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A new study by University of Georgia researchers shows that despite the availability of fortified foods, many older adults suffer from deficiencies of vitamin D, calcium and B12, which are critical for optimal bone, blood and nervous system health.

The research grew out of the authors’ interest in providing scientifically sound health promotion programs at more than 200 senior centers across Georgia that help prevent malnutrition and provide nutritionally-balanced meals to low-income elderly. Published in the Journal of Nutrition for the Elderly, the study notes that nutrient deficiencies make the elderly more vulnerable to chronic health problems such as osteoporosis, anemia and cognitive impairment.

“We always say ‘food first’ because eating a wide variety of foods provides the best source of minerals, vitamins and other nutrients,” said Mary Ann Johnson, professor of foods and nutrition in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences and coauthor of the study. “But people don’t always eat a balanced diet, and vitamin supplements are convenient, relatively inexpensive and some have shown definite benefits in preventing or reducing the risks of chronic disease.”

Johnson and study coauthors Joan Fischer, associate professor of nutrition, and research assistant Sohyun Park, said that among those surveyed, more than 60 percent of adults aged 60 or older take some type of dietary supplement; 40 percent take multivitamin and mineral supplements. Yet many were also confused about which vitamin supplements are beneficial.

That’s understandable, they said, given conflicting research studies. While the use of multi-vitamin and mineral supplements do increase the blood concentration of nutrients, researchers often can’t demonstrate specific health benefits from their use.

In fact, several recent vitamin studies only muddy the waters about the benefits of supplements. In November 2008, scientists released findings of a large clinical trial of nearly 15,000 male doctors who took vitamins C and E for a decade, showing no benefits in reducing cancer rates. Another recent study found that vitamins C and E don’t lower heart disease rates. And last October, a third major clinical trial–looking at whether vitamin E and selenium protect men against prostate cancer–ended early when it was clear that neither nutrient would reduce cancer risks.

But the UGA researchers say the benefits of taking certain supplements, especially calcium and vitamin D, are well-documented. Vitamin D, a fat-soluble vitamin, helps the body absorb calcium. It is present in significant amounts in fish and fortified milk, but very few other foods. Vitamin D is also known as the “sunshine vitamin” because it can be manufactured by the body when exposed to sunshine. However, as people age their skin starts to lose this ability to make vitamin D.

“We found that milk consumption varies widely in older adults,” said Fischer, “and some elderly people avoid dairy products altogether because of the fat in whole fat products –or because they have trouble digesting milk products. But there is strong evidence that vitamin D and calcium supplements improve overall bone health and prevent bone fractures.”

Calcium, essential for strong bones, is also important for normal heart and muscle function–and it helps the blood clot normally. The body uses and loses calcium every day through sweat, urine, feces, hair, nails and skin. It’s replaced by calcium-rich foods in the diet, including milk and dairy products, kale, collard greens and foods fortified with calcium, such as some brands of orange juice. But when the body doesn’t get enough, it pulls calcium from skeletal bones to carry out the more critical demands of the heart, nerves and major muscles.

B12, a water soluble vitamin, promotes the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system –and facilitates the formation of blood and new cells throughout the body. Good dietary sources include milk products, meat, poultry, fish and fortified breakfast cereals. After age 50, people don’t absorb vitamin B12 as efficiently and must guard against a deficiency.

“By the time people reach their elder years, the cumulative effects of lifestyle really start to show, good or bad,” said Johnson. “Part of the problem is that we need research that demonstrates the costs of poor nutrition and poor lifestyle. For example, many cases of diabetes and its complications are preventable. Nutrition is a science, but it doesn’t get the attention it deserves. We’re making progress, but we have a long way to go.”

