27th, 2011 [March 27th, 2011]
- Gorillas need greens, not processed food - April 3rd, 2011 [April 3rd, 2011]
- Cyathostemma micranthum (A.DC.) J. Sincl.(Norn Maeo) - April 16th, 2011 [April 16th, 2011]
- Mental 'Exercise' May Only Hide Signs of Alzheimer's - May 1st, 2011 [May 1st, 2011]
- Women Taking Calcium Supplements May Risk Heart Health, Researchers Say - May 8th, 2011 [May 8th, 2011]
- Nicotine Raises Blood Sugar Levels in Lab - May 15th, 2011 [May 15th, 2011]
- Happiness Protects Your Heart - June 12th, 2011 [June 12th, 2011]
- The biggest threat to the health - June 18th, 2011 [June 18th, 2011]
- Gay Men More Likely to Have Had Cancer - July 3rd, 2011 [July 3rd, 2011]
- Chocolate compounds fight high cholesterol - July 10th, 2011 [July 10th, 2011]
- To Eat More Fruit, Picture a Fruit Salad - July 17th, 2011 [July 17th, 2011]
- Flaxseed Fails as Treatment for Hot Flashes - July 24th, 2011 [July 24th, 2011]
- Green tea better at preventing cancer and dementia than previously thought - August 2nd, 2011 [August 2nd, 2011]
- Are Taller People at Heightened Cancer Risk? - August 6th, 2011 [August 6th, 2011]
- Olive oil provides amazing liver protection - August 14th, 2011 [August 14th, 2011]
- Interview With Dr. Bruce Ames – An Anti Aging Specialist - August 14th, 2011 [August 14th, 2011]
- Low-carb diet may reverse kidney failure in diabetics, says new research - August 20th, 2011 [August 20th, 2011]
- The Secret History of Anti-Aging Medicine - August 27th, 2011 [August 27th, 2011]
- MapleStory -JVizzle- Sabitrama's Anti-Aging Medicine (LvL50) - August 27th, 2011 [August 27th, 2011]
- Functional/Anti-Aging Medicine - August 27th, 2011 [August 27th, 2011]