5 September 2008
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I won’t tell you exactly how old I am, but I will say I saw the Beatles on Ed
Sullivan and that I voted for Richard Nixon in my extreme youth before I had any
notion of what a blackguard he was. Plus, when I’m in an elevator and notice another
passenger sporting one of those through-the-tongue thingies, I feel like I’m going
to pass out from vicarious pain.
Like all living creatures we exist in dynamic equilibrium. By day we deteriorate and
wear ourselves out in a million different ways and then, largely during sleep, we
repair the damage. Our skeletons recycle completely every seven years or so. Tiny
muscle fibers tear and heal. We accidentally bang ourselves into something and thousands of
capillaries shatter creating a bruise; then within a week or so, they grow back. We
shed and replace about 3/4 of a pound (0.35 kg) of skin cells annually. Our teeth
dissolve a bit when we eat or drink something acidic, then frantically re-mineralize
in between.
But then the older we get, the further we fall behind on the catch-up side.
There are plenty of nutrients out there purported to slow down or
possibly even reverse this unwelcome decline. Having explored this sort of thing for quite
a few years for my own selfish purposes, I thought now would be a good time to
distill as much of it down as possible to the handful that seem to be showing the hardest data in
their favor. First, some news items on the subject:
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| My former Toluca Lake neighbor (1903-2003) |
Now the mainstream medical community raises many objections to the very notion of
anti-aging or, indeed, the idea of using dietary supplements to enhance one’s health
in general. They typically fall into one of two categories:
Who’s Your Daddy: The Food and Drug Administration (in the US) regulates all prescription and
over-the-counter remedies. Pharmaceutical companies spend astronomical sums to
develop and test their products every which way so they will earn the FDA’s approval
for safety and effectiveness. Supplement advocates, what do they know?
Like many such bodies, the FDA and the businesses it
regulates swim in the same murky water. FDA bureaucrats who play ball can look
forward to cushy, high-paying jobs with pharmaceutical and medical equipment firms later on.
Our absurdly under-resourced FDA does a serviceable job in spite of all of this, but
we consumers have little cause for complacency. In 1998, for example, the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that around 106,000 people die every
year from prescription drugs.
Faith Healing: Well, OK. A handful of these substances appear to alleviate or
retard some of the age-related infirmities in laboratory subjects such as yeast,
fruit flies, mice, and rats. But none of these things are people, so there’s
no tangible evidence that they will do us any good or make anybody live even a
day longer.
Laboratory animals have short lifespans so it’s easy to chart them
from cradle to grave. No one I know has 150 years to devote to human studies. Maybe
some day they’ll know for sure that Amino Acid X really does slow
macular degeneration or dementia or atherosclerosis to a crawl, but by that time
most of us will be dead and gone.
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 | | One of the Omega 3 Molecules |
I’m going to present the following data in a form you don’t
normally see. One of the problems with ordering supplements is that when
you’re looking at total price, tablets per bottle, and dosage per tablet, it’s
often hard to cost-compare all those competing brands. Sometimes
you can tell at a glance, but usually it’s beyond what you can
easily crunch in your head. The marketers know this, thus the flamboyant
packaging, celebrity endorsements, and other puffery.
Directly below you can select the item and then see a listing in order of increasing
unit cost. Obviously you might want to consider other criteria such as convenience
and brand preference; but this is still a good start. You’ll be amazed how wildly a given product can vary in that respect from one
brand to another.
Now it’s no secret that the supplement industry is pretty much unregulated
and that some manufacturers are more honest than others about what you’re
really getting in the bottle. (The notorious diet aid Hoodia is a textbook case.
Little if any of it on the market is genuine and unadulterated.) Ultimately
you’ll have to make your own judgements and keep abreast with the
literature. Also, please note the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.
Peter
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