Huberman Lab
Restore Youthfulness & Vitality to the Aging Brain & Body | Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray
23 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
For the first time, we could take an old brain and we could give factors from a young organism and ask, is that going to change the age of the brain? And that's indeed what it did. So we saw that there are stem cells in the brain of these mice that they got reactivated.
Chapter 2: What factors in young blood can rejuvenate aging organs?
There was less inflammation, more activity that we can measure in the brain. And then most importantly, we actually saw that their memory function improved.
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
Chapter 3: How do blood biomarkers differ between young and old individuals?
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Tony Weiss-Corey. Dr. Tony Weiss-Corey is a professor of neurology at Stanford School of Medicine and an expert in identifying factors that can help prevent and reverse organ degeneration and aging. Today, we discuss the factors that are present in young blood.
Yes, you heard that right. And the factors that are present in blood after exercise that have been shown to rejuvenate the brain and other tissues in older individuals. Dr. Tony Weiss-Corey's lab has discovered several proteins that are present in high amounts when we are young and that circulate in the blood and that diminish with age.
And if these are supplied to the aged body and brain can reverse key features of aging. including improved cognition, tissue recovery from stress, damage, and more. We also discuss how aging is nonlinear. It does not progress uniformly across the lifespan.
And we discuss the fact that there are certain phases, such as puberty, your early 40s and your early 60s, when aging is accelerated and then slows again. We also discuss how different organs in your body age at different rates and how you can measure that.
Today's discussion is a very important one because so often these days we hear about anti-aging and longevity, but today you're going to hear about the real science of organ rejuvenation. We also are going to talk about the role of sunlight, fasting, hormones, and the use of specific molecular approaches to improve your vitality and health.
We also, of course, discuss exercise and social interactions, but in the context of the specific molecules they release into your blood to promote and enhance health and how you can leverage that information. Tony Weiss-Corey is a celebrated pioneer in the science of these topics because of the rigor he applies to the work.
He's not just talking about some molecule that someday there'll be a drug or some activity that we already know promotes health. He's an avid tool developer for measuring and reversing aging. So today we discuss all of that. And you're sure to come away from the discussion with both tools to improve your immediate and long term health, as well as a deeper understanding of the biology.
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Tony Weiss-Corey.
Dr. Tony Weiss-Corey, welcome. Thank you.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of NAD levels and NMN supplements in aging?
Great to see another Stanford colleague here. You're a true pioneer. Your work is the first work that I heard of where somebody did a serious experiment taking blood from a younger organism, putting it into an older organism and observing very interesting things.
If you would, could you tell us about that experiment and what, if anything, has been done in humans to examine whether young blood, such a loaded term, but young blood can be a rejuvenation factor for the more mature body or brain?
Yeah, so we were actually not the first ones, but we collaborated with the person who in more modern times used this model again. It's called parabiosis, where you have a surgical model where an old and a young mouse are paired, and their circulation allows for exchange of blood from the young to the old animal.
And my colleague who recruited me actually to Stanford, Tom Randall, used this model to study aging of stem cells in the muscle. So he discovered that with old age, the muscle sort of deteriorates and doesn't regenerate. And when he used the mouse, an old mouse, and paired it with a young mouse, and now this young circulation infusing, if you will, the old muscle, he regenerated that muscle.
And it looked almost like a young muscle. And at the same time, he also observed effects in other tissues, including in the brain. And that's when we started to collaborate and explored what could the effects of the brain, of young factors on the brain be.
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Chapter 5: What role does exercise play in enhancing brain function?
And in part, we were also intrigued by that because we had separate studies in humans where we tried to find blood signatures of Alzheimer's disease. And what we noticed is that we could see proteins that were correlated or even predictive of Alzheimer's disease But the most striking difference was between younger and older people.
So we saw that the concentration of their proteins was very different in young people and old people. And when you see something like that in biology, you always ask, is this cause or effect? So do the proteins in our body change because they respond to the aging of the brain, for example, or do they actually drive the aging of the brain?
