Youth pills, hawked online, win over top scientists

[Guest guest]

> Grapes and red wine al­so con­tain res­ver­a­trol (see chart),

> but far too lit­tle for these prod­ucts to con­fer

> the dra­ma­tic life­span boost seen in an­i­mal stud­ies,

>re­search­ers say.

My vote is for Concord grape juice and a Solgar grapeseed extract.

Carol

willis_protocols

[Guest guest]

On Saturday 10 February 2007 3:22 pm, cbwillis9 wrote:

> > Grapes and red wine al­so con­tain res­ver­a­trol (see chart),

> > but far too lit­tle for these prod­ucts to con­fer

> > the dra­ma­tic life­span boost seen in an­i­mal stud­ies,

> >re­search­ers say.

>

> My vote is for Concord grape juice and a Solgar grapeseed extract.

The grapes and grape juice sounds yummy. Unfortunately, I have to limit my

intake of grape juice (100 % concord) to 2 glasses or less or I'll need to

take something to " slow down " the digestive results therefrom. Grapeseed

extract, several brands, have always given me the " runs " . Thankfully, I can

take red wine extract and resveratrol without problems.

The Life Extension Foundation just came out with an article the tried to make

the case that 20 mg/day of resveratrol is enough to get most of the benefits.

On the other hand, several recent animal studies make a case for a much

higher amount, 5 to 20 mg/kg/day. I'm currently taking 5.3 mg/kg/day.

--

Steve - dudescholar3@...

" Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert

integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the

creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. "

--Cecil Beaton

[Guest guest]

" Youth " pills, hawked online, win over top scientists

Feb. 9, 2007

By Jack Lucentini

Updated Feb. 12

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/070206_resveratrol.htm

For cen­turies, shady sales­men have pushed nos­trums claimed to con­quer that

eter­nal scourge, ag­ing. Vir­tu­al­ly all have been gar­bage. Chi­na's king

Zhao Mei may have even died from his own " im­mor­tal­ity pills " 2,000 years ago,

ar­chae­o­lo­g­ists say.

But one brand of pills hawked on the In­ter­net as con­tain­ing

" youth-pro­long­ing " mo­le­cules has a cu­ri­ous dis­tinc­tion.

A Har­vard Med­i­cal School bi­ol­o­gist who is a lead­ing ex­pe­rt on ag­ing

takes them dai­ly, per­suaded by his own re­search that they may work,

ac­cord­ing to peo­ple fa­mil­iar with his ac­tiv­i­ties. He also once served as

con­sul­tant to the pills' maker, but said he did so at no charge.

A small but grow­ing band of peo­ple, hear­ing of his use of the pills, has

fol­lowed his lead in hopes of liv­ing long­er and more vig­or­ous­ly-as have a

di­verse ar­ray of an­i­mals on which the pills' key in­gre­di­ent has been

tested. A No­bel-prize win­ning phys­i­cist counts him­self among the con­verts.

The cap­sules in ques­tion are called Lon­ge­vi­nex (longevinex.com).

The Har­vard re­search­er, Da­vid Sin­clair, has said in in­ter­views that he

takes sup­ple­ments con­tain­ing the in­gre­di­ent, called res­ver­a­t­rol. But

he wouldn't spe­ci­fy which of the more than 20 avail­ab­le brands he takes, or

ad­vise their use to oth­ers. The med­i­cal school's rules for­bid do­ing that,

an ar­ti­cle in the June 22, 2004 Har­vard Ga­z­ette said.

None­the­less, three peo­ple fa­mil­iar with Sin­clair's ac­tiv­i­ties said his

brand of choice has been Lon­ge­vi­nex.

Grapes and red wine al­so con­tain res­ver­a­trol (see chart), but far too

lit­tle for these prod­ucts to con­fer the dra­ma­tic life­span boost seen in

an­i­mal stud­ies, re­search­ers say. None­the­less, even mod­er­ate al­co­hol

drink­ing is tied to slight­ly high­er life­span in hu­mans, ac­cord­ing to a

study in the Dec. 11-25 is­sue of the jour­nal Ar­chives of In­ter­nal

Med­i­cine.

But pills may have much more res­ver­a­trol, so some peo­ple want them-though

their ef­fects are lit­tle stud­ied, and how the sub­stance works is still

de­bated.

Confusion has set in among po­ten­tial buy­ers of these sup­ple­ments, thanks to

a slew of com­pet­ing and con­t­ra­dic­to­ry claims from the man­u­fac­tur­ers.

The si­lence from Sin­clair, pe­r­haps the best-known re­search­er of

res­ver­a­trol's ef­fects, has­n't helped. He de­clined to com­ment for this

ar­ti­cle.

Enigmatic tests

A few years ago, Sin­clair con­ducted tests that sug­gested Lon­ge­vi­nex worked

far bet­ter than a doz­en com­pet­ing prod­ucts, ac­cord­ing to a news ar­ti­cle

in the Feb. 27, 2004 is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Sci­ence. De­tails of the

res­ults haven't been pub­lished or op­ened to the wid­er sci­en­tif­ic

com­mu­ni­ty's scru­ti­ny.

Around then, Sin­clair has said he al­so served as a con­sult­ant to

Lon­ge­vi­nex's maker; all this took place dur­ing the pro­duct's

de­ve­lop­ment, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny pre­si­dent. But Sin­clair

an­nounced in a mail­ing at the end of 2003 that he had cut the tie be­cause the

com­pa­ny had used his name in pub­li­city. He lat­er launched his own

com­pa­ny, Sir­t­ris, to de­vel­op a re­lat­ed pre­scrip­tion prod­uct.

Nonetheless, he keeps tak­ing the pre­s­crip­tion-free Lon­ge­vi­nex,

ac­cord­ing to an e­mail at­trib­ut­ed to him by Jus­tin Loew, treas­ur­er of

the Im­mor­tal­i­ty In­sti­tute, a San Fran­cis­co-based non-pro­fit group that

pro­motes anti-ag­ing re­search.

Last No­vem­ber, Loew said in an on­line fo­rum that Sin­clair had e­mailed him:

" I take 4 pills of lon­ge­vi­nex with bfast and 4 at din­ner, but I don't

rec­om­mend an­y­one else take any res­ver­a­trol pills un­til we know more. "

(Note: late last month, the man­u­fac­tur­er raised the amount of res­ver­a­trol

per cap­sule, so Sin­clair's re­ported eight pills would be equi­va­lent to 3.2

now. Ei­ther way, his re­port­ed re­gi­men amounts to about 320 mg dai­ly. Three

pills daily would cost about $3.50 a day cur­rent­ly.)

Bill Sardi, pres­ident of Res­ver­a­trol Part­ners LLC, maker of Lon­ge­vi­nex,

con­firmed Loew's ac­count. Sin­clair told The New York Times in ear­ly

No­vem­ber that he has used res­ver­a­trol for three years-about the same length

of time Lon­ge­vi­nex has ex­isted. He added that his wife, par­ents, and ''half

my lab'' of two doz­en mem­bers pop res­ver­a­trol too.

To some ob­servers, the bets Sin­clair makes for his own body are far more

per­sua­sive than any rec­om­mendations or non-rec­om­mend­a­tions he might have

for the rest of us. " Sin­clair is a Har­vard dude, okay? " one user of the Web

fo­rum wrote. " We can de­bate all day, but the proof that the guy takes the

stuff is good enough for me. "

A si­m­i­lar sen­ti­ment, ex­pressed more re­served­ly, came from a 2004 No­bel

Lau­re­ate in physics, Wilczek of the Mas­sa­chu­setts In­sti­tute of

Tech­nol­o­gy in Cam­bridge, Mass. He said he takes Lon­ge­vi­nex. That

Sin­clair uses it was " cer­tainly one of the things that im­pressed me, " he

added, as did a re­cent study on res­ver­a­trol by Sin­clair in the re­search

jour­nal Na­ture. While not a bio­lo­gist, " I know how to read cri­ti­cal­ly, "

Wilczek added; as far as the pills go, " there does­n't seem to be much

pos­si­ble down­side, and the up­side is very con­si­der­able. "

Not ever­yone agrees.

A downside?

" The right place now with res­ver­a­trol is to say that this is real­ly

in­tri­guing da­ta, but mice aren't hu­mans, " Brent Bau­er, di­rec­tor of the

com­ple­men­ta­ry and in­te­gra­tive med­i­cine pro­gram at the Mayo Clin­ic in

Roch­es­ter, Minn., told The Wall Street Jour­nal in late No­vem­ber, af­ter the

lat­est spate of ma­jor res­ver­a­trol stud­ies were pub­lished.

" Do we know the right dos­age? No. Do we know the side ef­fects? No. Do we know

if there are po­ten­tial con­tam­i­nants? No, " said Tod Coope­rman, pres­ident

of consumerlab.com, a pro­vid­er of in­de­pend­ent test re­sults, in a

Na­tion­al Pub­lic Ra­di­o in­ter­view in No­vem­ber. " Per­son­ally, I would

wait. "

Res­ver­a­trol has been tied to both great­er life­span and vig­or in an­i­mals.

