Cancer and naked mole rats don’t go together. The little rascals live a long time as well. Cancer and aging researchers use naked mole rats because of these unique qualities.
Naked Mole Rats:
Naked mole rats are fascinating little critters. They are (almost) hairless and live in colonies underground. Their colonies are similar to bees, with workers, drones and a queen.
They range in length from three to ten inches. They have prominent teeth and claws perfect for burrowing and gathering roots and bulbs as food.
They are prolific breeders; strangely, the females remain fertile throughout their lives. But that’s not all. The nakeds live far longer than similar rodents—up to thirty years versus five or less for the others.
Cancer and naked mole rats are a rare combination.
For these reasons and more, naked mole rats are a favorite of cancer and anti-aging researchers.
Cancer and Naked Mole Rats:
Understandably the specie’s resistance to cancer fascinated researchers, and they finally made a breakthrough. Naked mole rat cells in a petri dish formed a stick gel around them. This gel turned out to be Hyaluronan – a downstream product of the breakdown of sugars.
When the naked mole rat’s metabolism was altered to reduce the amount of hyaluronan, the little critters developed cancer.
Now, I don’t want to oversimplify this, but hyaluronic acid is another name for hyaluronan. Humans produce hyaluronic acid for various purposes. One of them is the lubrication of cartilaginous joints.
I have written about this here.
You are not a Naked Mole Rat:
But you need hyaluronic acid too. The problem is that you and I make less and less of it as we age.
This is one reason (not the only one) why our joints get creaky as we age – less hyaluronic acid production. Same with wrinkly, dry skin. Almost all skin moisturizers have hyaluronic acid in them to maintain skin’s moisture.
Ok, this isn’t anything new. But here’s something to think about:
As we grow older, our body makes less hyaluronic acid, and as we grow older, our likelihood of developing cancer increases. So there’s an inverse relationship here: one goes down, the other goes up.
Now, this doesn’t mean that one causes the other, far from it. But still, it is worth noting from a cancer and an aging point of view.
Hyaluronic acid is easy to get and safe to take orally and in other forms. I have been taking it for some time for my joints, and I think it helps. If it staves off cancer, so much the better.
To be clear:
I am not saying that hyaluronic acid will prevent cancer or anything else. I am saying that I use it myself because it has almost no downside and a huge potential upside. This is why I take it.
Still, because I take it does not mean you should. You should research the subject, read my article on osteoarthritis, read the materials about cancer and naked mole rats, and make the best decision for yourself.
For the record, here is a high-quality source for hyaluronic acid. (Three-month supply.)
OMY1
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