Sleep and it's importance

U.S. researchers suggest a good night's sleep may help fight deterioration due to aging. Researchers at the Oregon State University in Corvallis linked poorer health and earlier deaths to the absence of a key gene controlling the biological clock regulating the sleep cycle. The fruit fly study, published in the journal Aging, found the flies without the gene lived just about as long as normal flies -- unless they were subjected to stress. When the researchers exposed the flies to a mild metabolic stress for 24 hours, they found no change in young flies, but middle-age and older flies showed significant damage beginning to occur. "We're beginning to identify some of the underlying mechanisms that may help explain why organisms age," Natraj Krishnan said in a statement. "This study suggests that young individuals may be able to handle certain stresses, but the same insults at an older age cause genetic damage and appear to lead to health problems and earlier death. And it's linked to biological clocks."

New Hope for Eternal Youth?

NEW YORK, Oct 9, 2009 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- Methuselah Foundation awarded Z. David Sharp, Ph.D. with a special "Mprize" for the first pharmaceutical intervention to successfully extend the life of laboratory mice. The study, published this summer in the journal Nature, showed that when aging mice were given the drug rapamycin, they lived longer than other mice. Dr. Sharp is from the University of Texas.

Methuselah Foundation presented the special Mprize Lifespan Achievement Award to Dr. Sharp at a ceremony on Thursday, October 8th at the Friars Club in New York City. Presenters included Dave Gobel, CEO Methuselah Foundation, Roger Holzberg, CEO My Bridge 4 Life, Huber Warner, University of Minnesota and Keith Murphy, CEO Organovo. Dr. Max Gomez, broadcast journalist, served as emcee for the event.

Dr. Sharp said he was "honored, thrilled and humbled by this recognition." He went on to thank Methuselah Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board and its Board of Directors for this "tremendous honor."

Dave Gobel, CEO of the Foundation said, "Methuselah Foundation is happy to honor Dr. Sharp's work because it begins to shed light on the potential for late-onset interventions via a pharmaceutical and has the potential for some very positive public messaging about the importance of aging research."

Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit medical charity dedicated to extending healthy human life. Supported by the donations of individuals and organizations, the programs of Methuselah Foundation include near, mid and long term strategies that advance the mission of ending age-related disease through awareness, education, scientific research and direct community outreach. For more information please go to: www.methuselahfoundation.org

Live Past 100!

Cutting-edge research is revealing the power of a “master antioxidant” – a tripeptide molecule called glutathione (GSH).

People with the highest levels of GSH are the ones who routinely live past 100. Plus, it may prevent a host of chronic diseases like arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer and diabetes – just to name a few.

Best of all, boosting your levels of GSH is easy. Today, I’ll give you an effective strategy that may add decades to your life. I’ll tell you exactly how to get the most powerful forms of GSH and how much to take.

When scientists at the University of Louisville gave mosquitoes a GSH booster, their levels went up by 50 to 100 percent. And, their life spans increased by a remarkable 30 to 38 percent.1

Doctors at the Montreal General Hospital Research Institute in Canada then repeated the experiment with mice. They were able to duplicate the results – boosting levels of GSH and increasing life spans.2

Their success prompted others to investigate the effects of GSH in humans. Odense University in Denmark compared levels of GSH in centenarians (age 100 to 105) and people age 60 to 79 and found that GSH was higher in the centenarians. And among the centenarian group, those who were the most active had the very highest levels.3

In the same way that high levels of GSH increase life spans, low levels of GSH show a direct link to chronic degenerative diseases. Here’s just a partial list:

Heart Disease
Cataracts

Arthritis
Renal Failure

High Blood Pressure
Leukemia

Diabetes
Hearing Loss

Cancer
Obstructive Lung Disease (COPD)

Macular Degeneration


And high levels of GSH are associated with fewer illnesses. A University of Michigan study found that those with higher GSH levels reported a greater sense of well being along with lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol and reduced body fat.4

The most natural way to get more GSH is eating foods high in glutathione. These include horseradish, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts.

