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. Chi­nas 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 vig­or­ous­lyas 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 wouldnt spe­ci­fy which of the more than 20 avail­ab­le brands he takes, or ad­vise their use to oth­ers. The med­i­cal schools rules for­bid do­ing that, an ar­ti­cle in the June 22, 2004 Har­vard Ga­z­ette said. None­the­less, three peo­ple fa­mil­iar with Sin­clairs 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 themthough 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 res­ver­a­trols ef­fects, has­nt 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 havent been pub­lished or op­ened to the wid­er sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­tys scru­ti­ny. Around then, Sin­clair has said he al­so served as a con­sult­ant to Lon­ge­vi­nexs maker; all this took place dur­ing the pro­ducts 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 dont 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 Sin­clairs 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 Loews ac­count. Sin­clair told The New York Times in ear­ly No­vem­ber that he has used res­ver­a­trol for three yearsabout 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 does­nt 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 arent 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 res­ver­a­trols 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 high­erad­just­ing for their weightwith 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 Sin­clairs tests evi­dent­ly fa­vored Sar­dis 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 arent. 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 hadnt lied about the con­tent. Sar­di coun­ters that his and Sin­clairs tests as­sessed not only the res­ver­a­trol con­tent, but its bio­lo­g­i­cal ac­t­i­vity. The is­sue re­mains un­re­solved. James Betza com­pet­i­tor of Sardis 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 Sar­dis firm. But he did­nt 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; andamong those whose res­ver­a­trol con­tent was veri­fied in the 2005 studyFood Sci­ence of Ver­mont (fslabs.com); Nu­tra­ceu­ti­cal (nutraceutical.com) and Source Nat­u­rals (sourcenaturals.com). --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos.