Can Eating Buckyball-Infused Olive Oil Prolong Your Lifespan?

Gray Whiskers stacey.d via Flickr With their strange 60-atom structures, buckyballs could have potential as drug carriers, medical tracers, cancer fighters and other interesting applications in the human body, but studies examining their impact on the body have had mixed results. A group of French researchers set out to study its toxicity and other effects, and came up with a surprising find - not only are buckyballs safe, a buckyball diet doubled the lifespan of lab rats. It's a limited study, and the longer-lasting rats could be the result of a calorie-restricted diet instead, as some skeptics have pointed out. But it raises some interesting questions about the potential health benefits of buckyballs. Computer simulations and other studies have shown buckyballs - more specifically, the fullerene known as C60 - are soluble in fat and can cross cell membranes, which is one reason why they could be useful as drug carriers...

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