These nutritional supplements will also boost your GSH:

Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA)

Melatonin

Bilberry

Grape Seed Extract

Turmeric

There are also two reliable GSH precursors – substances that stimulate the production of GSH. These are whey protein5, commonly found in protein powders and N-acetyl cysteine6 (in a dose of 1,800 mg to 2,400 mg a day) – both are available at your local nutrition and/or health food stores.

Finally, you can take GSH supplements (1 to 2 grams per day). The latest reports show that up to 80 percent of most GSH supplements are absorbed and used by your body.

Pomology has an excellent anti-aging product

Instead of sitting around hoping you inherited “good genes,” you can play an active role in your own future by turning on the genes that promote longevity – and turning off the genes that tell your cells to die.

This is very exciting news… There’s no need for excessive worry about your family history or whether good health “runs in your family.” For the first time in medical history you decide which genetic code gets played out.

How Do You Imagine Your Golden Years?

When you visualize your future, what do you see? Are you playing tennis with your grandkids, or stuck in a nursing home watching TV?

The difference may be as easy as switching on the genes that keep you young and active… In this letter, I’ll show you how it works and exactly what you can do to take advantage of this latest medical breakthrough.

Put the Brakes on Aging…

New research uncovered a gene that increases lifespan dramatically. Every living thing on earth carries this gene – including you. And there’s a nutrient that “turns it on.”

Modern science first discovered evidence of this “longevity gene” 20 years ago. It’s activated by a technique called caloric restriction. Researchers found that giving mice a nutritionally balanced diet with very few calories increased their lifespan.

Later studies revealed this effect wasn’t limited to mice: Calorie-restricted diets produced similar results across the board, from single-celled organisms to plants and mammals.

It wasn’t until recently that they found an explanation. They isolated a family of life-protecting genes called sirtuins (“silent information regulator proteins”). Sirtuins kick in under conditions of severe stress, bringing about a miraculous transformation.

They transmit signals to every cell in your body that literally cancel out the effects of aging. The process that leads cell death to slow to a crawl, buying your body more time to repair the DNA damage that brings life to an end.

This sounds great, but keep in mind that caloric restriction brings your daily calorie intake down to near starvation levels. Not exactly the kind of diet you can stick to.

The problem stumped scientists for years: How to “wake up” sleeping sirtuin genes (without caloric restriction)… Now we know these genes can be awakened and called upon to change your body in the course of a single lifetime – safely and naturally.


Here’s the Good News…

You don’t have to starve yourself to switch on your longevity gene. You can activate it with a simple nutrient. It’s called resveratrol.*

Switch on the Good… Turn off the Bad…

Resveratrol Lets You Choose which Genes to Express and which to Leave Silent

Some of the good anti-aging genes that get “switched on” with resveratrol are genes that:

Promote normal cell activity.*

Maintain healthy DNA.*

Enable insulin to assist glucose uptake into cells (promotes healthy glucose metabolism...)*

Help maintain cholesterol levels that are already within the normal range.*


Some of the bad genes that get “switched off” withresveratrol are genes that:

Effect production of low density lipoproteins or LDL.

Override normal patterns regulating cell division (cuts off your body’s ability to regulate healthy cell production…)

Encourage production of insulin and inflammation.

Interfere with apoptosis.

Resveratrol shifts your cells into high gear, stimulating them to perform a variety of activities that promote health and longevity.*

Resveratrol also acts as a potent antioxidant, binding with “free radicals,” the molecules that cause cell damage and lead to death over time. And its power to enhance and prolong your life goes way beyond anti-aging. You could even say it’s nature’s wonder drug.*

During recent studies, resveratrol excelled across the board. Some of its benefits include:1

Promoting healthy glucose metabolism and optimal body weight.*

Supporting cardiovascular health.*

Enhanced mitochondrial energy production (the mitochondria are the tiny power plants inside each of your cells…)*

Improved motor function, including balance and coordination.*

That last benefit is worth repeating… Resveratrol improves your quality of life, by boosting your physical abilities. You would expect these daily skills to decline as you get older, right? Wrong. During the test of balance and coordination, those taking resveratrol made steady improvement as they aged.*

Resveratrol is found naturally in grapes, blueberries, cranberries, and other plants also make it. But it’s difficult – if not impossible – to get enough of it to create an anti-aging effect from food alone.

