Face wraps promise a snatched jawline—but do they really work?
Once a niche beauty technique practiced by only the most devout anti-aging obsessives, face wrapping has recently surged into the skincare spotlight. Beauty fans are raving about these snug, balaclava-like wraps and their supposed tightening and 'snatching' effects. But can a stretchy wrap really reduce your jowls and tone your jawline? Here's what experts have to say. What can face wraps do?
The use of compression garments for treating facial scars dates back to World War I. It became widespread in aesthetic surgery in the 1980s and is still used today for post-operative patients. A 2019 literature review showed a statistically significant improvement in facial scars with the use of pressure masks and a 2023 study on facial skin cancer patients found long-term stable aesthetic outcomes after 10 months of mask use.
'The body's natural reaction to a surgery is to swell, to gather fluid,' says Foad Nahai, a plastic surgeon from MetroDerm, who requires patients to wear compression garments for up to a week after a facelift. 'It compresses and reduces the swelling in front of the ear, especially on the neck.' Compression is also 'incredibly effective' for treating scars, especially burns, he says. 'Early in my career, when I was taking care of burn victims, we used to put them in a custom-made face mask—not unlike the wraps that you see on social media – to compress the scars.'
(How much SPF is enough? Here's what to know about sunscreen.)
Today, those same principles have been repurposed in the beauty world, where face wrapping devotees claim these garments can help lift and define the jawline, reduce bloating, improve circulation, and prevent sagging. Still, experts say any perceived changes are temporary.
'You may notice some improvement after taking off the wrap, maybe for a couple hours or so,' says Glen Nosworthy, an aesthetic physician and founder of the medical spa Glo by Glen. That's because the compression temporarily moves lymphatic fluid—a watery substance that can collect in soft tissues and cause puffiness—out of the face. 'Think of it like a sponge,' says Hannah Kopelman, a dermatologist at DermonDemand. 'You're squeezing the fluid out of the sponge, but as soon as you take the compression off, it starts to fill up again.'
But tighter isn't always better, and could actually have the opposite effect, Nahai says. 'If you compress too tight, you compress all the arteries and the blood vessels, and there won't be as much blood coming through into the tissues.' Over time, this reduced blood flow can deprive skin cells of oxygen and nutrients, slowing repair and potentially harming skin health.
It will also not improve laxity, the firmness and elasticity of skin that decreases as we age due to the decline in collagen and elastin. 'The only thing that really changes skin sagging is if you can alter the collagen, elastin, or fat distribution in the face, and none of these can be done with compression alone,' Kopelman explains. Nosworthy adds that if you can hold a 'full pinch' of sagging skin between your fingers, surgery is likely the only way to tighten it effectively.
(Interested in wellness? Learn more about the real science behind popular trends.)
Ultimately, there is 'absolutely no evidence' that face wrapping has any lasting effect on facial rejuvenation, Nahai says, but if all you want is the fleeting illusion of a sculpted jaw, a compression garment could help. 'If you're going to be in photos, this could be a temporary fix for you,' Kopelman says, 'but I don't view it as a long-term solution.'
Face wrapping is generally considered low risk, as long as the compression isn't too intense. 'You don't want to wrap too tightly because it can irritate your skin or even cause an exacerbation of dermatitis or rosacea,' Kopelman says.
Nosworthy warns that face wraps 'can cause skin irritation if you're in them for eight hours at night, especially if you're not keeping them clean, which could do more harm than good [and cause] acne.' As with any garment worn close to the skin, a face wrap should be washed regularly with mild detergent, Nahai advises. 'I would recommend that they should be cleaned at least every second or third night.' What else can you do to sculpt your jawline?
While experts agree that face wrapping won't get rid of jowls, they have plenty of advice for maintaining a firm, defined jawline.
'Limit your exposure to the sun, don't smoke, keep your skin hydrated—those are the things that will prevent or at least will slow down the aging and the sagging of the skin,' Nahai says. Nosworthy recommends a lymphatic drainage facial to 'directly push extra fluid out of the soft tissue space, and then you can follow up with something like a gua sha,' a smooth-edged tool used for DIY facial massage. 'Facial exercises can also help to strengthen the muscles and move fluid along the lymphatic chain to exit out of the body.'
(What lymphatic drainage massage actually does for your body.)
Professional-grade options for collagen stimulation include radiofrequency, ultrasound, and specific fractional laser procedures. At the same time, plastic surgery may be the 'only effective' solution for sagging skin on the jawline beyond the age of around 60, Nahai says. 'There's no substitute for removing excess skin other than to re-drape it and surgically remove the excess.'
Instead of investing in a face wrap, Nahai suggests buying a tube of retinol or retinoid serum instead. Backed by decades of research, these vitamin A-derived ingredients are proven to increase collagen production and reduce wrinkles, providing a 'greater return on investment than an elastic wrap.'
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National Geographic
18 hours ago
- National Geographic
Face wraps promise a snatched jawline—but do they really work?
A snug compression wrap promises to sculpt the jawline, but experts say its effects are only skin deep. The trend's fleeting results come from temporarily shifting lymphatic fluid beneath the skin. Photograph by Rebecca Hale, National Geographic Once a niche beauty technique practiced by only the most devout anti-aging obsessives, face wrapping has recently surged into the skincare spotlight. Beauty fans are raving about these snug, balaclava-like wraps and their supposed tightening and 'snatching' effects. But can a stretchy wrap really reduce your jowls and tone your jawline? Here's what experts have to say. What can face wraps do? The use of compression garments for treating facial scars dates back to World War I. It became widespread in aesthetic surgery in the 1980s and is still used today for post-operative patients. A 2019 literature review showed a statistically significant improvement in facial scars with the use of pressure masks and a 2023 study on facial skin cancer patients found long-term stable aesthetic outcomes after 10 months of mask use. 'The body's natural reaction to a surgery is to swell, to gather fluid,' says Foad Nahai, a plastic surgeon from MetroDerm, who requires patients to wear compression garments for up to a week after a facelift. 'It compresses and reduces the swelling in front of the ear, especially on the neck.' Compression is also 'incredibly effective' for treating scars, especially burns, he says. 'Early in my career, when I was taking care of burn victims, we used to put them in a custom-made face mask—not unlike the wraps that you see on social media – to compress the scars.' (How much SPF is enough? Here's what to know about sunscreen.) Today, those same principles have been repurposed in the beauty world, where face wrapping devotees claim these garments can help lift and define the jawline, reduce bloating, improve circulation, and prevent sagging. Still, experts say any perceived changes are temporary. 'You may notice some improvement after taking off the wrap, maybe for a couple hours or so,' says Glen Nosworthy, an aesthetic physician and founder of the medical spa Glo by Glen. That's because the compression temporarily moves lymphatic fluid—a watery substance that can collect in soft tissues and cause puffiness—out of the face. 'Think of it like a sponge,' says Hannah Kopelman, a dermatologist at DermonDemand. 'You're squeezing the fluid out of the sponge, but as soon as you take the compression off, it starts to fill up again.' But tighter isn't always better, and could actually have the opposite effect, Nahai says. 'If you compress too tight, you compress all the arteries and the blood vessels, and there won't be as much blood coming through into the tissues.' Over time, this reduced blood flow can deprive skin cells of oxygen and nutrients, slowing repair and potentially harming skin health. It will also not improve laxity, the firmness and elasticity of skin that decreases as we age due to the decline in collagen and elastin. 'The only thing that really changes skin sagging is if you can alter the collagen, elastin, or fat distribution in the face, and none of these can be done with compression alone,' Kopelman explains. Nosworthy adds that if you can hold a 'full pinch' of sagging skin between your fingers, surgery is likely the only way to tighten it effectively. (Interested in wellness? Learn more about the real science behind popular trends.) Ultimately, there is 'absolutely no evidence' that face wrapping has any lasting effect on facial rejuvenation, Nahai says, but if all you want is the fleeting illusion of a sculpted jaw, a compression garment could help. 'If you're going to be in photos, this could be a temporary fix for you,' Kopelman says, 'but I don't view it as a long-term solution.' Face wrapping is generally considered low risk, as long as the compression isn't too intense. 'You don't want to wrap too tightly because it can irritate your skin or even cause an exacerbation of dermatitis or rosacea,' Kopelman says. Nosworthy warns that face wraps 'can cause skin irritation if you're in them for eight hours at night, especially if you're not keeping them clean, which could do more harm than good [and cause] acne.' As with any garment worn close to the skin, a face wrap should be washed regularly with mild detergent, Nahai advises. 'I would recommend that they should be cleaned at least every second or third night.' What else can you do to sculpt your jawline? While experts agree that face wrapping won't get rid of jowls, they have plenty of advice for maintaining a firm, defined jawline. 'Limit your exposure to the sun, don't smoke, keep your skin hydrated—those are the things that will prevent or at least will slow down the aging and the sagging of the skin,' Nahai says. Nosworthy recommends a lymphatic drainage facial to 'directly push extra fluid out of the soft tissue space, and then you can follow up with something like a gua sha,' a smooth-edged tool used for DIY facial massage. 'Facial exercises can also help to strengthen the muscles and move fluid along the lymphatic chain to exit out of the body.' (What lymphatic drainage massage actually does for your body.) Professional-grade options for collagen stimulation include radiofrequency, ultrasound, and specific fractional laser procedures. At the same time, plastic surgery may be the 'only effective' solution for sagging skin on the jawline beyond the age of around 60, Nahai says. 'There's no substitute for removing excess skin other than to re-drape it and surgically remove the excess.' Instead of investing in a face wrap, Nahai suggests buying a tube of retinol or retinoid serum instead. Backed by decades of research, these vitamin A-derived ingredients are proven to increase collagen production and reduce wrinkles, providing a 'greater return on investment than an elastic wrap.'
