People who 'age' better don't share much in common at all about lifestyles like diet. Surveys are too unreliable and too many centenarians were only such because of inaccurate records or even fraud for valid epidemiology.

But what they do share in common is superior energy production in cells. Their mitochondria, the energy factories that take all our food (ultra-processed and organic certified foods are biologically the same, sorry activists) and convert it into a common energy currency, fire better.

Improving them has long been the goal. Ever since Professor Fred Crane really got study rolling decades ago, there has been speculation about improving their efficiency and supplement gimmicks like antioxidants. What may work is replacing damaged cells new mitochondria. A new study used microscopic particles made of made of molybdenum disulfide and induced pluripotent stem cells. With the flower-shaped particles, literally called nanoflowers, cells rolled out more mitochondria and when damaged cells needed help, the surplus got sent over. 

Some of that is natural but the researchers say their nanoflower-boosted stem cells sent over twotimes more mitochondria than untreated ones.


White nanoflowers help healthy yellow cells deliver energy-producing red mitochondria to neighboring cells -Nuclei are stained blue. Credit: Dr. Akhilesh K. Gaharwar

"The several-fold increase in efficiency was more than we could have hoped for," said lead author and Texas A&M graduate student John Soukar. "It's like giving an old electronic a new battery pack. Instead of tossing them out, we are plugging fully-charged batteries from healthy cells into diseased ones."

They believe their larger nanoparticles work better than current mitrochondrial efforts because those are small molecules and are removed faster, leading to repeat doses.