Can Magic Mushrooms Reverse Aging? Psilocybin Shows Promise

The world is an interesting place. We have mayflies that live for only a day and certain tortoises that can live up to 200 years. And right about in the middle of this are we humans, who are celebrating crossing the 100 mark.

The number of centenarians, those who reach their 100th birthday, is actually rising worldwide. In 2000, there were roughly 151,000 centenarians globally, which tripled to 573,000 by 2020.

According to the United Nations population projections for 2024, there are an estimated 722,000 centenarians worldwide, with Japan leading the way at 146,000, followed by China (60,000), India (48,000), and Thailand (38,000).

The Pew Research Center estimates that by 2054, the global centenarian population could reach nearly 4 million, with China expected to have the largest number of centenarians, followed by the U.S., India, Japan, and Thailand. 

Although a growing number of people live to 100, the vast majority of the population does not. The global average life expectancy is actually just over 70 years as of 2025.

This has ignited interest in a profound question: can we slow down the aging process and help more people live longer, healthier lives?

The Global Race to Slow Human Aging

Slowing down aging is a key area of scientific interest that has broad impacts on human health and medicine.

Aging is a progressive physiological change in an organism that leads to senescence. Senescence is simply the process of growing old. It is a decline in the ability of an organism to adapt to metabolic stress.

In biology, senescence is a process by which a cell ages and stops dividing permanently. Over time, large numbers of senescent cells can build up in tissues throughout the body and may cause inflammation and harm to neighboring healthy cells.

This gradual deterioration of functional characteristics in living organisms is fast becoming a big problem for nations around the world. 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the pace of population aging is currently much faster than in the past. Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world’s population above 60 years is projected to almost double to 22%.

Meanwhile, the UN estimates that by 2080, the global population aged 65 and over will reach 2.2 billion and outnumber children under age 18.

This means that all countries will face major challenges as an aging population places significant economic burdens on them, primarily due to increased healthcare costs, strain on pension systems, and a shrinking workforce, which then leads to slower economic growth, decreased productivity, and potential fiscal instability. 

This situation, combined with people wanting to live longer and be younger, has anti-aging and longevity research getting a lot of interest and investment from corporations, governments, and the public.

In recent years, research into healthy aging and longevity has progressed significantly, but there still isn’t a magical pill, as of yet.

Having said that, there are certain actions people can take to extend their lives.

Daily Longevity Tips: Proven Habits That Extend Life

Researchers around the world have been working on finding a solution to the question of how we can live a long and healthy life for a long time. And what they found is that a regular person can take several measures to achieve this. 

This includes consuming a healthy diet, which is a mix of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and healthy protein sources, while cutting back on processed foods, salt, sugar, alcohol, and tobacco. 

This will help manage your weight, control your cholesterol levels, and manage your blood sugar and blood pressure, all of which contribute to a healthy heart and a younger self.

A few months ago, researchers from the University of Washington and the National University of Natural Medicine meanwhile reported foods like berries, rosemary, turmeric, garlic, green tea, and oolong tea, to be strongly associated with a reduction in epigenetic age, which refers to the biological age of a person’s cells and tissues. 

These foods reduced biological age by an average of two years by enhancing DNA methylation, an epigenetic modification that regulates gene expression, and reducing oxidative stress and inflammation.

Being active is another easy way to reduce your age. You just have to engage in 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. Add some muscle-strengthening activities like weight lifting or resistance training to your routine, and you’re golden.

Another important contributor to your healthy and long life is good sleep. Try to get an average of seven to nine hours of sleep each night.

Just by adopting these simple habits in our daily lives, we can slow down our aging. But this isn’t all. There are more advanced and sophisticated ways to slow down aging as well. 

Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson is among those who are experimenting with new drugs and technology to try to be younger. This, however, costs him about $2 million a year.

As shared by the 47-year-old biohacker in interviews, this expensive and immersive process involves 40 supplements, precision nutrition, exercise, advanced therapies including light therapy, a strict sleep regimen, and constant self-monitoring.