National Geographic
18 hours ago
- National Geographic
How human hibernation could revolutionize medicine and get us to Mars
Putting people into sleep mode is a sci-fi concept that's a lot closer to becoming real than you might think. Erin Belback is part of an ongoing human trial backed by NASA that aims to replicate the effects of hibernation in humans—a potential tool for overcoming some of the physiological problems of long-duration spaceflight. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh plan to monitor her exhaled breath and body temperature to study her metabolic rate for their research. Photograph by Rebecca Hale, National Geographic Photographs by Corey Arnold The test subject had slipped into what physician Clifton Callaway describes as a 'twilight kind of sleep.' Eighteen hours after Callaway's team at the University of Pittsburgh's Applied Physiology Lab started the man on a sedative that suppressed his body's natural shivering response, his internal temperature had sunk from 98.6°F to 95°F. His heart rate and blood pressure had dropped. His metabolism—and, along with it, his need for food, oxygen, and carbon dioxide removal—had plunged 20 percent. Yet the subject could still rise from his bed, shuffle to the bathroom to empty his bladder, and, when hungry, ring a bell to ask for food or a drink—alleviating the need for a catheter or intravenous lines and ensuring he could still respond and react. The man was one of five exceedingly fit volunteers, ranging in age from 21 to 54, who quietly dozed in the semidarkness—pretend astronauts on a nine-month journey to Mars. NASA had tasked Callaway, an expert in cardiac care and induced hypothermia, with figuring out a simple way to put human beings into a state that mimics some of the key features of hibernation without the use of a ventilator or immobilizing drugs, and careful dosing of dexmedetomidine did the trick. His subject, Callaway says now, was woozy, dreamy, but still able to function in an emergency if required—'just like a bear.' Humans in hibernation mode are a classic staple of space travel in science fiction movies, whether it's HAL 9000 fatally unplugging a few of his passengers in 2001: A Space Odyssey or Chris Pratt waking up Jennifer Lawrence too soon because he's lonely in Passengers. But NASA has grand ambitions of sending astronauts to Mars, for real, as soon as the 2030s, and putting humans in hibernation mode, for real, could be the key to achieving it, which is why both NASA and the European Space Agency are supporting studies like Callaway's. A bearlike state of hibernation could, in theory, help astronauts snooze through the tedium of extended space travel and limit crewmate conflict. Their slowed metabolism could help reduce cargo: Missions would require less food and oxygen, and consequently less fuel. Space agency-funded research is even exploring whether slowing a person's metabolism weakens the health impact of harmful radiation. This would be an encouraging boost for the viability of extended travel through space, where radiation is as much as 200 times greater than on Earth. In fact, when it comes to achieving the dream of crew missions to Mars, says ESA's chief exploration scientist Angelique Van Ombergen, space radiation 'is a big showstopper.' Robert Foote, a volunteer in the NASA-supported trial in Pittsburgh, is monitored by scientists after being asleep for 20 hours. By achieving hibernation on demand, researchers could potentially unlock a wide range of medical benefits, including extending the time that doctors have to treat strokes and heart attacks. Photograph by Tim Betler, UPMC Scientists aren't studying hibernation just so we can ship astronauts ever deeper into space, though. Its physiological superpowers could save countless lives here on Earth, if we can unlock the secrets to the mysterious molecular-level changes that shift animals in and out of a state of hibernation, or 'torpor'—a miraculously reversible state of dormancy characterized by extreme lethargy, a lowered body temperature and metabolic rate, and a host of other remarkable changes. 'It's a well-established principle,' Callaway explains, 'that at low temperatures, like in hibernating animals, you tolerate lack of oxygen, lack of blood flow better and longer.' But why? Why don't bears' muscles atrophy while they sleep? How come their blood doesn't clot? And what triggers the process to begin with? In their hunt for answers, scientists are now inching closer to their most ambitious discovery yet: a central switch in the brains of hibernating animals that activates the various beneficial phenomena of hibernation, all at once. Mimicking the colder body temperature of bears during hibernation, for instance, could lessen the severity of 'reperfusion injuries,' the often devastating damage that occurs after cardiac arrest when blood flow is restored to the oxygen-deprived tissues of the body, setting off massive inflammation, oxidative stress, and cell death. It could also help extend the narrow window of time that doctors have to provide critical care during strokes and heart attacks. A clearer understanding of how hibernating bears preserve muscle mass and turn on and off insulin resistance could have other benefits: It might help us treat chronic obesity and diabetes in humans. ICU patients can lose more than 10 percent of their muscle mass in seven days. Could an induced state of hibernation stall or even stop the decline? Scientists are searching beyond bears for the answers because, of course, bears aren't the only animals that hibernate. A team at Colorado State University is investigating how the 13-lined ground squirrel can rapidly fatten and then switch off its appetite