Feel Good Vitamins

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Feel Good Vitamins

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 A new study from the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Pharmacy has found that a simple educational intervention provided by a pharmacist can make a significant impact in the amount of vitamin D intake in geriatric outpatients, resulting in increased serum, or blood levels of this key nutrient. Surprisingly, the study also found that the overall increase in serum levels in the patients who received the intervention were still not in the target range, indicating that current national recommendations for vitamin D intake may be insufficient. The study is published this month in the July/August issue of the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association.“The educational intervention was simple to administer and can be reproduced by pharmacists in a variety of settings, including a community pharmacy or a clinical practice site,” said Joseph Vande Griend, PharmD, assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the UC Denver School of Pharmacy and lead author of the paper. “Geriatric patients are at risk of medical complications from vitamin D insufficiency, including osteoporosis, and pharmacists, physicians, and other point-of-contact health care representatives can make a difference by recognizing vitamin deficiencies in their patients and taking the time to talk about the importance of key nutrients like vitamin D.”The Pharmacist’s Findings and an Educational Intervention Vitamin D concentrations were studied in older adults, ages 65 to 89 years, during clinic visits to the University of Colorado Hospital from December 2005 to January 2006. Eighty patients completed the study and 59 of them, 74 percent, were found to have vitamin D insufficiency. The majority of patients who were vitamin D insufficient consumed more than the recommended 400 to 600 IU per day of vitamin D.

The UC Denver pharmacists practicing in geriatric medicine then created a vitamin D informational sheet that was given to those geriatric outpatients who had insufficient vitamin D intake. A pharmacist reviewed the sheet with the participant during a 15-minute, one-on-one educational session about vitamin D, in which it was recommended the participant consume a total of 1,200 IU per day of vitamin D. A recommendation of 1,200 IU was chosen because the amount was estimated to increase patient serum levels to the study-defined sufficient vitamin D concentration of 32 ng/mL. The 1200 IU per day of vitamin D is also easy to obtain from over-the-counter resources; it is higher than the current Institute of Medicine recommendation (400 IU/day under age 70 and 600 IU/day over age 70) but below the upper daily intake limit (2,000 IU/day).

The handout covered the importance of vitamin D in maintaining good health, provided a listing of food sources with vitamin D, and a listing of over-the-counter supplements containing vitamin D3 along with their general cost. The handout is available online at http://www.japha.org/ .

At the conclusion of the educational session, the clinical pharmacist helped the participant choose which foods and/or supplements to use to increase daily vitamin D intake and provided the participant with a written, personalized plan to consume 1,200 IU per day of vitamin D. No supplements were provided to the study participants.

Two weeks after the educational session, the pharmacist followed-up with participants via telephone. During the call, the importance of vitamin D in maintaining optimal health and the details of the personalized vitamin D plan were reiterated. Participants were then asked whether they had obtained the agreed upon vitamin D product(s) and whether they were actually using the products. If not, the recommendation was reviewed and the participant was encouraged to obtain the product(s) and try to increase vitamin D intake.

The Outcome of the Educational Intervention After 12 weeks, a higher proportion of participants in the educational intervention group (55 percent) achieved the desired vitamin D blood level concentration of 32 ng/mL compared with the nonintervention group (24 percent). The change in dietary and over-the-counter vitamin D intake was also evaluated. Self-reported total vitamin D intake increased by a mean of 647 IU/day in educational intervention participants and 67 IU/day in the nonintervention group. Participants in the educational intervention group reported consuming an average of more than 1,400 IU/day vitamin D.

It’s just before noon, and the emergency room already is filling with patients.

John Whitcomb, a lanky, high-octane physician, scurries from exam room to exam room, keeping pace with an onslaught of people coming in with chest pain, ankle injuries, seizures and stomachaches. The ER at Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee isn’t the most likely place to get a friendly lecture about vitamin D.

But Whitcomb, one of a small but growing number of physicians who think deficiency of the sunshine vitamin is its own public health emergency, preaches to anyone who will listen.

A growing body of research suggests that inadequate vitamin D can substantially increase the risk of a variety of diseases, including several cancers, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression and multiple sclerosis as well as the risk of falling and infections.

In northern regions like Wisconsin, where vitamin D levels are low, the concern is even more pronounced because of a lack of ultraviolet radiation during much of the year.

Now pockets of physicians here and around the country are making vitamin D a high priority.

Steve Trapp, 38, was on a bus from Chicago to Seattle last month when he began vomiting at the Milwaukee bus station. He was taken to the ER at Aurora Sinai. Whitcomb diagnosed the problem as a bout of stomach flu and dispensed nausea medicine — and an ample dose of vitamin D advice.

As Trapp lay in an exam room, Whitcomb rattled off a few recent research findings on how vitamin D can reduce the risk of various diseases. He told the couple how there really is no food source that can provide ample levels of the vitamin.