That’s why I tell my patients it’s possible to…

Turn Back Your Aging Clock with Powerful Antioxidants

Reseveratrol is a powerful, “high capacity” antioxidant. Not only does it protect the cells in your body from early death, it triggers the activation of your anti-aging genes.*

I’m sure you’ve heard of antioxidants. People throw that term around all the time. But they seldom tell you what they really are… or why you really need them.

Antioxidants protect every cell, tissue and organ in your body – keeping them healthier, longer. It’s just like a sandwich. If you leave it on the counter, the air makes the bread stale. And if you leave it out for a few days, the meat and cheese go rotten. (This destructive process is called oxidation. Oxidation is carried out by free radicals.)

But seal it in a zip-lock bag and throw it in the fridge, and it stays good for weeks. Your body is the same… Give your cells the right antioxidant protection and your body will last years – even decades – longer.*

Resveratrol is a major breakthrough. There’s no doubt about it… But there’s more to antioxidants. In fact, when you combine resveratrol with two powerful allies, you get a formula capable of real transformation.

Check out our anti aging products.

Tea the New Life Extension Brew?

Now there’s a strategy you can use to extend your life…one cup at a time.

Imagine if you could extend your life by five years just by drinking tea. Would you do it?

When a large group of elderly Chinese men drank three cups or more of tea each day, they recorded significantly longer telomere lengths – nearly five years of added lifespan – compared with those who drank one cup or less.1

If you suffer from
back pain, neck pain, or sciatica, you should read this…
Jerry Tarman of Carlsbad, Cal. had suffered from chronic back pain and sciatica for over 50 years. Like most people, he had tried it all... chiropractors, physical therapy, he even overdosed on Tylenol®, but nothing gave him lasting relief until he discovered the secrets below:

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The 7 mistakes most back pain sufferers make that keep them from getting lasting relief


The study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, applies to black and green teas with the majority of the subjects drinking green tea.

Our ancestors have long touted the health benefits of tea, but never at the DNA level. Now we’re learning new ways where you may help maintain the length of your telomeres and increase your lifespan. That’s good news for tea drinkers and great news for fans of life extension.

You’ve heard me talk about telomeres – the “time keepers” that cap each strand of DNA. Each time your cells divide, your telomeres get shorter. And telomere length is a key indicator of your overall health and lifespan.

By lengthening your telomeres, you can extend your life. And that means for the first time, you can actually stop – even reverse – the aging process in your body.

Here’s the thing: Your telomeres are extremely vulnerable to oxidative stress … and that’s exactly what antioxidants protect you against. This helps keep your telomeres long. And that, in turn, will help you live a longer and healthier life. That’s where the healing powers of tea come in. The antioxidant properties of tea may be responsible for protecting the telomeres.

Green tea packs a powerful punch of antioxidants and phytonutrients that eradicates free radicals floating in your body. These are the primary culprits in aging.

The active ingredient in green tea is EGCG, which can prevent and repair cell damage. As a scavenger of free radicals, EGCG combats the effects of pollution, sunlight and smoking, which helps skin from wrinkling and aging.

The best way to receive the benefits abundant in green tea – including the EGCG – is to start with whole tea leaves (sold in specialty tea stores) or with a tea bag.

Most of the bottled green tea drinks contain additives like aspartame that counteract brewed green tea’s healing properties. I suggest you make your own to maximize the powerful, antioxidant-fighting benefits. You can also find ECGC supplements at your local health food store. I suggest taking 50 mg of ECGC daily.

And there are other ways to maintain your telomere length. Here’s what I recommend:

Vitamin B12 – Take at least 100 mcg per day. Although, I have advised my patients to take as much as 500 mcg per day or more for improving things like brain function and energy levels.