before hibernation for clues to combating obesity. UCLA researchers examining the genes of yellow--bellied marmots have recently found that 'epigenetic aging' is 'essentially stalled' during the seven to eight months they hibernate each year. Experts in Germany are exploring how bats maintain blood circulation at low temperatures, with an eye to human hibernation applications. And biologists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are studying a squirrel that can drop its body temperature by 70 degrees and heart rate down to five beats per minute and survive eight months in subzero temperatures. Their goal is to develop a 'hibernation mimetic' drug that might safely allow clinicians to place humans into an immediate state of hibernation—without a long prep time, in a rural hospital lacking advanced equipment, or even in an ambulance racing through the streets. It would instantly dial down cellular metabolism, slow cell death, and catalyze a whole host of other biological processes associated with hibernation. (New bat discovery could help humans hibernate during space travel.) To decode hibernation's mysteries, biologists like Heiko Jansen are carefully studying the world's most notorious hibernators: bears. The 11 grizzlies housed at the Washington State University Bear Center are onetime 'trouble' bears from Yellowstone National Park and their offspring. Today they are sleeping for the benefit of science. The center's grizzlies are monitored in camera-equipped dens as they snooze through the late stages of their hibernation. For the five months they rest, their metabolism slows dramatically, reducing their need for food and oxygen. Callaway's twilight sleep experiment provides a glimpse into what might be possible for humans, but what happens in the lab and in the wild are clearly two different things. Bears don't need drugs to settle in for the winter—they have a natural 'torpor switch,' he says, which is flipped through some process that we don't fully understand. And though they're unruly, bears still offer a good comparison for our own potential: They're at least closer to us in size than a rodent, and, perhaps most critically, their temperature drop during deep sleep is well within the range of human survivability. One bright afternoon in late March, biologist Heiko Jansen stood outside a fenced-in pasture at the Washington State University Bear Research, Education, and Conservation Center in Pullman and watched as a shaggy 300-pound female grizzly bear named Kio struggled to eat a marshmallow. Other than a serious case of bedhead and the glacial pace of Kio's chewing, there were few visible clues that the dangerous, disheveled giant with the four-inch claws was undergoing a profound metamorphosis. Looking from the outside, little about Kio's metabolic process seems applicable to humans. Ten days earlier, she rose from her bed of straw and began to slowly work through a feast of bear kibble, apples, and elk bones and leg meat. It was her first meal in five months. Her salivary glands were still sluggish. Then she pooped out a 'fecal plug' composed of plants, dried feces, dead cells, and hair lodged in her lower intestine. Those three key activities—rise, eat, poop out the plug—seem to have helped flip a series of microscopic genetic switches inside her cells, catalyzing the slow-motion reversal of a host of bizarre biological cycles her body had entered into over the winter. Kio's metabolism, which had been operating at one-quarter its normal speed, kicked into gear, more than doubling by the time she was struggling with the marshmallow. Her core body temperature, hovering about 12 degrees below normal, began to rise. Two of her heart's four chambers, which had all but shut down for the winter, reopened for business. Her fat cells, for months miraculously resistant to insulin, the hormone that tells the body when to absorb sugar, started to respond to it again. Her appetite, absent for months, rumbled to life. When the grizzlies begin to stir, in March, they are awake but drowsy—their bodies beginning the process of reversing their metabolic slowdown. This bear, Adak, will be rewarded with honey and other treats after presenting his legs for a blood draw. Five months earlier, back in November, when Kio lay down and packed it in for the winter, she stopped eating, her gut entered 'stasis,' her saliva glands shut down, and she began living on her own body fat. Over the following months, she burned roughly 20 percent, or 70 pounds, of her body weight. To facilitate this, her body became resistant to insulin, a good thing for hibernators. Humans who become insulin resistant often develop diabetes—clearly a bad thing. Bears can switch that resistance on and off, depending on the season, without health consequences. If we could understand how, maybe we could figure out a way for humans to do it too? (Hibernating bears could hold a clue to treating diabetes.) The notion got a boost of confidence in 2018, when a Canadian group published the first complete grizzly bear DNA sequence. A year later, Jansen headed up a team that used a technique known as RNA sequencing to identify which genes are activated in bear muscle, fat, and liver tissue samples before, during, and after hibernation. They found seasonal changes in more than 10,000 of a grizzly's 30,723 genes. Now, in order to decode how bears switch insulin resistance on and off, Jansen has been extracting stem cells from blood samples collected from Pullman's bears at different times of year, methodically eliminating individual genes and then growing colonies of fat cells in petri dishes to see what happens. 'We're not saying that we'll find something that can reverse diabetes,' Jansen offers. 