Man who spent 93 days at bottom of the Atlantic says he's now '10 years younger'
A man who is spending 100 days living underwater has said he feels so much younger, and there's a very good scientific reason for that.
Joe Dituri, also known as Dr Deep Sea, has smashed the record for the number of days lived underwater as part of a test into what that sort of environment will do the the human body.
While the study has been done in part to find 'new ways to revive marine environments' it's also a great chance to study the biology of the University of South Florida professor.
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He's still got a little while to go and for the past 93 or so days he's been living in a 100 square foot pod which is 30 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
Dituri hasn't been alone down there, what with visits from other scientists and even family members who've been able to dive down and check on him, but one of the great side effects of living down there is he says it's made him '10 years younger'.
That's not just a passing comment on how good it can be to to get away from it all under the sea for 100 days, there's a real medical reason that he feels so much better.
Here's the science-y bit, on the end of our chromosomes there are these things called telomeres which help avoid your DNA strands from becoming damaged, but the older you get the shorter the telomeres become.
It's all part of the aging process but there are some developments on the anti-ageing front which suggest that spending time in a pressurised oxygen chamber like the kind that Dituri has been living in for almost 100 days can re-lengthen the telomeres.
He's been living in what is essentially a hyperbaric chamber which is the environment which has seen a re-lengthening of a person's telomeres in medical trials.
That's probably why he's feeling younger, along with a number of other health benefits he's enjoyed since going to live under the sea.
His metabolism has been boosted so he's become leaner and his stem cell count is up significantly too, so it's really positive health news for Dr Deep Sea and perhaps in the future people could pop down to an underwater chamber for a few weeks as an anti-aging treatment.
The previous record for living underwater which he comprehensively smashed stood at 73 days and was set back in 2014.
While he's down there to participate in experiments he himself might have ended up being the most valuable experiment of all.
Joe Harker