He said the sun’s angle drops in winter, and with that shift, vitamin D levels in the blood decrease from an average of about 40 nanograms per milliliter to less than 20 ng/ml.

“When the level drops below 32, many of the body’s functions don’t work right,” he said.

Only supplements or ultraviolet light can prevent that from happening.

Over the past two years, Whitcomb estimates that he has talked to more than 1,000 patients about vitamin D in the ER or other urgent care facilities in the area. He’s written about vitamin D in newsletters and given talks to other doctors.

He’s even tested the blood of ER patients to find out their vitamin D levels. Invariably, the levels are extremely low.

While there is not unanimous agreement on what is the optimal vitamin D blood level, many researchers say it should be at least 30 ng/ml and preferably between 40 and 60.

No large clinical trials

Exposure to intense sunlight was mostly a year-round occurrence for our prehistoric ancestors who, for thousands of years, existed naked near the equator.

It has been only in relatively recent human evolutionary history that people moved north, began wearing clothing and spent more time indoors, resulting in vitamin D deficiencies.

The vitamin actually is a hormone that plays a role in the regulation of more than 100 genes, many of which are involved in preventing diseases.

However, while that theory sounds attractive to vitamin D advocates, much of the research pointing to the vitamin’s disease-preventing ability is observational in nature. While most of those studies show a benefit, some do not.

Nevertheless, observational studies pointing to potential health benefits from the vitamin continue to pile up.

A study released late last month found higher rates of death from all causes and from cardiovascular disease among a group of 3,258 heart patients with low levels of vitamin D in their blood, compared with heart patients with higher levels of vitamin D.

Also in June, a study involving 18,225 men found that those with vitamin D levels below 15 ng/ml were 2.4 times more likely to have a heart attack than those with levels above 30 ng/ml.

Last year, an analysis involving 1,760 women found a 50% reduction in breast cancer risk in those whose vitamin D levels were more than 52 ng/ml, compared with levels of less than 13.

After reading a variety of vitamin D studies, Tara Rakowski, an east side family practice physician with Columbia St. Mary’s, began testing for the vitamin in her patients. In more than 60% of the approximately 500 patients, vitamin D levels were less than 20 ng/ml, she said. Now, “there isn’t a patient I don’t check it on,” she said.

Typically she will put patients with low vitamin D levels on a prescription regimen of 50,000 international units of vitamin D a week. After that, they usually take 2,000 IU a day in the form of vitamin D3, which is inexpensive. That’s the dose many vitamin D proponents now are recommending, although it is considerably more than the current recommended intake, which ranges from 200 IU in children to 600 IU in the elderly.

Rakowski said her patients often feel better after boosting their vitamin D levels.

Jaishree Hariharan, an internal medicine physician who practices at Froedtert Hospital, said she had checked vitamin D levels in about 200 patients in the past year. Most have levels below 20 ng/ml, she said.

“The big misnomer that most physicians are worried about is vitamin D toxicity,” said Hariharan, an associate professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. However, with doses of 2,000 IU a day, “there is no downside,” she said.

Upping her dose

Alice Carter, a 63-year-old from Milwaukee, is lying on a bed with chest pain in the ER at Sinai Medical Center.

After Whitcomb determines the Milwaukee woman is having a bout of angina, he begins telling her about vitamin D.

He seems pleasantly surprised when she tells him that she started taking 1,000 IU a day about a year ago, but he says she should up the dose to 2,000.

“Your skin pigment protects you from sunburn, but it also means you need to get three to four times as much sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D,” he tells Carter, who is African-American.

He tells her that many African-Americans he has tested have vitamin D levels of less than 10, but blacks living near the equator in Africa have levels near 60, he says.

“So are you saying I need to move down South?” she jokes.

Whitcomb says that won’t be necessary if she increases her summertime dose to 2,000 IU and her wintertime dose to 4,000.

Resveratrol Basics

Resveratrol is a polyphenol most commonly found in red wine and grapes. It is also found in peanuts, certain berries, some pines, and the roots and stalks of Japanese knotweed.  

Resveratrol plays an important role in the plant’s natural defense system against injury, infection, and disease. Researchers became interested in exploring the health benefits of resveratrol after they observed the surprisingly low rates of heart disease found in populations that consume a diet high in saturated fat and red wine.

