Adult stem cell function declines with age leading to the decline in fitness

The potential therapeutic use of stem cells is a very hot topic these days. Most of the attention has focused on embryonic stem cells and induced Pluripotent Stem cells (iPS cells), which can form every tissue type in the body to regenerate failing organs. The problem is that detailed knowledge is lacking for how to stimulate the embryonic stem cells to form differentiated tissues (e.g. cells that form the heart, pancreas, muscle, and brain). Moreover, because embryonic stem cells are unlimited in their ability to form any type of tissue, the risk of cancer looms large over the therapeutic use of embryonic stem cells. For example, both embryonic and IPS stem cells can form tumors called teratomas when injected into immune-compromised mice. Enter the bodys adult stem cells, which have not generally been associated with cancer and have been used safely as therapeutics in many countries. The problem with adult stem cells is that it is difficult to get enough of them to be effective for most indications or target the harvested adult stem cells to the proper tissue. Moreover, there are scores of different types of adult stem cells in the body, so picking the best type of adult stem cell for a particular therapeutic can be challenging. Thus, adult stem cell therapeutics with all its potential to regenerate damaged organs and tissues is still a work in progress.

But what about the many populations of endogenous adult stem cells that everyone has embedded in every organ system of the body? All the organs and differing tissues of the body appear to have adult stem cells available for regenerating cells in case of injury or disease. It was recently discovered that even brain neurons and heart muscle cells (previously thought to be non-dividing and irreplaceable in adults) have their own reservoirs of adult stem cells for regeneration. Unfortunately, as we age most adult stem cell populations either decline in number and/or lose the ability to differentiate into functional tissue-specific cells. For example, cardiac muscle stem cells exist but old folks have only one half the number of cardiac stem cells found in young people. Thus, adult stem cells become more and more dysfunction with age, which progressively increases organ and tissue dysfunction with age.

There are many examples revealing the role of adult stem cells in aging. First, the outer surface of your skin continuously sloughs off dead cells, so that adult stem cells must continuously replenish the dying skin cells to maintain the skin as an effective protective barrier to the outside world. With age, there are progressively fewer functional skin stem cells, so cell turnover in the skin slows, leading to thinner, dryer skin that loses its elasticity and youthful beauty. Second, hair also thins and goes grey, as functional follicle stem cell decline and the adult stem cells generating hair color also decline. Third, the differing adult stem cells that maintain the tissues composing skeletal muscle, pancreas, heart, bone, liver, kidney, and the immune system lose functional capacity, raising the potential for decline in tissue function or outright failure with age. As a final example, the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch slowly wane with age, as the declining stem cell populations responsible for maintaining these functions are unable to fully replenish the sensory neurons after injury and random cell death.

If your own adult stem cells are a key factor in aging and disease, then one novel way to slow aging and disease is to stimulate your own adult stem cells to maintain their proper numbers and functional capacity to differentiate into the various tissues as needed for repair and regeneration. This makes sense, because in most, if not all, organs of the body, old cells are continually being replaced by new cells coming from the adult stem cell populations. If stem cells are not producing enough new cells, then organs slowly decline in function as you age. Thus, stimulating your own stem cells can be a winning strategy to stave off many of the disorders associated with aging.

In practice, however, stimulating adult stem cell populations in the body is not a simple task. If the proliferation of adult stem cells is over stimulated, then one may get overgrowth of tissues or a potential tumor. Alternatively, one may stimulate the stem cells to proliferate in a balanced and regulated way, but the stem cells lose functionality and cannot differentiate into the desired specialized tissues to replace senescent cells. These twin problems promoting over stimulation or dysfunctional stem cells put real limits on any proposed therapeutic for stimulating stem cells. For example, most current treatments to stimulate immunity or stem cells (nave T cells) rely on complex carbohydrates from mushrooms or microorganisms to provide antigenic material that can stimulate immunity. This will activate the immune system stem cells to make more differentiated non-stem memory T cells directed against the antigenic material, but it does nothing to stimulate more immune stem cells (nave T cells). Indeed, chronic use of such stem cell enhancers may actually lead to stem cell depletion, as more adult stem cells are exhausted from the requirement to respond to the constant presence of the polysaccharide antigen. Indeed, one theory of how the HIV virus causes a defective immune system is that it exhausts the supply of nave T cells by the repeated attacks of the mutating HIV virus.

Stem Cell 100TM is a nutraceutical supplement that improves the function of your existing stem cells rather than over stimulate stem cells to differentiate or divide. By promoting the stability and vitality of adult stem cells they have the capacity to divide when the body signals a need for more stem cells and differentiated cells. When an organ or tissue is damaged, it will send out natural signals that new cells are needed to replace old or damaged cells. Stem Cell 100TM allows the adult stem cells to respond to the damage signal by provided new differentiated cells to replace the old damaged cells and also make more adult stem cells to keep up the stem cell population. Two other compounds in Stem Cell 100TM provide further natural support for stem cells.

(Note that not everyone will experience the same effects, as conditions vary among individuals. The general expectation is that for most health measurements that are in the Normal Range for your age, Stem Cell 100TM will promote readings that you had when some 20 years younger.)

The statements above have not been reviewed by the FDA. Stem Cell 100TM is not meant as a preventive or treatment for any disease.

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Stem Cells and Aging | Life Code