HARVESTING the blood of the young in a quest to stay eternally youthful may sound like the plot of a horror film – but it is the reality for a youth-obsessed elite desperate to halt the march of time.

Within the walls of luxury wellness clinics, ageing CEOs and tech gurus are jabbing their genitals full of fluids which they believe contain the secret to – or at least better skin.

Headshot of a smiling bald man in a white linen shirt.Dr Daniel Stickler, 60, says he feels better now than he did at 40 Credit: daniel stickler/apeiron center Female track and field athletes walking on sunny trackPlasma from the blood of young college athletes is particularly desirable Credit: Getty

Young plasma exchange therapy is the latest anti-ageing craze to sweep image-conscious America – and it could soon reach Britain.

It involves draining your body of blood plasma – and then pumping in up to three litres of fresh replacement, collected from young elite athletes from colleges across the US.

The controversial treatment has not been approved by the US health watchdog the FDA – and only one blood bank in the world is licensed to sell plasma from 18-25 year olds.

Health authorities are “not aware of evidence” that the therapy is effective, the FDA said.

But websites offering young plasma therapy boast of “miraculous” transformations.

Wellness clinic Apeiron, in Texas, shows hypnotic videos of sunbeams dancing through desert ravines.

“Ageing doesn’t need to be a process of slow and painful decay” the website soothes viewers.

You can still keep your “mental edge” and “enjoy your next era” with the help of eager young donors – tested for superior health and fitness.

NINTCHDBPICT001103288512Youth-obsessed billionaires believe the secret to long life is contained in bags of plasma Credit: Getty Exterior of the Thrive Medicine Clinic, a modern building with a wood facade and a white gable roof.A single treatment at Thrive Medicine costs between $30,000 and $50,000 Credit: GooglemAPS

Dr Phillip Gallegos of Thrive Medicine – a clinic in Texas which offers young plasma exchange therapy – said the treatment is for “people who want to think like James Bond in the business, and then go have great sex, and then exercise”.

He told The Sun that Spectrum Plasma – the world’s only blood bank licensed to sell young plasma – conducts a “barrage of testing” on youngsters before allowing them to donate.

Dr Gallegos said: “They’re taking it [blood plasma] from college students.

“They’re really looking and trying to target more the athletic college students to be able to donate. They want the highest quality of donor.”

He pointed out: “You don’t want to get substandard plasma for somebody.”

Dr Gallegos, who has done the treatment himself, told The Sun that swapping out one’s plasma is like getting a “systems upgrade”.

“It is one big spectrum we’re trying to fix”, he added.

“Imagine your body is a high-performance car.

NINTCHDBPICT001103290192Dr Rhet Langley and Dr Phillip Gallegos were initially sceptical of the unregulated treatmentCredit: Refer to Source NINTCHDBPICT000819846654Biohacker Bryan Johnson injected a litre of his teenage son’s blood in his quest for youth Credit: Bryan Johson/INSTAGRAM

“Over the course of decades of driving, the engine oil (your blood plasma) breaks down. It fills with ‘sludge’ inflammatory toxins, cellular waste, and signals that tell your body to decay rather than repair.”

Young plasma therapy drains away the old, toxin-filled “sludge” – and replaces it with fresh blood that is free of cell waste, he claims.

Wellness enthusiasts are micro needled all over, according to Dr Langley of Thrive Medicine.

“We’ll put it all over their body. We’ll even inject it in genitalia.”

Young plasma contains trillions of youth-boosting exosomes – microscopic bubbles that act as messengers between cells.

They are critical in reversing the ageing process because they can spur cells into rejuvenation, say experts.

Older plasma has significantly fewer exosomes – and so cells do not repair and replenish as quickly.

But with a Vampire-style swap, teen-harvested exosomes signal to the cells of a 70-year-old that they are much younger and urge the cells to replenish.

At least, that’s what proponents of the treatment claim.

“What you see initially is that the person is kind of flat, tired, their skin doesn’t look all that great. They just look dull, the normal things that go with ageing” said Dr Gallegos, describing a newcomer to Thrive Medicine.

“Within the three days that they’re at the clinic, they walk out, they’re more vibrant, they’re walking quicker. Their skin looks a lot brighter and they just feel great.”

