Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@drdeepsea
Topics: US News, Guinness World Record
Rikki Loftus
A man who spent a record-breaking 100 days living underwater says the experience made him 'younger'.
The scientist challenged himself to spend 100 days 30-feet under a Florida lagoon, where he lived in a small 9m by 9m room that he had to scuba dive to get to - earning himself a Guinness World Record in the process.
But the bizarre living situation wasn't just a bit of fun for Dr. Joseph Dituri - he wanted to see how his body would react and he even ended up discovering a 'brand new species'.
Dr. Dituri closely monitored how the long-term extreme pressure was affecting him and, when he wasn't working on that, he taught school kids online from his watery digs.
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During his time underwater from March to June 2023, the scientist and formal naval officer was also closely monitored by medical, psychological, and psychosocial experts.
His goal was to research a new type of medicine that can help deliver oxygen to the human body under high pressures by helping it grow new blood vessels.
Just one month into his experiment, Dr. Dituri and his team even discovered a species - a single-celled organism that is now being studied by microbiologists.
Talking to The Independent at the time from his underwater tank room, Dr. Dituri said: "We believe [it] is a brand new species to science.
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"People have dived in this area thousands and thousands of times - it’s been here, we just didn’t look."
When he resurfaced in June last year, the scientist claimed that a lot of areas of his health had improved, including longer telomeres - which are structures on chromosomes that are often linked to extending life.
Dr. Dituri told WKMG News in Orlando: "I'm 56 now. My extrinsic [biological] age was 44. When I got out of the water, my extrinsic age was 34.
"So, my telomeres lengthened. I actually got younger when I was under the water."
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A press release from last year added: "Part of the work will see a psychologist and a psychiatrist monitor the effects he experiences while in an environment similar to extended space travel.
"It's an isolating confined extreme environment. And as humans, we really need to figure out how we're going to be living in that (environment) if we're going to expand our planet, if we're going to go interplanetary, if we're going to find all the cures that we need to find."
When he emerged from his underwater mission last June, Dr. Dituri claimed that blood tests showed a 50 percent reduction in every inflammatory marker in his body.
The scientist also became a Guinness World Record holder for the most days spent living underwater, beating the old record of 73 days.