'But at least by looking at a model system, the cells that change their sensitivity, we can begin to develop some clues as to what's going on.' Kio's cardiac function might also yield insights that help treat human blood--clotting disorders. While Kio was hibernating, her heart rate slowed from 80 to 100 beats per minute to about 10. Normally this would cause her blood to clot into dangerous blockages and induce a stroke—'if that happened to us,' says Jansen, 'we'd be dead'—but hibernating bears also experience a remarkable drop in their blood-clotting platelets. It was Kio's ability to maintain muscle tone, however, that particularly transfixed some of her researchers. Unlike humans, who begin to lose muscle mass within a week of inactivity, Kio rose from her hibernation bed as fit as if she'd spent the winter chasing chipmunks. Up in Alaska, researchers Vadim Fedorov and Anna Goropashnaya are trying to unlock the mystery of how bears do this—and test the hypothesis that humans might be able to as well. The Russian-born husband-and-wife team specialize in evolutionary genetics at the University of Alaska's Institute of Arctic Biology (IAB), in Fairbanks. When they began analyzing gene expression patterns in tissue samples collected from captive black bears nearly 20 years ago, the results shocked them. Seeing as how bears stop eating and slow their metabolism during hibernation, Fedorov and Goropashnaya assumed the gene activity involved in building new muscles would be dialed down to preserve energy. Instead, the genes were just as active and even appeared to ramp up. 'We checked it several times,' says Goropashnaya. 'We couldn't believe it.' At the university's Institute for Arctic Biology, Anna Goropashnaya and Vadim Fedorov are investigating how muscle tissue of squirrels and bears (squirrel tissue is projected on their lab wall for this image) is preserved in hibernation when the animals don't eat and barely move. The findings were 'illogical' but somehow correct. Scores of genes known to be part of muscle protein biosynthesis were turned up in what appeared to be a coordinated—and metabolically costly—frenzy of activity. The two presented their first paper on the phenomenon in 2011. Now, with the aid of newer DNA sequencing technologies, they're able to study twice as many genes and with far more specificity, which is what led them to the mTOR pathway, a well-known cellular 'dial' that also plays a key role in controlling the rate of cell division. Typically, when mammals are starved of nutrients, their bodies dial mTOR down to suppress cell regeneration and steer energy to protect existing cells. But in the muscles of hibernating bears, the researchers confirmed what they'd first observed years earlier: mTOR increased instead. Fedorov and Goropashnaya were stumped. If hibernating bears are building new muscle, where are they getting the nutrients to make it? Researchers at the Universities of Wisconsin and Montreal have explored one possibility: microbes. Early findings in other hibernators indicate that instead of producing urine when hibernating, animals recycle the nitrogen in urea, and microbes in their guts could be ingesting and metabolizing it into amino acids, which make new muscles. If Fedorov and Goropashnaya can identify a single, extra-powerful 'upstream' gene responsible for switching on this muscle regeneration, it could have profound medical implications. The muscles of bedbound ICU patients wouldn't melt away within weeks, and astronauts could build muscles while resting. But what if all the disparate and remarkable processes of hibernation could be globally activated all at once—with a drug? To find out, scientists are looking deeper into the animal kingdom to unlock the secrets of the most extreme hibernator of all. (It's not just bears: These hibernating animals may surprise you.) The arctic ground squirrel, a diminutive rodent with gold-tinted fur, a button nose, and a tiny pair of Bugs Bunny-like front incisors, can drastically drop its body temperature and heart rate, slow to one breath per minute, and survive months in subzero conditions. The squirrels are also, for the most part, far easier to study than bears. An arctic ground squirrel remains in hibernation in a lab at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. 'Until they open their eyes,' says Kelly Drew, the affable, silver-haired neuroscientist who directs the Center for Transformative Research in Metabolism at the IAB, after digging through a nest of cotton and wood shavings to pull out a frozen, furry snowball. 'Then they can bite.' In the early 2000s, Drew persuaded the U.S. military to fund a search for the brain chemicals that trigger hibernation in the squirrels. If she could identify those chemicals, she suggested, she could then test them on humans, in hopes of developing new ways to cool wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Drew's first breakthrough with the squirrels arrived in 2005 when an undergraduate research assistant chanced upon a paper from a Japanese lab while combing through scientific literature. The Japanese group had actually achieved the opposite of what Drew hoped to do. They'd found a drug that woke hibernating hamsters by blocking their brain cells' response to a specific chemical called adenosine. Drew assigned a graduate student to inject a synthetic version of adenosine, a drug called 6-Cyclohexyladenosine, or CHA, directly into the brains of her squirrels. Rather than blocking adenosine, which is how the caffeine in your coffee works its magic, CHA replicates its effects. When the graduate student dosed a squirrel's brain in the summer, outside of hibernation season, nothing happened. But when he repeated it closer to hibernation season, the CHA put the animal into such a deep state of torpor, the student initially thought he had killed it. 'He was super sad because that's a big deal,' Drew recalls. 'He takes the animal out for the vet to do the necropsy. The vet gets the tools out, he's going to start cutting open this dead animal, and it starts to move.' Her lab had done it. They'd found a way to put a squirrel in hibernation mode, like flipping a switch. Temporarily removed from its refrigerated hibernation den and settled on a bed of wood shavings, this arctic ground squirrel remained in a state of torpor for over an hour before beginning to stir. The squirrels survive their long hibernation by warming up for short periods every few weeks. On the opposite side of the world, at the University of Bologna in Italy, around the same time Drew's grad student stumbled on that Japanese paper about adenosine, another grad student named Domenico Tupone was charting a similar path. The focus of his laboratory research wasn't hibernation per se but a component of it: identifying the brain circuits that regulate body temperature during sleep. His team suspected that a small patch of neurons at the base of an ordinary rat's brain helped convey temperature-control signals to the periphery of the body. They temporarily immobilized those neurons with an injection, then placed the rat in a cold, dark cage. The experiment validated their hypothesis. As Tupone and his colleagues watched, the rat sank into a state of hypothermia so extreme it should have proved fatal. That's when things got weird. Six hours and four injections later, the hypothermic rat was still alive. And when the team finally removed it from its cage and warmed it up, the rat behaved, at least outwardly, as if nothing had happened. Afterward, as Tupone and his colleagues examined the brain waves picked up by a web of electrodes attached to the rodent's skull, scientist Matteo Cerri made an observation that altered the course of Tupone's future research. The peaks and valleys of the brain waves looked familiar. Cerri had seen the same patterns in hibernating animals. But there was one crucial difference. Unlike arctic ground squirrels, rats do not naturally hibernate. Tupone had to know: If a non-hibernating animal could be safely induced into hibernation, then maybe humans could do it too? In the years that followed, Tupone obsessed over scraps of paper in dimly lit bars, sketching out what a brain circuit capable of triggering hibernation in humans might look like. In bed, he tossed and turned, fantasizing about a 'revolutionary' IV-administered drug akin to Drew's 'hibernation mimetic' that paramedics could use to slow cell death on the way to the hospital. He became convinced that if it could be accomplished safely, inducing natural torpor in humans would upend basic science. The next step for both researchers, though—human trials—presented their stiffest obstacle yet. In order to administer Drew's 'hibernation mimetic' to ground squirrels, her team often had to perform invasive brain surgeries. For humans, the drug would need to be delivered via IV. The trouble is, adenosine receptors are present throughout the body, and activating them globally can trigger unwanted side effects, including cardiac arrest. After four more years of frustrating trial and error, Drew paired the drug with a compound that fixed the heart attack problem, and she's currently trying to solve the additional obstacle of fluctuating blood glucose levels, which in extreme cases can cause seizures in lab animals and even death. 'It works; it definitely cools them,' Drew says. 'We're just trying to tweak it so it's as safe as possible.' Clinicians have lots of devices to regulate temperature, 'but the human body typically fights it. By avoiding that cold defense response, which is what our hibernation mimetic does, then the clinician has the ability to dial in whatever temperature they want.' In minutes, not hours. Tupone, meanwhile, was working on parallel tracks at Portland's Oregon Health & Science University under Shaun Morrison, one of the world's experts on the brain circuits that control body temperature. Tupone's primary focus was on extending the map of temperature--related circuits into new parts of the brain, but in his spare time, he continued to hunt for the elusive hibernation switch. Around 2016, he stumbled upon a curious biological phenomenon that convinced him he was getting close. He and Morrison were attempting to confirm their map of the brain's thermoregulatory control system, in an experiment similar to the one in which the unexpected survival of those hypothermic Italian rats had blown his mind. This time, Tupone used a small knife to sever the bundle of nerves running to the rat's brain stem, cutting off the pathway that relays temperature--control signals down to the body's periphery. Once again, though, Tupone's results seemed to flip the expected rule of mammalian physiology. Rather than disabling the ability of the rat to respond to heat or cold, Tupone's incision somehow enhanced it. When Tupone wrapped the rat in a plastic blanket and ran hot water over it, its body began generating even more heat. When he used freezing cold water, the rat's brain seemed to allow its body temperature to fall even faster. An arctic ground squirrel emerges from a burrow in the foothills of Alaska's Brooks Range shortly after its eight-month hibernation. Each fall, Colorado State University scientists working at the nearby Toolik Field Station collar squirrels with devices to track body temperature data and light, which tells them if a squirrel is in or out of its burrow. In the spring, new squirrels are