Vitamin C – Based on my own experience, taking up to 3,000 mg per day is a good amount if you're in good health. I always recommend pregnant women get at least 6,000 mg per day. And in times of stress or sickness, you can take up to 20,000 mg.

Make sure that you get the natural form of vitamin C and not the synthetic form. In one particular study, natural vitamin C was 148% more effective than the synthetic form. And it stayed in the test participants’ systems longer.2

Vitamin E – Look for a multivitamin with at least 200 iu of “mixed tocopherols” rather than just alpha tocopherols. Your body is better able to absorb them in their organic “d” form.

Fountain of youth?

Drugs That Might Lengthen Life Spans Are Being Tested; Writing a Prescription for the Fountain of Youth ; Researchers Are Testing Drugs That May Extenda Healthy Life Span
International Herald Tribune

09-09-09

Forget the fountain of youth: chemicals are more likely to someday be the source of a longer, healthier life.

It may be the ultimate free lunch -- how to reap all the advantages of a calorically restricted diet, including freedom from disease and an extended healthy life span, without eating one fewer calorie. Just take a drug that tricks the body into thinking it's on such a diet.

It sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is. Yet such drugs are now in clinical trials. Even if they should fail, as most candidate drugs do, their development represents a new optimism among research biologists that aging is not immutable, that the body has resources that can be mobilized into resisting disease and averting the adversities of old age.

This optimism, however, is not fully shared. Evolutionary biologists, the experts on the theory of aging, have strong reasons to suppose that human life span cannot be altered in any quick and easy way. But they have been confounded by experiments with small laboratory animals, like roundworms, fruit flies and mice. In all these species, the change of single genes has brought noticeable increases in life span.

With theorists' and their gloomy predictions cast in the shade, at least for the time being, experimental biologists are pushing confidently into the tangle of linkages that evolution has woven among food intake, fertility and life span.

"My rule of thumb is to ignore the evolutionary biologists -- they're constantly telling you what you can't think," Gary Ruvkun of the Massachusetts General Hospital remarked this June after making an unusual discovery about longevity.

Excitement among researchers on aging has picked up in the last few years with the apparent convergence of two lines of inquiry: single gene changes and the diet known as caloric restriction.

In caloric restriction, mice are kept on a diet that is healthy but has 30 percent fewer calories than a normal diet. The mice live 30 or 40 percent longer than usual with the only evident penalty being that they are less fertile.

People find it almost impossible to maintain such a diet, so this recipe for longevity remained a scientific curiosity for many decades.

Then came the discovery of the single gene changes, many of which are involved in the body's regulation of growth, energy metabolism and reproduction. The single gene changes thus seem to be pointing to the same biochemical pathways through which caloric restriction extends life span.

If biologists could only identify these pathways, it might be possible to develop drugs that would trigger them. Such drugs could in principle have far-reaching effects. Mice on caloric restriction seem protected from degenerative disease, which may be why they live longer. A single drug that protected against some or all the degenerative diseases of aging would enable people to enjoy more healthy years, a great benefit in itself, even if it did not extend life span.

The leading candidates for such a role are drugs called sirtuin activators, which may well be mimicking caloric restriction, in whole or in part. The chief such drug is resveratrol, a minor ingredient of grapes and red wine. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is now conducting clinical trials of resveratrol, in a special formulation, and of small-molecule drugs that also activate sirtuin but can be given in much lower doses. The resveratrol formulation and one of the small chemicals have passed safety tests and are now being tested against diabetes and other diseases.

The sirtuin activators have a strong scientific pedigree. They emerged as the surprising outcome of a quest begun in 1991 by Leonard P. Guarente of MIT to look for genes that might prolong life span in yeast, a single-cell organism. Working with David A. Sinclair, now at Harvard Medical School, he discovered such a gene, one called sir-2.

People and mice turned out to have equivalent genes, called sirt genes, that produce proteins called sirtuins.