Today, resveratrol is attracting attention for its unique ability to mimic the gene expression effects of caloric restriction, the only intervention that has been shown in peer-reviewed studies to prolong maximum life span and/or produce anti-aging effects in a variety of organisms, including mice, rats, dogs, and monkeys. These studies suggest that resveratrol may have similar health and longevity benefits in humans.

Many people find the prospect of long-term caloric restriction too difficult and uncomfortable. A better option would be to find a means to mimic the beneficial effects of caloric restriction through a healthy, convenient dietary supplement such as resveratrol.

Resveratrol: A Caloric-Restriction Mimetic

A 2003 study at Harvard University found that resveratrol mimics the effects of caloric restriction in yeast cells, boosting their life spans by as much as 70%.3 The following year the researchers went on to demonstrate that resveratrol slows aging in two standard laboratory animals, roundworms and fruit flies.4 That made resveratrol the first compound to show anti-aging effects in widely divergent species. Then in 2006, scientists in Pisa, Italy, showed that resveratrol’s magic could be applied to more advanced animals— large doses of resveratrol extended the life span by more than 50% in a species of fish, Nothobranchius furzeri, which typically lives just nine weeks.

In a study published in 2006 in the journal Cell, researchers in France found that resveratrol protects mice against diet-induced insulin resistance and obesity.6 Furthermore, mice given the resveratrol supplement demonstrated improved endurance levels during exercise. The researchers also studied the cell-signaling pathway in the mitochondria of these mice. Mitochondria are the power plants of cells, which are responsible for intracellular energy production. Resveratrol activated a protein in the sirtuin family (SIRT1), which then stimulated the activity of another protein involved in mitochondrial function. Other recent studies, including one conducted at the Joslin Diabetes Center, have found another member of the sirtuin family of cellular proteins that may play a major role in how fat is produced and stored, offering a new target for treatments to prevent obesity and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

The French researchers surmised that resveratrol helped control weight gain by enhancing energy expenditure.   Since the study found a link between sirtuins and energy utilization, the researchers concluded that resveratrol may be helpful in the prevention and treatment of certain metabolic disorders, especially those related to mitochondrial dysfunction, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease—two neurodegenerative conditions that become more prevalent with aging.

Resveratrol Supports Endothelial Health

Recent experiments have shown that the benefits of resveratrol include improvements in the health of the endothelial tissue lining blood vessels. This holds special significance for long-term cardiovascular health, as atherosclerosis is believed to begin when damage to specialized endothelial cells goes unchecked, leading to an inflammatory condition that culminates in endothelial dysfunction and possible vessel blockage.

Resveratrol also benefits the circulatory system by eliciting a decrease in the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL); by fostering decreases in platelet aggregation; and by promoting relaxation of small blood vessels called arterioles.   Collectively, these mechanisms benefit the overall health of the cardiovascular system by decreasing factors that contribute to the development of atherosclerosis, and by decreasing the likelihood of undesirable clotting, which, in turn, decreases the risk of stroke.   Furthermore, new data indicate that resveratrol decreases the incidence of dangerous heart arrhythmias.

One of the most intriguing of resveratrol’s heart-healthy mechanisms involves the upregulation of endothelial progenitor cells (adult stem cells). There is emerging recognition by medical professionals that these adult stem cells are crucial components of cardiovascular health. In fact, scientists now believe that endothelial progenitor cells may serve as a key indicator of overall circulatory function and predict that levels of these specialized stem cells may one day supplant the lipid profile as the biomarker of choice for cardiovascular disease risk.

Research within the past five years has shown that the number and functionality of endothelial progenitor cells, which are critically involved in blood vessel repair, are directly correlated with current and future cardiovascular wellness. To put it simply; the more of these endothelial progenitor cells one has in the general circulation, the more robust one’s cardiovascular health is likely to be. Manufactured in the bone marrow, endothelial progenitor cells are low in patients with diabetes, hypertension, and/or cardiovascular disease, and their functionality decreases significantly with advancing age.