ear-tagged and weighed before their summer of foraging begins. The long-term study is revealing how climate change is affecting the biology of these important hibernators. Tupone and Morrison quickly concluded they had discovered something profound. The results suggested that a second, previously undiscovered brain circuit capable of modulating body temperature existed—one that facilitated the transition in and out of hibernation. They named the phenomenon 'thermoregulatory inversion' (TI). But where exactly was this circuit, and how could it be activated? After eight years of trial and error, Tupone and Morrison published a paper this past January announcing they'd found a small patch of neurons in the rat's hypothalamus—the ventromedial periventricular area (VMPeA)—that, when activated, not only seems to slow metabolism, lower body temperature, and induce brain waves and cardiac patterns unique to hibernation but also sets in motion phenomena that flip the body's normal temperature-control system on its head, facilitating the transition into and out of the torpor state. They'd found it: the elusive 'torpor switch.' Tupone believes the switch is connected to an incomplete version of the hibernation circuitry that still exists in many animals. To disable it, he hypothesizes, evolution did the most efficient thing. It simply removed the connection between the circuitry and the switch that would flip it on automatically. 'It is like you have all the cables inside your walls to turn on a light,' he says, but you've removed the connection to the switch that controls that light. 'We think humans have all the circuitry.' Our switch, he believes, just isn't connected anymore. To back up his findings, Tupone is now collaborating with Kelly Drew's lab to find the analogous circuitry—and the switch—in arctic ground squirrels. And he's laying the groundwork for a drug of his own that can flip the switch in his rats without invasive brain surgery. Each advance, though, generates more mysteries. To flip their switch on and off in the study they published in January, Tupone and Morrison had to use invasive brain surgery and manually apply a drug to the general area where it was located. Even that infinitesimally small patch of the brain still contained millions of neurons, including an entire neighborhood of unrelated neurons surrounding it. To find a drug specific enough to give to humans without immense side effects, Tupone will need to identify the precise neurons around the switch and design a drug that will target only those involved in hibernation. That's just the tip of the iceberg, though. To suppress the shivering response in humans, anesthesiologists typically administer muscle relaxants or paralyzing drugs, which suppress breathing, so doctors have to intubate patients … which requires putting them into a medically induced coma. This is why induced hypothermia is not available outside hospitals. It's also not currently an option for stroke patients, because of the dangerous drop in blood pressure that often occurs during the gap between administering anesthesia and intubating a patient, which can deprive the brain of even more oxygen at a moment when dangerous blockages are already suffocating its cells. Rats don't hibernate. But what if they could? Neurologist Domenico Tupone and fellow researchers from the University of Oregon say they've identified a 'torpor switch' in rat brain neurons (projected on the wall) that can be activated to send the rodents into a deep state of hibernation. Identifying this circuitry in non-hibernators could be a breakthrough in the human hibernation effort. 'It can actually worsen a stroke,' says researcher Cal-laway, from the University of Pittsburgh. 'But boy, it sure would be nice to lower your body temperature and let your brain tolerate the stroke longer until I can get you to the cath lab and take that blood clot out.' As an emergency physician, Callaway understands better than most the potential applications for humans, as well as the challenges presented by making the leap from bears and squirrels to humans. He's been researching and refining the techniques used to induce hypothermia in cardiac and brain-injured patients since the 1990s, and he's also a former chair of the American Heart Association's Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee, which is why NASA awarded him a grant through the Translational Research Institute for Space Health to explore whether his techniques can be applied to the metabolic needs of astronauts. So far, there are problems. The drop in blood pressure and heart rate in his five healthy volunteers was so extreme that those with cardiovascular or other medical conditions might not be able to tolerate it. And within days, all five of the 'pretend astronauts' had developed a tolerance to his sedative, suggesting, among other things, that its effectiveness would fade over time. Those are solvable problems, Callaway says. 'This is just the first step' in a process that he believes will take 10 to 15 years—a mere nap for Rip Van Winkle. 'There's a lot of science to be done,' he says. But he's excited by the progress: 'I don't think it's pie-in-the-sky anymore.' To keep the pretend astronauts inspired during the human trial, Callaway's team had plastered the walls of their lab with posters: a satellite floating in space above the swirling blues and whites of Earth; the cratered, gleaming surface of a moonlike planet; the rainbow-hued burst of starlight, radiating from a distant galaxy. For now, such destinations are accessible only in our dreams. But someday in the not too distant future, a real astronaut might awaken from a hibernation-like slumber to gaze on the real thing.