Dr. Guarente then found that the sirtuins can detect the energy reserves in a cell and are activated when reserves are low, just what would be needed for a protein that mediates the effects of caloric restriction. Dr. Sinclair and colleagues screened a number of chemicals for their ability to activate sirtuin, and resveratrol landed at the top of the list. The chemical was already known as the suspected cause of the French paradox, the fact that the French eat a high fat diet without penalty to their longevity.

The two researchers and their colleagues thus argued that caloric restriction works by activating sirtuins, and so drugs that activate sirtuins should offer the same health benefits.

But despite the high promise and strong scientific foundation of the sirtuin approach, it has yet to be proved that a resulting drug will work. The first of many questions is that of whether caloric restriction applies at all to people.

Two experts on aging, Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Judith Campisi of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, argued recently in Nature that the whole phenomenon of caloric restriction may be a misleading result unwittingly produced in laboratory mice. The mice are selected for quick breeding and fed on rich diets. A low-calorie diet could be much closer to the diet that mice are adapted to in the wild, and therefore it could extend life simply because it is much healthier for them.

"Life extension in model organisms may be an artifact to some extent," they wrote.

To decide whether life extension by caloric restriction is an artifact of mice in captivity, why not try it on wild mice? Just such an experiment has been done by Steven N. Austad of the University of Texas Health Science Center. Dr. Austad reported that caloric restriction did not extend the average life span of wild mice, suggesting the diet's benefits are indeed an artifact of mice in captivity. But others interpret his results differently. Richard A. Miller of the University of Michigan says the maximum life span of the wild mice was extended, and so the experiment was a success.

Laboratory mice are inbred, and researchers can get different results depending on the breed they use. To put the mouse data on a firmer footing, the National Institute on Aging has set up a program to test substances in three laboratories simultaneously. Its first round of candidate agents for reversing aging include green tea extract and two doses of resveratrol.

The resveratrol tests are still under way, but last month the results with another substance, the antifungal drug rapamycin, were published. Rapamycin was found to extend mice's lives significantly even though by accident the mice were already the equivalent of 60 years old when the experiment started.

Rapamycin has nothing to do with caloric restriction, so far as is known, but the study provided striking proof that a chemical can extend life span.

Another result, directly related to the caloric restriction approach, emerged last month from a long-awaited study of rhesus monkeys kept on such a diet. The research was led by Richard Weindruch of the University of Wisconsin. As fellow primates, the monkeys are the best possible guide to whether the mouse results will apply in people. And the answer they gave was ambiguous.

The monkeys who had spent 20 years on caloric restriction were in better health than their normally fed counterparts, and suffered less diabetes, cancer and heart disease, apparently confirming that caloric restriction holds off the degenerative diseases of aging in primates as well as rodents.

But as for life span, the diet extended life significantly only if the researchers excluded deaths that were apparently unrelated to aging, such as under the anesthesia used to take blood samples.

People may live so long already that no drug could make much of a difference. Probably because of reductions in infant mortality and other types of disease, human life expectancy in developed countries has been on a remarkable, unbroken upward trend for the last 160 years. Female life expectancy at birth rose from 45 years in 1840 to 85 years in 2000.

An important difference among experts on aging is whether there is an intrinsic rate of aging. Supposing there were cures for all diseases, what would one die of, if one died at all? Dr. Vijg and Dr. Campisi believe there is a steady buildup of damage to DNA and to proteins like the collagen and elastin fibers that knit the body together.

Damage to DNA means that the regulation of genes gets less precise, and this regulatory drift disrupts the stem cells that repair each tissue. Even if all disease could be treated, it is not clear that anything could overcome intrinsic aging.

Dr. Miller, on the other hand, said he believes that no clear distinction can be made between disease and other frailties of aging.

"Anything a doctor can charge for we call disease, but wrinkled skin, white hair or not feeling good in the morning, these we don't call disease," he said.

In the view of evolutionary biologists, the life span of each species is adapted to the nature of its environment. Mice live at most a year in the wild because owls, cats and freezing to death are such frequent hazards. Mice with genes that allow longer life can rarely be favored by natural selection. Rather, the mice that leave the most progeny are those that devote resources to breeding at as early an age as possible.