Since the publication in 2003 of an article in the influential New England Journal of Medicine, scientists have increasingly focused on the activities of endothelial progenitor cells. In that landmark report, researchers from the National Institutes of Health noted that there is a “strong correlation” between the number of circulating endothelial progenitor cells and a patient’s Framingham risk factor score.13 The Framingham score is a commonly accepted method of assessing an individual’s 10-year risk of developing coronary heart disease. It takes into account risk factors such as LDL, HDL, and triglyceride levels, age, gender, history of smoking, and other factors.

Interestingly, research by Chinese investigators indicates that the influence of cholesterol levels on the development of atherosclerosis (and thus heart disease) may actually relate to the relationship between endothelial progenitor cells and cholesterol. On the heels of the New England Journal of Medicine article, Chinese researchers published a report, which concluded that high LDL may be damaging precisely because it reduces the number and functionality of endothelial progenitor cells.

Experiments showed, “the number of endothelial progenitor cells was significantly reduced in patients with hypercholesteroemia (extremely high cholesterol levels) compared with that in control subjects.”12 In patients with high total cholesterol and LDL, the ability of endothelial progenitor cells to proliferate, migrate, adhere to vessel walls, and induce the regeneration of vessels was impaired. As cholesterol levels increased, they found, endothelial  progenitor cell levels declined. Other investigators found that endothelial progenitor cell levels are depressed among patients with elevated homocysteine.29 Resveratrol, on the other hand, has been shown in the past year to increase the number of these crucial cells in the peripheral circulation, even at doses achievable by moderate red wine intake or through dietary supplementation.

Resveratrol Produces Favorable Metabolic Changes

In a landmark mouse study published in the journal Nature, resveratrol countered some effects of a high-calorie diet, improving the health of the mice and increasing their life span, even though they did not lose any weight.32 These mice shared many of the problems of humans on an equivalent diet, including obesity, insulin resistance, and heart disease.

The study compared middle-aged mice fed a standard diet with those on a high-fat (60% of daily calories) diet, with and without high-dose resveratrol supplements. Over a two-year period, the resveratrol-fed mice on the high-fat diet lived as long as the ones on a standard diet and at least 15% longer than their untreated, obese peers. How much better off were the treated mice? The resveratrol-treated mice demonstrated improved insulin sensitivity compared with their obese counterparts who did not receive resveratrol, suggesting that resveratrol conferred important benefits for longevity and diabetes prevention.32 Additionally, the resveratrol-treated animals displayed greater numbers of liver mitochondria than animals who consumed a high-fat diet that did not contain resveratrol. The study further suggested that resveratrol might lead to better health and endurance than is usually seen in obese mice. Resveratrol’s exact working mechanism is not yet known with certainty, but the researchers believe it may be activating SIRT1, a sirtuin protein that is thought to be involved with longevity.

The mouse studies also hinted that resveratrol induces basic metabolic changes akin to those produced by caloric restriction.6,32 Gene-expression analysis in livers of these aged and overweight mice indicated that resveratrol favorably modified some of the known metabolic pathways that are also affected by caloric restriction.32 Perhaps the most intriguing result of the recent mouse studies was resveratrol’s ability to increase the number of mitochondria, the key cell components that serve as energy producers.

Resveratrol’s ability to restore function to mitochondria is especially exciting because it seems that restored mitochondria are more efficient than the aging mitochondria they replace, are less prone to churn out free radicals, and are more efficient at ridding the body of damaged cells that induce chronic inflammatory reactions. Caloric restriction appears to do the same thing, but is much more difficult to implement and maintain in humans.

Resveratrol’s effect on mitochondria may be enough by itself to account for much of the compound’s demonstrable effects in the mouse studies. It may account for the enhanced running abilities observed in the overweight mice treated with resveratrol. What makes the findings of these recent mouse studies so potentially significant to researchers is that humans have genes similar to those linked to resveratrol intake in the mice.

Resveratrol and Cancer

In addition to its anti-aging and anti-heart disease effects, resveratrol may promote longevity through another avenue—that of fighting cancer, one of the chief causes of death in older adults.

When added to cells cultured in media, resveratrol has been found to inhibit the proliferation of a variety of human cancer cell lines, including those from breast, prostate, stomach, colon, pancreatic, and thyroid cancers.

