Scars turn into normalish skin — thanks to a hair transplant

Welcome to Long Youthspan

I'm your host, the tenacious, short-legged, long-bodied Youthspan Hound.

Since this is the first issue, let me tell you the kind of content I plan to dig up, catch, and bring to your inbox every day:

• Practical longevity news and anti-aging breakthroughs. There are more and more of these breakthroughs with each passing month.

• A dose of fun and curiosity. This is to make those important news go down easy, so you want to come back and read tomorrow.

You might wonder about me, the Youthspan Hound, and why I'm writing this newsletter. You can read about me a bit further down in today's issue.

For now, let's get going. Let me tell you about a surprising new study I dug up a few days ago. It was about reversing skin damage in actual living humans — though with some werewolf-like side-effects.

Scars turn into normalish skin — thanks to a hair transplant

What's the news: Transplanting hair follicles into scar tissue transformed the scars into normal skin, or something close to it.

Is this for real? The study was performed at Imperial College London on three live human patients with post-surgery scars. The study started in 2017, and results were published earlier this year, in January 2023.

Three reasons why this is a big deal:

• The scarred skin doubled in thickness, becoming close to normal skin.

• The transplanted hair follicles stimulated cell growth in the dermis — the deep layer of skin under the epidermis — including blood vessels and connective tissues.

• There was an increase in collagen fibers.

All in all, this gives hope for an effective way to remove scars — and maybe treat damaged skin more generally, including skin damaged by sun exposure and aging.

Yes, but: The transplanted hair follicles still grew hair. That might be ok if you're covered in hair to begin with, like my people happen to be. But if you're human, and you have a scar in the middle of your face, then an extra eyebrow in the middle of your cheek is not socially acceptable.

The good news: The same team of researchers is now working on figuring out how hair follicles transform scar tissue in the first place.

In time, they hope to identify how exactly those hair follicles are making surrounding skin repair and rejuvenate itself. Once they figure it out, they will be able to reproduce that skin repair — without the transplants, and without the sprouting hair.

Advice for now: Unless you're willing to fly to London to be treated by the scientists who did this research, you will have to wait a bit until this treatment becomes more mainstream. Keep your eyes peeled to the Long Youthspan newsletter, because when scars become removable, without werewolf-like side effects, the Youthspan Hound will be the first to let you know.

Today's issue is brought to you by a science-backed system for increase your energy levels

In each issue of Long Youthspan, I will be promoting certain offers from around the Internet.

Yes, promoting these offers can make me money, and can help me buy dog food and write Long Youthspan for the long term. But money or dog food is not the primary reason why I will be promoting any of the offers you will see in this newsletter.

The primary reason I will promote these offers is because I believe in them. Because I will only dig up offers that are valuable, well-made, and can be genuinely useful to you if you are interested in topic of longevity.

The first offer is the Energy Blueprint, by Ari Whitten. It's a course that covers science-backed approaches to having more energy — and generally better health.

I went through this course in 2017. It exposed me to ideas that were cutting-edge then, but which have become mainstream now, such as hormesis, red light therapy, and mitochondrial health.

For years, I used what I learned in this course to improve my health and energy, and also to sound smart and well-informed around the dog park.

Ari has been actively updating his course every year. And today, in 2023, I believe the Energy Blueprint is still the best source of specific information and recommendations if you are interested in long-term, sustainable health, based on the latest scientific research.

If you want to see if the Energy Blueprint is for you, Ari has a three-part mini course on how to increase your energy levels. You can sign up for it, for free, at the link below:

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About the Youthspan Hound, your host and editor

As I mentioned up top, you might wonder who I am and why I've started this newsletter. What I will say about myself is that, when I am not writing in the voice of a dachshund, I am a 42-year-old in generally good health.

I'm interested in the field of longevity for my own middle-aged bones. I want to find out about practical changes I can make in my own life to be youthful and healthier for longer.

I am not an expert in longevity or in any field related to it.

But I am an expert in digging up interesting science papers, reading those papers in detail, figuring out what the gist (or lack thereof) is, and bringing that to your feet. Hence the hound persona.

I'm also excited and inspired to read about real breakthroughs happening in this field, and the way that might affect all our futures together.

I want to share all that with you, and with as many people as possible. Right now, this newsletter has exactly one subscriber — me — but with my work, and maybe your help, that will soon change.

Thanks for reading, and see you tomorrow

That wraps up first issue of Long Youthspan. I will be back tomorrow to tell you about a promising and popular longevity supplement that is entering its own 1930s-style Prohibition Era.

For today, let me leave you with a picture of Jonathan the Seychelles giant tortoise, the longest-lived reptile on Earth.

Jonathan is still alive, and he lives on the island of St. Helena in the middle of Atlantic Ocean. Today, Jonathan is an estimated 190 years old.

The picture below (Jonathan is the one on the left, he looks just as youthful today) was taken some time between 1862 and 1868. At that point, Jonathan was already fully grown, meaning he was at least fifty years old — something like a 19-year-old fresh out of high school.