The tech entrepreneur claims that his routine has helped him achieve biological markers that defy his chronological age. As per his claims, he has the lung capacity of an 18-year-old and the heart health of a 37-year-old.

But of course, that’s not something every individual can afford to do, so scientists have been working on finding newer and better ways to slow down aging in the population.

How Science May Rewrite the Rules of Human Aging

In the realm of slowing down aging, the promising avenues have been senescent-cell clearance, genetic and cellular reprogramming, and a cocktail of drugs that target fundamental aging pathways.

Animal models have often shown dramatic lifespan gains, but human trials are still in early stages. Still, significant progress is being made. 

The aging science was first revolutionized when molecular biologist and biogerontologist Cynthia Kenyon showed that altering a single gene could double the lifespan. And since then, we have made several discoveries and conducted many successful experiments.

In 2023, researchers from the University of California, San Diego decoded critical mechanisms behind the aging process and then genetically manipulated them to extend the lifespan of cells. They were able to improve the lifespan by 82% with their synthetic gene oscillator that switches between the two normal paths of aging to slow cell degeneration.

T cells in the body can also be reprogrammed to slow down and even reverse aging, discovered¹ researchers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. They used a mouse model and found that these cells can actually be used to fight off another cell type that increases with the person’s age and causes inflammation.

The team has been researching chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy where T cells are first taken from a person and then altered before being infused back into the same person to fight specific types of cancer, to treat autoimmune diseases and viral infections like HIV and hepatitis C and has found it to be effective in eliminating senescent cells in mice.

Those treated with this therapy to remove senescent cells were found to be getting healthier with reduced weight, improved metabolism, and increased physical activity. Interestingly, the effects were preventive, so when young animals were treated, just once and only in their youth, “they aged better.”

When it comes to animal model breakthroughs, scientist Haim Cohen turned to metabolism’s role in determining the rate of aging with a focus on how the sirtuin-6 (SIRT6) enzyme controls healthy aging. 

For this, he developed transgenic mice overexpressing the SIRT6 enzyme, in order to mimic the effects of calorie restriction, and extended their lifespan by about 30%. The mice aged more slowly, had reduced inflammation, and improved metabolism which is found in young mice.

Earlier this year, researchers at CCM Biosciences developed² activators for the SIRT3 enzyme to restore youthful enzyme activity and are heading toward clinical trials in 2025 itself. 

Scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School, meanwhile, identified interleukin-11 (IL11) as a key driver of aging, linked to increased fat accumulation and muscle loss, which are signs of aging. So, the scientist used anti-IL-11 antibodies in mice that improved fat metabolism, muscle strength, and telomere maintenance.

Now, when it comes to drugs, rapamycin and trametinib have been seen as effective in extending lifespan as well as reducing cancer risk.

Researchers have also found³ rilmenidine, a common medication for hypertension, has impressive anti-aging effects in Caenorhabditis elegans worms. The medication works by imitating the effects of caloric restriction at the cellular level.

Psilocybin: A New Path to Youth

While the drugs and changes at the cellular and genetic level are still in the experimental stage, many different vitamins, proteins, and compounds are already effective in protecting your body from damage caused by age-related issues. 

This includes vitamin C, vitamin E, curcumin (derived from the underground stems of the turmeric plant), collagen, and omega-3 fatty acids.

The list now has a new addition: psilocybin. 

That’s right, the very compound that’s found in psychedelic mushrooms and is used for recreational purposes and studied to treat anxiety, depression, addiction, and Alzheimer’s is now being actively investigated for extending our lifespans.

Researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine have found psilocybin to be helpful in increasing both cellular and organismal lifespans.

The naturally occurring psychedelic compound psilocybin has been getting a lot of attention in the medical and scientific community lately, thanks to considerable clinical evidence for its therapeutic potential to treat various psychiatric and neurodegenerative indications.

Psilocybin is a potent serotonergic agonist (substances that activate serotonin receptors) that interacts with the serotonin receptor 5-HT2A, which is expressed in multiple organs and cell types, including fibroblasts, T-cells, cardiomyocytes, neurons, epithelial, endothelial, and macrophages.