National Geographic
5 days ago
- National Geographic
The world's oldest neurologist answers your questions about aging
At 103, Howard Tucker is the world's oldest practicing doctor. He answered these burning questions from Nat Geo readers. Dr. Howard Tucker, the world's oldest practicing doctor, answers your questions about how to stay healthy for longer. Image Courtesy What's Next? Documentary It can be overwhelming to navigate all the advice out there on how to live a longer and healthier life. But who better to learn from than someone who has already done it? National Geographic recently went right to the source of longevity tips in an interview with Howard Tucker, who at 103 is the world's oldest practicing doctor—and a TikTok star, with 102,000 followers and counting. His secret to longevity? As Tucker told writer Alisa Hrustic, he credits 'a continuous pursuit of knowledge and connection—and the occasional martini.' (At 102, he's the world's oldest practicing doctor. These are his longevity tips.) Tucker's advice was so popular that we put out a call to readers, offering you a chance to ask him your own burning questions about aging, longevity, or living a healthier life. And Tucker delivered. Read on to find out whether he answered your question—and what he really thinks about dietary supplements, ageism, and why you reap real advantages from spending time with the young people in your life. 1. What's a common misconception people have about living over 80? People think that everyone over 80 has an addled brain and is beginning to dement. This is not true. Far from it. There are plenty of older people who are intact mentally, even physically. 2. At what age did you start experiencing ageism in medicine? How would you combat this type of discriminatory thinking? When I go to a doctor with someone with me, the doctors will talk to the others and bypass me because they think I'm not capable of incorporating it all. I'm having trouble now getting a new job because of my age. They presume, number one, I don't have it all anymore. And number two, I won't be here when the time comes to testify [about] the medical legal stuff. When people tell me that they are discriminated against because of their age, I can only tell them that the concept is common, not necessarily personal, and does not reflect on their own frailties. So, keep moving forward and ignore what they're saying about you. 3. As someone with Alzheimer's running on all sides of my family, what are some habits or suggestions to combat it? Stay engaged. Have friends who stimulate you. Continue to read and study and maintain an attitude about life that's exuberant. Although I must confess, I knew some brilliant people who stayed active mentally, still developed Alzheimer's. But the prevailing concept is that one should do these intellectual exercises to keep things going. Some people will say yes. Others say no, hogwash. I will say that at one point, the lowest consumers of extra vitamins were physicians themselves, and now, they're just like the rest of the herd. They take supplements. To me, the jury is still out. It may help some, we think, and may not help others. (5 things you should know before taking that supplement.) 5. What is your opinion about the best activities to help us with the process of aging? The key is to stay active, meaning physically and mentally. Physically, just walking will do it. And mentally is reading and puzzles, as they've always said. And staying stimulated—by younger people for the most part. In my instance, engaging with younger colleagues is stimulating. 6. How much does our environment, pollution, access to the outdoors, etc., influence our health and longevity? I don't know about climate change, but pollution is definitely hazardous for longevity. There have been studies on this. People who live near factories which have polluted the air, or foundries, they have complications, which shortens their life. The concept is: 'running cold water does not freeze.' And joints that stay active do not freeze. So far as I know, there is no cure. There are medicines to slow down the progression. 8. Over the course of your career, what has changed the most in how we understand the aging brain? The MRI and CAT scan. They took us from medieval times into the modern century.
