Re: Report on Harvard's Healthy Aging Conference - opinions welcome

[Guest guest]

IMO, the " report " is just a long-winded commercial advertisement for Longevinex.

Searching for " Longevinex " , I found the following announcement for a clinical

trial to determine if Longevinex, which contains resveratrol, has any effect on

Alzheimer's disease:

(http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00743743)

I have recently read that 80% of longevity is due to genetics and the rest can

be influenced by lifestyle. As far as supplements, I think that Vitamin D may

give you more longevity for your dollar than resveratrol.

Tony

>

> An e-mail to subscribers from:

> " Longevinex " info@...� (10/01/09)

> �

> Commentary on Harvard Medical School's Aging & Healthy Lifespan Conference:

Dare I be so candid to say that longevity researchers may be slowing progress

towards the discovery of the fountain of youth? Of course, everybody slants

their predictions and science to fit their desires, not humanity's. Drug company

execs want humanity to wait for their drug, and researchers would rather the

fountain of youth be discovered after they have retired so as to ensure they

will have a lifetime of research grants.

> �

> Surprisingly " indefinite lifespan " advocate Aubrey de Grey says the fountain

of youth is still decades from realization and MIT professor Leonard Guarente

says it will take 100 years before humanity discovers how to add another 25

healthy years to the human lifespan.

> �

> Don't tell the French that the fountain of youth has not been invented yet.

The legions of French centenarians have grown from 8000 in the year 2000 to

20,000 in 2008. The French are finally learning to abandon tobacco but continue

drinking their dark, aged red wine, which provides an array of molecules that

outperform the best anti-aging pill invented to date.

> �

> All the talk of a single molecule like resveratrol prolonging human life, or

even the lifespan of laboratory mice, has yet to be demonstrated. Only mice

engorged with a high-fat (60% fat calories) lived a bit longer when given

resveratrol, and high-dose resveratrol actually shortened the life of lab

animals on a standard-calorie (25% fat calories) diet. In a human study, all

that 5000 mg of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals highly touted SRT501 resveratrol drug

could do was modestly reduce blood sugar levels two hours after ingestion of a

meal.

> de Grey touts the mitochondrial theory of aging, which cannot be denied and

which he was not the first to describe, but fails to recognize experiments done

in animal labs years ago already demonstrated how to reverse biological aging

using metal chelators to eradicate lipofuscin, the cellular debris that

progressively accumulates in living cells.

> �

> Lipofuscin is believed to be the first marker of aging, accumulating soon

after childhood growth has ceased (~age 18 years). Such an intervention

reinvigorates the cell cleansing mechanism of autophagy (lysosomal bodies within

living cells literally cannibalize cellular garbage), thus restoring a youthful

state to the cell.

> �

> Verily, a soon-to-be-published paper written by Stuart Richer OD, PhD, of the

North Chicago Veterans Medical Center, describes a non-invasive method to

measure lipofuscin in humans (retinal imaging) and presents the case of an

80-year old man given a mineral-chelating nutriceutical (Longevinex) which

correlated with measurable improvement in visual function and the disappearance

of lipofuscin. This proof-of-principle study suggests a day in the not too

distant future when humans can determine their biological age and utilize

mineral-chelators to reverse the clock-hands of biological time.

> Albeit, before a middle-aged man will ever meet a 40-ish looking woman who has

actually had 92 birthdays, as researcher Kenyon predicts, researchers

are going to have to reach beyond cellular aging to understand what causes

connective tissue to degrade -- resulting in wrinkled skin, thinning hair and

stiff joints. To this end, technologies which promote youthful production of

hyaluronan, the body's water-holding gel that insulates nerves, cushions joints,

moistures skin, and serves as a scaffolding for the body, will have to be

addressed.

>

> Humanity need not hold its breath for an anti-aging pill. The mechanisms that

control longevity genes via mineral chelation are now reasonably understood.

There is no other explanation given as to why the human body ages at three

different speeds:

> �

>

> childhood growth -- no cellular aging correlated with minerals directed

towards growth of bone, collagen and red blood cells;

> post-growth adulthood -- progressive aging with accumulative mineralization;

> late life reduction in the rate of aging correlated with reaching a steady

state of mineralization.

> So far, the over-mineralization theory of aging has not been challenged.

>

> The French have their red wine, the Japanese their green tea and miso soup,

which provide the small molecules that control mineralization and aging.

Americans await a pill.

> Bill Sardi

> �

>

[Guest guest]

perhaps new data would be nice?

Paradoxes in medicine: an access to new knowledge

http://www.bmj.sk/2009/11002-10.pdf

regards