Since 2003, it has been found to ex­tend life­span in worms and flies by near­ly

30 pe­rcent; fish and yeast by al­most 60 pe­rcent; and obese mice by an

es­ti­mat­ed 15 pe­rcent, though that stu­dy, by Sin­clair and col­leagues, is

un­fin­ished.

Hope that hu­mans might ben­e­fit sim­i­larly stems from the con­sist­en­cy of

the an­i­mal re­sults, and the fact that hu­mans and other an­i­mals are

ge­net­i­cal­ly close­ly re­lat­ed. Nine­ty-nine pe­rcent of genes are

si­m­i­lar in mice and hu­mans, for ex­am­ple.

But res­ver­a­trol's ef­fects on hu­man life­span are un­known be­cause our

rel­a­tively long life­spans make stud­ies dif­fi­cult. Some an­ec­do­tal

re­ports have suf­ficed to raise eye­brows, though. Sardi said some us­ers of

his pro­duct have re­ported some re­ver­sal of hair gray­ing. An ed­i­tor of

World Sci­ence (which has no ties to anyone sel­ling res­ver­a­trol) tried it

and ex­per­i­enced the same thing.

As far as ill effects, re­search­ers say the jury is out, but no­thing has

raised alarms yet. " About 10,000 peo­ple in this coun­try take this prod­uct

with no ap­par­ent side ef­fects, " the Har­vard Ga­zette ar­ti­cle quoted

Sin­clair say­ing.

Compared to what Sin­clair re­portedly takes, fish and mice in the lon­gev­i­ty

stud­ies got doses rough­ly five to se­ven times high­er-ad­just­ing for their

weight-with no re­ported prob­lems. In rat stud­ies, re­search­ers found that

they had to mul­t­i­ply those high­er doses again, by some­where be­tween 10 and

30, for harm­ful ef­fects to become evi­dent. But no long-term safe­ty stud­ies

have been done in hu­mans, or with spe­cif­ic com­mer­cial prod­ucts. Sardi

re­com­mends that his not be taken by grow­ing chil­dren or preg­nant wo­men, or

sim­ul­ta­neous­ly with other med­i­ca­tions.

Just why Sin­clair's tests evi­dent­ly fa­vored Sar­di's prod­uct is un­clear.

Sar­di has com­missioned some tests of his own, with si­mi­lar re­sults, but

us­ing a meth­o­dol­ogy whose mer­its sci­ent­ists have since de­bated.

Sar­di says his ad­van­tage is that his cap­sules are spe­cial­ly made to keep

the mo­le­cule stable, and com­pe­ti­tors' aren't. But a June 2005 study in the

jour­nal Chem­i­cal and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Bul­let­in tested five com­pe­t­ing

brands and found that they con­tained close to the la­beled amounts of

res­ve­r­a­t­rol; the mak­ers ap­pa­rent­ly hadn't lied about the con­tent.

Sar­di coun­ters that his and Sin­clair's tests as­sessed not only the

res­ver­a­trol con­tent, but its bio­lo­g­i­cal ac­t­i­vity. The is­sue re­mains

un­re­solved.

Betz-a com­pet­i­tor of Sardi's and gen­er­al ma­na­ger of Bio­ti­via

Bio­ceu­ti­cals (bioflu.com)-said he be­lieves Sardi and Sin­clair may have, or

have had, a " fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ship. "

Sin­clair wrote in his 2003 mail­ing that he " never re­ceived any mon­ey " from

Sar­di's firm. But he did­n't say whe­ther he might have been com­pen­sated in

other ways, such as dis­count­ed pills. Was he? Sardi, asked that this week,

be­came en­raged and re­fused to an­s­wer. His company lawyer,

Au­gus­tine, said there was no com­pen­sa­tion of any kind, and that Sar­di may

have reacted ang­ri­ly be­cause " He hears that all the time... At some point it

got to him. "

Oth­er mar­keters of resveratrol supplements include Bi­o­ti­via, which boasts

the high­est res­ver­a­trol con­tent per pill; and-among those whose

res­ver­a­trol con­tent was veri­fied in the 2005 study-Food Sci­ence of

Ver­mont (fslabs.com); Nu­tra­ceu­ti­cal (nutraceutical.com) and Source

Nat­u­rals (sourcenaturals.com).