And here Tom had this model that allowed him to ask that question or that allowed us together to ask that question. Because for the first time, we could take an old brain and we could give factors from a young organism and ask, is that going to change the age of the brain? And that's indeed what it did. So we saw that there are stem cells in the brain of these mice that they got reactivated and
There was less inflammation, more activity that we can measure in the brain with electrical activity of neurons. And then most importantly, we actually saw that their memory function improved. And so to your question, is that relevant for humans? We actually try to translate that and we can talk more about this, where the stage of that field is right now to see whether it can be translated.
Yeah, I would love to hear more about that. I realize in your description that most of us think about blood, of course, delivering oxygen and red blood cells, et cetera, et cetera, but of blood that's drawn as a good source not the only, but a good window into the health status, the age status of an organism, including us.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential risks of stem cell treatments?
But what I'm hearing is that it's also delivering nutrients or proteins of some kind that can Reverse some sort of clock, and we'll get into later whether or not it's an organ-specific clock or a body-wide clock. But I think blood-borne factors, generally, I think of as a readout, not as a medicine. But you're talking about blood-borne factors as medicine.
Yeah. I think that's really the fascinating aspect of this work that over the past few years people started to look at, that many of these proteins and probably other molecules in the blood, they're not just reflecting the status of the body, if you will, but they're actively influencing how it works. And the composition changes dramatically from young to old.
We have this picture that I always like to show when I give a talk about our work, where we have several thousand individuals and we measure 3,000 proteins in them. And then we use collars to show low levels or high levels of proteins. And you see this dramatic change from young people to old people in a way that you can pick one sample and you can say, this person must be about that old.
And we can talk more about what people call clogs. But to your question, yes, there are factors in the blood that clearly can change the function of cells and organs. And what the field is trying to figure out is what are the key ones, which ones could we use to slow down aging or to keep the body healthy as long as you live?
So what has been done in humans in terms of an equivalent or pseudo-equivalent experiment to the parabios experiment you described?
To try to translate that, we started a company, Alkahest, to see whether factors from the blood of individuals could influence, first of all, aging of a mouse brain. So we took blood from young people or old people and injected it into mouse brains so that we could show that could in fact mimic the effects of young mouse blood. So there were similar factors in humans as in mice.
And then we went a step further and worked, collaborated very closely with a company called Griffles, who is producing mice. clinical medicines for hospitals based on plasma donation. So they have centers where volunteers donate plasma and then they pool this and they isolate For example, antibodies.
So if you're immunodeficient or you have cancer therapy and you are immunosuppressed, you will get regular infusions of antibodies that are sourced from healthy people, from these volunteers. Also, if you lose a lot of blood, you may get albumin, which is the main protein in our blood.
So this company had this manufacturing process where they collect thousands of donations and they process it into different medicines. And this allowed us to test these different fractions and see which ones have an effect in the mice. And again, we could find some of them that really were more powerful than others.
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Chapter 7: How can intermittent fasting impact health and longevity?
And they could indeed see that some of the organs looked younger or the body overall looked younger. There's some improvements in function. Not dramatic, but suggesting that there might be something there.
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Chapter 8: How can lifestyle factors influence Alzheimer's disease risk?
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So if you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. I can imagine a situation where there are factors in blood that
that can damage tissues that arise when there's some sort of injury, let's say a heart attack or even a hip fracture, pick an injury. I can also imagine a situation where the blood of very healthy, vigorous, younger organisms is devoid of all of that.
So when I'm thinking about what could be in young blood that could be rejuvenating, I can imagine that there's sort of a possible double dissociation there. That as we get older, we're having little, let's just call them micro injuries that we're not aware of all the time. And that infusing young blood into that person would make them feel better. So you're counteracting the bad stuff.
But there's another picture where you're supplying something that's pro-youthful. Do you know whether or not the proteins that are contained in young blood are inhibiting the damage-induced bad stuff or it's supplying something that is really a kind of a youthful factor? Two different things. Yeah, yeah. And you could see where they'd interact.
But the reason I'm getting granular here is because I think ultimately for a therapeutic ā you'd want to be able to dissociate between these two.
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