According to this theory, if mice had wings and could escape their usual predators, natural selection ought to favor longer life. And indeed the maximum life span of bats is 3.5 times greater than flightless mammals of the same size, according to research by Gerald S. Wilkinson of the University of Maryland.

In this view, cells are so robust that they do not limit life span.

Instead the problem, especially for longer-lived species, is to keep them under control lest they cause cancer. Cells have not blocked the evolution of extremely long life spans, like that of the bristlecone pine, which lives 5,000 years, or certain deep sea corals, whose age has been found to exceed 4,000 years.

In people the germ cells, the egg and sperm, do not age; babies are born equally young, whatever the age of their parents. The genesis of aging was the division of labor in the first multicellular animals between the germ cells and the body cells.

That division put the role of maintaining the species on the germ cells and left the body cells free to become specialized, like neurons or skin cells. But in doing so the body cells made themselves disposable. The reason we die, in the view of Thomas Kirkwood, an expert on the theory of aging, is that constant effort is required to keep the body cells going. "In terms of natural selection, there are more important things to do," he writes.

All that seems clear about life span is that it is not fixed. And if it is not fixed, there may indeed be ways to extend it.

You are What You Eat

Creams are helpful on the outside, but don't count out what goes inside your body when you're looking to keep your skin clear and fresh. Here are some foods to pile on your plate .

Strawberries, red peppers, kiwi

These fruits and veggies are packed with vitamin C, an antioxidant shown to prevent damage to the skin and possibly help prevent aging. Vitamin C also helps form collagen, which supports the skin's structure and keeps it smooth.

Other vitamin C-rich foods: Potatoes, tomatoes, citrus fruit, broccoli.

Carrots, apricots, spinach

The antioxidant beta-carotene is in these fresh foods. Beta- carotene converts in the body to vitamin A, which we need to create new and healthy skin cells. It also protects your skin from bacteria and viruses and keeps it hydrated.

Other beta-carotene-rich foods: Collard greens, romaine lettuce, sweet potatoes.

Sunflower seeds, almonds, olive oil

Rounding out the antioxidants are the vitamin E-rich foods. This vitamin protects cell membranes from free-radical damage, especially brought on by UV rays. Of course, sunscreen helps, but a serving of nuts and seeds every so often can help strengthen your cells from the inside.

Other vitamin E-rich foods: Mangoes, peanuts, chicken breast.

Water

Not drinking enough water can dehydrate and give off that pruney look (no one wants that). Instead, keep skin radiant by sipping water throughout the day. No need to chug gallons - you also get water from other sources, such as fresh fruits and veggies.

Flaxseed, salmon, tuna

All rich in omega-3 fats, these foods help prevent inflammation. Their heart-healthy oils also keep skin nice and shiny. A study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that elderly folks who consumed higher amounts of fish and veggies throughout their life had fewer wrinkles. It could be the combo of the omega-3s in fish plus antioxidant-rich veggies, though researchers can't say for sure right now.

Other omega-3 foods: Sardines, walnuts, tofu.

Courtesy Toby Amidor of Healthy Eats on foodnetwork.com

- Food Network Kitchens

Dr Sears on an Anti-Aging Break Through

You know stress hurts. You worry, you feel anxious… you lose sleep. That’s old news. But now, through the discovery of telomeres, we can actually measure the effects of stress. And the wear and tear is more distressing than we even imagined.

Researchers at the University of California discovered that stress speeds up aging.1 This makes your cells die before their time – and produces all the terrible effects we think of as aging.

They compared women who felt a lot of stress to women under little stress. Using certain cellular markers, they discovered the high-stress women were up to 10 years “older” than women with low stress levels!2

The cellular markers they used are “telomeres.” Telomeres are the “time keepers” attached to every strand of DNA. As they wind down, you get older and your body breaks down.

