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Want to live forever? <\/p>\nWant to live forever? <\/p>\n
Scientists have taken one step closer to achieving this dream after finding a secret protein that keeps cardiac muscle youthful.<\/p>\n
And it may be the key to keeping heart attacks and stroke at bay for good.<\/p>\n
Cell<\/em> magazine published a Harvard study which involved joining the circulatory systems of 2 animals. When they connected old mice with young mice, the older heart tissue got a surprising boost from the young.<\/p>\n The question was how did it work? Researchers isolated a molecule in the blood of the young mice that wasn\u2019t there in the blood of the older ones. It\u2019s called growth differentiating factor-11 (GDF-11) and it\u2019s full of promise.<\/p>\n And it gets better\u2026<\/p>\n Not content with just finding it, the researchers managed to replicate it too. Which is great news, because as we age, there’s less of this molecule present in the blood. Cardiac muscle tissue starts to grow stiff and becomes thicker without it, which is the cause of heart disease.<\/p>\n Because scientists can reproduce this molecule, there\u2019s now hope that we might one day be able to effectively treat heart disease, and with something natural too, not some pharmaceutical substance that might cause side effects. <\/p>\n Until that day comes, though, the best thing to do is preserve what you\u2019ve got! And the two best ways to do this are by controlling high blood pressure and reducing excess cholesterol.<\/p>\n