Anti-Aging Medicine and IPT

Dr. Perez Garcia 1 came to believe that insulin potentiation therapy (IPT) could slow down or stop the aging process. Here is an excerpt of a newspaper article from the San Antonio Express of May 28, 1947:

Forty-eight years of age, he [Dr. Perez Garcia 1] was pleased that he is mistaken for 35. This often happens, he says, and he attributes it to the application of his treatment on his own body. "You see," he said, "the glucose rejuvenates the cell. All of my patients exhibit an arrested age because of the treatment. I used it myself when I had chronic colitis in 1926 and appendicitis in 1940. It really works."

Rejuvenated or not, history records that Dr. Perez Garcia 1 died at a normal age of 75.

Aging related effects of IPT could be easily studied in colonies of rodents. Personally, I would want to see the results of such a study before trying IPT treatments on a regular basis as an anti-aging regimen. It could be that drugs and nutrients that slow the aging process would be potentiated and better distributed by the IPT protocol. If there is a substance (telomerase, for example) that can help rejuvenate cells, then IPT can help distribute it to all the cells of the body.

It could be that IPT treatments stimulate widespread cell division, probably including stem cells and fibroblasts, which could result in tissue repair and the appearance of short-term rejuvenation. But this cell division would at the same time reduce the length of telomeres (digital counters on the ends of DNA strands) and thereby perhaps actually decrease the length of life.

Maybe this is one reason why diabetics who poorly control their glucose levels (frequent pulses of hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia) have shorter lifespans. There may also be a slight danger of insulin, given during many IPT treatments (without chemotherapy drugs) over a long time, actually encouraging the growth of some cancer cells.

This is all speculation. These would be interesting subjects of laboratory research.