Human studies have shown that just a single dose of psilocybin can improve both debilitating physical and psychological symptoms, and that too for several years.

The focus surrounding psilocybin, however, has been mainly on neurological impacts and behavioral outcomes, with few studies assessing alternative or systemic mechanisms that may also contribute to its beneficial effects.

“There have been a number of clinical studies that have explored the therapeutic potential of psilocybin in psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety; however, few studies have evaluated its impacts outside the brain.”

– Senior study author Dr. Louise Hecker, associate professor of medicine, cardiovascular research at Baylor

A vast majority of all that we know about this compound, Hecker noted, is about how it impacts the brain. Their study changes that by suggesting that “psilocybin has potent effects on the entire body, including antiaging properties, which also may contribute to the plethora of observed beneficial clinical outcomes.”

Published in Nature Partnering Journal (NPJ) Aging⁴, the study results show that psilocybin reduced multiple indicators of aging in cells while improving survival in aged mice at the same time. In particular, psilocybin treatment preserves the length of the telomere.

Telomeres are protective caps of DNA and are located at the ends of chromosomes. They prevent chromosome ends from fraying, sticking together, or being mistaken for damaged DNA, hence maintaining genomic stability. 

Now, each time a cell divides, the telomeres become a bit shorter until the cell can’t divide successfully any longer, and then it dies.

So, as we age, telomeres naturally shorten, which is a classic hallmark of aging. However, the latest research suggests that psilocybin treatment can be effective in maintaining their length, thereby contributing to the extension of cellular life.

This makes sense given that clinical depression has been shown to accelerate aging⁵ and telomere shortening⁶, while positive mental states are associated⁷ with longer telomeres, though no studies have investigated the direct impact of psilocybin on biological aging.

To study the impact, the latest study used psilocin, psilocybin’s active metabolite that gets formed upon the breakdown of the compound after ingestion.

In human cells, the team actually found a 10 μM of psilocin treatment resulting in a 29% extension of cellular lifespan, while a high dose had a “more striking” effect. The 100 μM treatment extended cellular lifespan up to 57% by delaying cellular senescence, preserving telomere length, and reducing oxidative stress levels.

In aged mice (19-month-old mice are roughly equivalent to 60 human years), the study found psilocybin to significantly improve survival compared to control mice. Improvements in the quality, indicating healthier aging, were also noted by the team.

“This is a very exciting and clinically relevant finding that suggests that even when intervention is initiated late in life, it can have dramatic impacts.”

– Study’s lead author Dr. Kosuke Kato, an assistant professor of medicine-pulmonary at Baylor

Additionally, the findings suggest that the treatment leads to elevated SIRT1, which points to improved DNA damage responses. There was also decreased Growth Arrest and DNA Damage-inducible 45 alpha (GADD45a) levels.

“Our findings open an exciting new chapter in psychedelic research beyond its neurological and psychological benefits. Psilocybin may represent a disruptive agent that promotes healthy aging. The next steps need to explore the therapeutic effects across multiple age-related diseases.” 

– Hecker

While a big achievement, the study needs further research for the findings to be validated in human studies, and once that’s achieved, psilocybin can offer new ways for healthy aging. According to Kato:

“There is still a lot to understand, including optimal dosing protocols that will lead to maximal efficacy. We also need to better understand the potential risks of long-term psilocybin treatment before this type of treatment is ready for public use.”

Investing in Psilocybin

One of the ways to invest in the magical potential of psilocybin is through the $177 million market cap Cybin Inc (CYBN ) 

The Canada-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company creates psychedelic-based therapeutics for mental health conditions. It is currently developing a proprietary deuterated psilocin analog, CYB003, which is in Phase 3 studies for the adjunctive treatment of MDD. CYB004 is its proprietary deuterated N, N-dimethyltryptamine molecule, and it’s in a Phase 2 study for generalized anxiety disorder. Cybin also has a research pipeline of investigational, 5-HT-receptor-focused compounds.

As of writing, the shares of CYBN are trading at $7.7, down 13.83% YTD. It has an EPS (TTM) of -22.95 and a P/E (TTM) of -0.33.

For its fiscal year ended March 31, 2025, Cybin reported a net loss of C$113 million (about $82.5 million) while operating expenses consisting of research, general, and administrative costs were C$100 million ($730K). Cash flows used in operating activities were C$101 million. The company reported having C$135 million ($nearly $100 mln) in cash at the end of the period.

“During the past 12 months, we have continued to focus on building out the strong foundation that underpins the clinical and regulatory milestones we anticipate in the coming year.”

– CEO Doug Drysdale

Cybin is currently committed to the potential approval and commercialization of its two leading programs: CYB003 and CYB004. To accelerate its clinical goals, it has also entered into several strategic collaborations, including with Osmind and Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO ).

Click here for a list of the top five life longevity companies.

Latest Cybin Inc (CYBN) Stock News and Developments

Conclusion

Over the last century, medical innovations and discoveries have enabled us to live longer. However, as the global population lives longer, the challenge is not merely more years but rather more quality years. Science has shown that aging is driven by cellular deterioration, inflammation, and metabolic decline, and these can be slowed with the right interventions.

While diet, exercise, and sleep form the foundation of a healthier life, breakthroughs in genetics, immunotherapy, and pharmacology are now offering deeper, more systemic ways to extend youth.

Among these, psilocybin has emerged as a surprising candidate. The latest study has showcased psilocybin’s benefits beyond just neurological and psychological effects, potentially influencing systemic aging processes. While still early, the results of psilocybin treatment on aging are profound. This magical compound may not only change how we think, but soon, how we age.

References:

1. Amor, C.; Fernández-Maestre, I.; Chowdhury, S.; et al. Prophylactic and Long-Lasting Efficacy of Senolytic CAR T Cells Against Age-Related Metabolic Dysfunction. Nat. Aging 2024, 4, 336–349. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-023-00560-5
2. Guan, X.; Dumpati, R. K.; Munshi, S.; Chall, S.; Bose, R.; Rahnamoun, A.; Reverdy, C.; Errasti, G.; Delacroix, T.; Ghosh, A.; Chakrabarti, R. Computationally Driven Discovery and Characterization of SIRT3-Activating Compounds That Fully Recover Catalytic Activity under NAD⁺ Depletion. Phys. Rev. X 2024, 14, 041019. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.14.041019
3. Bennett, D. F.; Goyala, A.; Statzer, C.; Beckett, C. W.; Tyshkovskiy, A.; Gladyshev, V. N.; Ewald, C. Y.; de Magalhães, J. P. Rilmenidine Extends Lifespan and Healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans via a Nischarin I1-Imidazoline Receptor. Aging Cell 2023, 22, e13774. https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.13774
4. Kato, K.; Kleinhenz, J. M.; Shin, Y. J.; et al. Psilocybin Treatment Extends Cellular Lifespan and Improves Survival of Aged Mice. npj Aging 2025, 11, 55. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41514-025-00244-x
5. Lorenzo, E. C.; Kuchel, G. A.; Kuo, C.-L.; Moffitt, T. E.; Diniz, B. S. Major Depression and the Biological Hallmarks of Aging. Ageing Res. Rev. 2022, 83, 101805. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2022.101805
6. Vakonaki, E.; Tsiminikaki, K.; Plaitis, S.; Fragkiadaki, P.; Tsoukalas, D.; Katsikantami, I.; Vaki, G.; Tzatzarakis, M. N.; Spandidos, D. A.; Tsatsakis, A. M. Common Mental Disorders and Association with Telomere Length. Biomed. Rep. 2018, 8, 111–116. https://doi.org/10.3892/br.2018.1040
7. Palanisamy, S.; McFarlane, J. The Relationship Between Positive Psychological Characteristics and Longer Telomeres. Psychol. Health 2016, 31, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2016.1226308