What’s more, the effects of stress on telomeres get worse with age. A North Carolina study found that stressed women over 55 had significantly shorter telomeres.3 Therefore, the older we get, the more important it is to control the stress in our lives.

It’s not just women. An Ohio State University study linked shorter telomeres to high-stress occupations such as long-term caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients. The Alzheimer’s caregivers showed a four to eight year shortening of life span.4

That’s why it’s so important for you to get rid of stress. “Toughing it out” could be the biggest mistake you ever make. But stopping stress in its tracks can help you add 10 years or more to your life.

In this month’s Health Confidential, I’ll give you the supplements you can take to help your body respond to stress. Plus, I’ll give you a way to repair the damage that stress has already done to your cells.

Slow Telomere Shortening with Antioxidants
When you’re under stress, your body needs more antioxidants.

Researchers in France studied the lifestyles of a wide range of men and women. They were looking to see which behaviors affected their ability to fight off free radicals. Not surprisingly, behaviors such as smoking and drinking lowered their bodies’ antioxidant ability. But the researchers found that psychological stress had the same effect.5

Scientists at Tokyo Medical and Dental University got similar results when they tested three groups of workers at a drug company. When the men were subjected to stress – making a speech in front of company executives – their bodies produced higher levels of a certain free radical.6

Perhaps more importantly, the French researchers also linked lower antioxidant capacity to a higher risk of cancer and heart problems. So building up your antioxidants when you’re stressed is particularly important.

A natural multivitamin and mineral supplement is a good place to start. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that those who took a multivitamin daily had 5.1 percent longer telomeres than non-users.7

Specifically, the study pointed to vitamins B12, C, and E for maintaining telomere length.

Vitamin B12 – I recommend taking at least 100 mcg per day. Although, I have advised my patients to take as much as 500 mcg per day or more for improving things like brain function and energy levels.

Vitamin C – based on my own experience, taking up to 3,000 mg per day is a good amount if you're currently in good health. I always recommend pregnant women get at least 6,000 mg per day. And in times of stress or sickness, you can take up to 20,000 mg.

You also want to make sure that you get the natural form of vitamin C and not the synthetic form. In one particular study, natural vitamin C was 148% more effective than the synthetic form. And it stayed in the test participants’ systems longer.8


Vitamin E – There are actually eight forms of vitamin E, divided up into two groups: four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. Almost all multivitamins use tocopherols, but make sure they use “mixed” tocopherols. That means they are using a combination of all four. Some manufacturers try and skimp by using just one of the four tocopherols. It’s also important to watch out for the kinds of tocopherols that are in it. Your body is better able to absorb them in their organic “d” form.

But many vitamin manufacturers use the inferior synthetic “dl” form. Studies actually show that natural vitamin E has twice the bioavailability of the synthetic form.9 That means your body is able to absorb more of the vitamin. So be sure to get the natural “d” form.


I recommend 200 to 400 IU of mixed tocopherols a day. Unlike vitamins B12 and C, vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin, which means it needs fat to get absorbed in your body. So be sure to take it with food.

Also get plenty of fruits and vegetables in your diet, too. (Organic is best.) Nothing beats Nature’s own source of healthy nutrients.

Besides fighting off the effects of stress with antioxidants, you can also help your body adapt to stress. That’s where herbs come in.

Adaptogens: Your Secret Weapon Against Stress
In my experience, natural alternatives are usually superior to drugs. And my patients tend to agree. Herbs and other natural supplements are usually more effective and more economical than prescription drugs. And they rarely have the dangerous side effects.

Best of all, these natural alternatives don’t just mask symptoms the way most drugs do. Instead, they strengthen your body’s own natural defenses. And that means you’re dealing directly with the problem, not just covering it up.

This is the situation with some herbs called “adaptogens.” These herbs help your body adjust to stress – including psychological stress. And three of the best adaptogens are panax ginseng, Siberian ginseng (eleuthero) and Ginkgo biloba.

All three herbs are approved for use by Commission E, the German government’s official natural medicine committee.10 And with good reason, too. All three are effective in fighting stress.