They have just replaced up to 70 per cent of their elderly blood plasma with that of an 18-25 year old.

Between 18 and 25 is “the goldilocks time in human physiology”, explained Dr Dan Stickler, co-founder of wellness clinic Apeiron Center.

Cash-strapped college students can give blood – from which plasma is extracted before being pumped back into the body – and pocket £73 ($100) per donation.

“Plasma donations can teach young adults basic rules of kindness, respect for their elders, and cooperation”, claimed CEO of Spectrum Plasma Tom Casey.

Back at the clinic, ageing tycoons will shell out between £22,000 ($30,000) and £36,600 ($50,000) per injection – a treatment which will last around four months.

Some clients at Thrive Medicine undergo five treatments a year – totalling £183,000 ($250,000) worth of annual plasma therapies.

Chemotherapy/infusoin system in the hospital.Students donate blood which is filtered of plasma and then pumped back into their bodies Credit: Getty NINTCHDBPICT000819850719Over three or four days, the client will steadily replace their blood plasma Credit: Not known, clear with picture desk

The doctors themselves also take part in the bizarre blood exchange. “I do it all the time”, said Dr Stickler, 60, laughing.

“I feel healthier now than I did at 40”, he added.

He said: “I run anywhere from five to seven years younger than my chronological age.”

One retired real-estate tycoon, 75, told Dr Gallegos that of all the biohacks he has tried, “the things that I notice the most is the young plasma”.

Dermatologists were reportedly left amazed at his skin quality, saying: “How is your skin quality, the elastin, the collagen, as good as it is? I don’t usually see this in somebody that’s 75. Usually, it’s paper thin.”

In 2023, notorious biohacker and tech CEO pumped a litre of his 17-year-old son’s plasma into his body to reverse ageing.

The self-proclaimed “rejuvenation athlete” – who pops over 100 pills a day to stay young – later rejected the treatment and said on X in 2025: “I am no longer injecting my son’s blood.”

The FDA have not approved the use of young plasma for anti-ageing treatments and use of fresh frozen plasma remains unregulated.

“We are not aware of evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of these uses”, states a notice on their website .

Doctors carrying out young plasma therapy rely on anecdotal stories to back up their claims.

Dr Gallegos of Thrive clinic said the private driver who shuttles ultra-rich clients from the airport to the clinic and back again reportedly told him: “I don’t know what you’re doing in there but these people leave completely different.”

But another doctor confessed: “There’s just not been enough volume of research.”

Test trials of young plasma therapy have been conducted on rats – but none have been completed in humans.

Clinicians must tread a careful line between fact and fiction when peddling the elixir of youth.

“We can’t say that it treats anything” admitted Dr Phillip Gallegos, adding that they were working to get young plasma therapy approved by the FDA.

Nonetheless, he claims that plasma is “a life-giving substance”.

“At first, we were hesitant about doing it”, he confessed, pointing out that at the time, many people delivering young plasma “weren’t even qualified”.

The doctor told The Sun that many clinics operate rogue – with little to no understanding of how to treat clients.

He said: “You see a lot of misunderstanding about how to practise in general so there are a lot of clinics engaging that do not understand fluid dynamics, don’t understand how to deliver blood products.”

Doctors Gallegos and Langley were ultimately persuaded by what they saw as the “naturalness” of the treatment, seeing it as just “common sense”.

“It’s in your blood – we use that to heal everyday”, explained Dr Langley.

It is no coincidence that both Apeiron and Thrive clinics are based in Texas – the site of the world’s only blood bank which collects plasma from donors aged 18 to 25.

“We’ve had people come from Europe, we’ve had people come from across the world to get this because it is very difficult to get in a commercial setting”, said Dr Langley.

Some clients have even asked about bringing in their own young donor, he added.

He said: “These are ultra-wealthy people. They’re like: ‘I want my own donor’ and we’re like ‘great’.”

Both he and his partner Dr Gallegos believe young plasma exchange therapy is effective despite the lack of statistical evidence in humans.

Dr Gallegos said: “Having done it myself, I would say if I were to use one word for myself it would be resiliency, the ability to bounce back from a 24 hour shift as if I were 30.”

And Dr Stickler of Apeiron clinic said that his clients “all keep coming back for it. So they are getting subjective feelings of improvement for sure.”