Man spent 100 days living underwater in Atlantic Ocean and it had huge impact on him
A man who spent 100 days living underwater believes the experience made him '10 years younger', and there's a very good reason he thinks that.
Joseph Dituri, also known as 'Dr Deep Sea', set a new record for the number of days someone has lived underwater as part of an experiment to see what the environment would do to his body.
The previous record was 73 days, but Dituri's underwater stint of 100 days blew right past that during his 2023 experiment where he lived at the bottom of a 30ft deep lagoon in Key Largo, Florida.
He wasn't alone down there for the full duration, as he was joined by visitors from the scientific community and some relatives who dived down to his submerged habitat.
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Before emerging from his underwater home, on day 93, he spoke to the Daily Mail and claimed he was feeling a decade younger thanks to his time down there.
Why Joseph Dituri spent 100 days living underwater
It was for a mission called Project Neptune 100, where he conducted research into ocean conservation while he was also a subject of research himself.
According to the University of South Florida, Dituri had the hypothesis that more hyperbaric pressure on the body might help him live longer and impact the ageing process.
Various things did happen to his body while he was down there as he shrank by half an inch, but on the plus side, he saw improvements to his sleep, cholesterol levels and inflammation.
He appears to have come out of the experience healthier than when he went in, albeit a bit shorter.
Why he felt '10 years younger'
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 ageing 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.
"When I lived underwater for 100 days, I did blood, urine, saliva, electrocardiograms, electroencephalogram and pulmonary function tests," Dituri said after emerging from the water.
"A crazy amount of tests - about seven or eight hours of science per day."
Aged 55 at the time he went into the water, his epigenetic age, which measures the true age of a body's cells, was 44 so he was already doing well health-wise.
However, by the time he came back out, it had dropped to 34 so he had every reason to feel younger.
Joe Harker