[FairfieldLife] The Fountain of Eternal Youth. - Will we find it.??

[Jason Spock]

 
  “Youth” pills, hawked online, win over top scientists
   
  Feb. 9, 2007
By Jack Lucentini
Updated Feb. 12
   
  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.


                        Pills on the mar­ket are la­beled as 
con­tain­ing from less than 5 mg to as much as 250 mg of 
res­ver­a­trol in its ac­tive form. Even that is around 
one-sixth what an aver­age-weight per­son would have to take dai­ly 
to get doses com­pa­ra­ble to those used in mouse life-extension 
stud­ies. But many users are sat­is­fied with tak­ing smaller 
amounts in or­der to play it safe and save mon­ey.
  
---------------------------------
  
  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, Frank 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.

James 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, Tracy 
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).
   

       
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