For example, an animal study in India compared the effects of Ginkgo biloba and panax ginseng. The study found that both herbs show powerful stress-fighting properties. And ginseng was particularly effective against chronic stress – the kind of relentless pressure that’s so common in our society.11

European researchers also found that Ginkgo normalized the levels of stress hormones in rats exposed to stressful situations.12 And according to a recent article in Current Clinical Pharmacology, Siberian ginseng lowers levels of cortisol – the main stress hormone.13

What all this means to you is that you can get relief from stress, even if you can’t avoid it. Extracts of all three of these herbs are widely available.

I advise my patients to take 120 mg of Ginkgo biloba and 200 mg to 500 mg of Siberian ginseng and Panax ginseng daily if they are feeling stressed.

Finally, just a word of caution here… Although these herbs are generally safe, people with high blood pressure should avoid Siberian ginseng.

Repair the Damage from Stress
You can also reverse the damage done to your cells by stress. It just happens to be the most exciting advancement in anti-aging medicine ever.

For the first time, the emerging science of telomere biology has found a way to turn your genetic switch back on. It’s a ground breaking new therapy called TA-65. It’s a natural extract that comes from the Astragalus plant. It activates your telomerase gene, the switch that controls your genetic aging. That means you can actually stop, and even reverse your body’s aging process.

I am very excited about TA-65, and over the last several months have been spreading the word as much as possible. In fact, my Wellness Research Foundation recently hosted a special seminar with Dr. Bill Andrews, who is one of the leading telomere biology researchers in the world. He is one of the people who discovered telomerase activation with TA-65.

The turnout for this seminar was amazing. We had a packed house. There was limited seating and people paid $500 in advance to be part of this exclusive event.

Both Dr. Andrews and I explained this scientific breakthrough in fine detail to everyone. We presented over two hours of captivating information to the group. We discussed the steps leading to the discovery of TA-65, exactly how it works, and even shared our own personal story with it. We left absolutely nothing out.

Jelly Fish the Unconventional Anti-Aging Bullet!

ARE JELLYFISH THE LOST LINK TO THE FOUNTAIN OF
YOUTH?

Prevagen™, a recently launched product based on jellyfish protein, is making big
waves with health conscious consumers.
For many people who conjure up an image of a jellyfish, a slippery denizen of the
deep comes to mind. But since September 1st, 2007, when Prevagen, a dietary supplement
designed to fight the aging process became available, many consumers now think of
jellyfish as a key to a healthier life.
Yet the jellyfish-to-Prevagen story didn’t happen overnight. Over 12 years of
scientific research went into Prevagen, the first product in the marketplace designed to
fight the aging process with jellyfish protein.
For millions of people who dream about aging gracefully free of
neurodegenerative diseases that their parents might have had, or of having more energy,
better concentration, sharper, better memory retention, and sounder sleep, Quincy
Bioscience of Madison, Wisconsin has been working for years to help people realize their
dreams.
When the company launched Prevagen, they announced the supplement was
designed to help fight the aging process by utilizing a calcium-binding protein found in
jellyfish. The supplement, which is produced by recombinant protein technologies so no
jellyfish are sacrificed, replaces age-fighting proteins which are lost in the normal process
of aging.
Mark Underwood, president of Quincy Bioscience explains how the jellyfish
protein aequorin works. “Aequorin interacts with calcium and regulates the actions that
control the health of cells involved in learning, memory, focus and concentration. As we
age, the protein levels diminish. Prevagen works to replace those proteins and ensure
optimal brain function.”

Underwood himself has been taking Prevagen for several months and he reports a
marked increase in concentration and memory. If you’re trying to visualize how jellyfish
can help your brain functions, think of it this way. “Our brain cells can die if we don’t
have proteins like those found in jellyfish,” says Underwood. “It’s similar to not having a
surge protector on your computer.”
Ever since Prevagen entered the market, people have benefited from that “surge
protector” found in jellyfish protein.

Try it for yourself:

BUY NOW