Ask the internet for antiaging tips and you’ll find advice ranging from Goop-y frivolities to dangerous shams. “Aging has always been a target for charlatans and snake oil salemen,” says John Newman, a geriatrics researcher at UC San Francisco and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

But as researchers begin to understand how aging works at a molecular level, there’s a glint of promise—and oodles of hype—in new life-­extension treatments.