Face it, most people want to live longer lives as opposed to dying younger. Many fear death while others fear what will happen to those they leave behind.

The search for a fountain of youth or elixir of youth has been part of mankind for many centuries. In fact, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a fountain of youth in the 5th century BC. Others have written about or searched for a fountain of youth ever since, including Prester John in the early Crusades (11th/12th centuries AD). True or not, legend has it that Juan Ponce de Leon, a Spanish explorer was searching for the legendary fountain of youth when he ventured into Florida in 1513. Some reports indicate that some of the natives he encountered told him that the Fountain of Youth really existed and that it could restore youth. They told him it was located in a place called Bimini, a section of the Bahamas, but he never found it, nor did anyone else.

In more resent times, researchers have been searching for a different fountain of youth, one found in the laboratory that could help stop and even reverse the aging process.

Technically, the human body undergoes 4 different aging processes:

1) Cellular aging – in general, it is believed that each cell can replicate itself about 50 times and then it dies. This is attributed to the shortening of telomeres on the strands of DNA each time a cell replicates. The shorter the telomere, the less accurately the DNA will replicate until the point where it is unable to replicate and the cell dies.

2) Hormonal aging – when young, our body produces a number of different hormones that are important in development and growth. Those hormones usually peak during and right after puberty, but as we age, the hormones tend to decrease.

3) Accumulated damage – This is external aging, largely due to exposure to the sun, smoke, pollution and toxins. The longer a person lives, the more accumulated damage to the skin and underlying tissues there is.

4) Metabolic aging – During the process of metabolization, our body converts food, drink and other factors into different compounds and forms of energy. Over time, this actually causes some damage to various parts of the body. Some believe that the more a person eats, the more metabolism takes place and quicker someone ages.

What if researchers could find a way to prevent some of this aging from taking place? Would that interest you?

Then check out this report:

Volunteers who were given a cocktail of drugs for a year actually “aged backwards”, losing an average of 2.5 years from their biological ages, according to the new study. The research showed that the marks on their genomes that represent their “epigenetic clock”, as well as their immune systems, actually improved despite the passing of time.

The scientists involved in the study were shocked by the results.

“I’d expected to see slowing down of the clock, but not a reversal,” researcher Steve Horvath from the University of California, Los Angeles told Nature, which first reported the findings. “That felt kind of futuristic.”

The original test group of people was small and the researchers say that further and more expanded research needs to be done to verify the results, but they are hopeful that will happen soon. If proven to be true, these researchers stand to make millions of dollars as millions of people will be clambering to buy the magic fountain of youth cocktail.