In 2004, a team of biochemists at the University of Virginia looked at resveratrol’s role in blocking cancer growth and progression. Resveratrol appears to reduce the activation of nuclear factor-kappab (NF-kb), a protein that has been implicated in cancer by acting like a switch to turn on inflammatory processes.34,35 Resveratrol also enhances cancer cell sensitivity to certain immune cell-induced death mechanisms.   Nuclear factor-kappab inhibitors like resveratrol may thus have important implications for increasing the effectiveness of anticancer therapies in humans.

Researchers from the State University of New York at Stony Brook looked at the drinking habits of 360 red and white wine drinkers with similar lifestyles. White wine consumption had no association with colorectal cancer incidence. On the other hand, regular red wine consumption was linked to a 68% reduced risk of the cancer. The researchers believe that resveratrol was most likely the component in wine that was behind the apparent benefits.37 The findings confirmed results from an earlier study conducted by the same group showing that wine consumption reduced colorectal cancer risk by 45%.38

Last year, researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham examined resveratrol’s potential in preventing prostate tumors. In the study, published in Carcinogenesis, the mice were given the resveratrol found in one liter of red wine per day. Mice who consumed a diet supplemented with resveratrol had a dramatic eight-fold reduced incidence of poorly differentiated prostatic adenocarcinoma, a type of prostate cancer with a poor prognosis. The mice that experienced the greatest cancer-protection effect consumed resveratrol in a powdered formula mixed with their food for seven months.    Since it is medically inadvisable to consume one liter of red wine every day, this study points to the importance of resveratrol supplementation as part of prostate cancer defense.

An earlier study published in the Journal of Carcinogenesis found that dietary resveratrol helped prevent breast cancer in female rats. Starting at birth, rats were fed either a control diet or a diet supplemented with resveratrol. At the age of 50 days, both groups were exposed to a cancer-inducing chemical. The resveratrol-fed rats were significantly protected against breast cancer, demonstrating fewer tumors per animal and longer tumor latency (an asymptomatic period in this disease process). The researchers concluded, “our work supports the previous reports that resveratrol in the diet is effective at inhibiting…mammary cancer. We have shown that resveratrol can enhance maturation of the mammary gland as well as reduce cellular prolifer-ation and increase apoptosis (programmed cell death) in mammary epithelial cells, in a manner that is protective against mammary carcinogenesis.”

What if I told you could live to be age one hundred in as healthy and vigorous condition as you are now?

Or if you are already suffering the ill effects of aging, you could turn back the clock twenty years and stay that way until the century mark? Would you be interested?

And what if that extra thirty years added to the average life span allowed you to live long enough to take advantage of new scientific breakthroughs so that your healthy functional life span could be extended to 120 or 130 years and beyond?

And what if the launching pad to that wonderful prospect involved taking a substance that caused your body to lose unwanted fat and build muscle, renew your organs, improved your heart and lung activity, made studs out of men, increased sexual pleasure in women, and gave you the energy, sleep, and wonderful sense that the world is your oyster? Would you say, “What is this substance and how can I get some?”

There is such a substance. It is an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of hormone. Too little of it makes us dwarfs and too much of it turns us into giants. But the right amount of it at the right time promises to bring about the most fundamental revolution in society today–the beginning of the end of aging.

The “Fountain of Youth” Hormone

On July 5, 1990, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a clinical study on a drug that sent shock waves throughout the world. It was instantly hailed as a fountain of youth.

In a scene that seemed like something out of the movie Cocoon, injections of synthetic human growth hormone–a substance naturally

produced by the pituitary gland–had turned twelve men, ages sixty-one to eighty-one, with flabby, frail, fat-bulging bodies, into their sleeker, stronger, younger selves.

In language rarely used in conservative medical journals, Daniel Rudman, M.D., and his colleagues at the Medical College of Wisconsin wrote: “The effects of six months of human growth hormone on lean body mass and adipose-tissue mass were equivalent in magnitude to the changes incurred during 10 to 20 years of aging.”

In interviews with reporters, the men in the study and their wives reported other startling changes. The gray hair of a sixty-five-year-old man was turning black. The wife of another man had trouble keeping up with her newly energized husband even though she was fifteen years younger. A third man, who saw the wrinkles disappear on his face and hands, was now opening jars with ease, passing younger people on the street, and gardening for hours on end.

Some of the users and their spouses made sly references to reinvigorated sex lives. What happened to the control group? In group 2, as they were called in the study, “there was no significant change in lean body mass, the mass of adipose tissue, skin thickness, or bone density during treatment.” In other words, they continued aging on schedule.

Double-Blind Clinical Proof

Drugs and therapies that claim to reverse aging are nothing new. For decades youth seekers have trekked to the four corners of the world seeking youth and immortality. Recent examples include Ana Aslan’s clinic in Rumania for injections of Gerovital H3, which is essentially the same Novocain your dentist uses. Konrad Adenauer, Gloria Swanson, Groucho Marx, and more than 50,000 lesser-known patients have had their buttocks shot with fresh fetal lamb cells at Clinique La Prairie in Switzerland.

Others swear by ginseng or placental extract or nucleic acid therapy, which unleashed a craze for eating RNA-rich sardines.

While some of these therapies might have genuine merit, none of them has passed the gold standard of drug testing: controlled, randomized, double-blind clinical study.

Today there is immense interest in the hormone melatonin, released by the pineal gland in the brain. But melatonin has yet to be tested in double-blind trials in human beings. The only age-reversing drug that has passed placebo-controlled double-blind clinical trials with flying colors is human growth hormone. Not once, but many times over.

HGH Today Following up his own work, Rudman found that HGH given to twenty-six elderly men re-grew the livers, spleens, and muscles that had shrunken with age back to their youthful sizes.

Improved muscle strength, he pointed out, could make the difference between someone’s being on his feet or being confined to a wheelchair, between being spoon-fed or cooking a meal, between living independently or living in a nursing home.

“The overall deterioration of the body that comes with growing old is not inevitable,” he concluded. “We now realize that some aspects of it can be prevented or reversed.” Rudman’s landmark discovery opened the floodgates to the point that there are now thousands of studies in the world medical literature documenting the benefits of growth hormone therapy.

The National Institute on Aging has funded a multimillion-dollar effort in nine medical centers that will run for five years to test whether human growth hormone and other trophic factors–defined as substances that promote growth or maintenance of tissues–can reverse or retard the aging process. In 1992 medical researchers at Stanford University stated, “It is possible that physiologic growth hormone replacement might reverse or prevent some of the ‘inevitable’ sequelae of aging.”

But many people are not waiting for the results of these studies. In this country and abroad, doctors at dozens of clinics are treating thousands of old and middle-aged people who wish to erase the effects of aging. Hundreds of case histories have now become available, some of which you will read about in the coming chapters.

The FDA has just approved HGH for use in adults. Until now the only indication had been for treatment of children who failed to grow due to lack of growth hormone. The adult indication is for somatotrophin (growth hormone) deficiency syndrome (SDS). Signs of SDS include decreased physical mobility, socialization and energy levels, along with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease and lower life expectancy.

More Research Needed

Today more than ever if you decide to take HGH you face a multitude of choices. We believe the final research is early. HGH works. That is conclusive and it is the Fountain of Youth. How you improve your amount is the choice you make. The only problem is HGH injections cost approx. $1500 plus monthly. They require a doctor’s prescription and should be used only if medically approved within the scope of the FDA guidelines.

Green tea improves endothelial function

The June, 2008 issue of the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation published the results of a trial led by Dr Nikolaos Alexopoulos and colleagues at the Athens Medical School in Greece which found that drinking green tea improved endothelial function in men and women. Dysfunction of the endothelial cells which line the circulatory system is a critical event in the development of atherosclerosis, which leads to heart attack and stroke.

The current study tested the effects of three substances: 6 grams of green tea brewed in 450 milliliters boiled water, 125 milligrams caffeine, and hot water as a placebo, in 14 healthy participants with an average age of 30 years. Half of the subjects were smokers. Flow mediated dilatation of the brachial artery, which evaluates endothelial function by measuring artery diameter after a brief period of restricted blood flow, was assessed before the intake of each substance, and at 30, 90 and 120 minutes (time points when the peak plasma concentration of caffeine and tea flavonoids occur), for each of the three sessions.

While caffeine and hot water failed to demonstrate significant effects, there was a peak increase of 3.9 percent in endothelium-dependent brachial artery dilatation 30 minutes after the subjects consumed green tea. The finding supports the associated observed between green tea drinking and decreased cardiovascular disease risk. Tea flavonoids have antioxidant effects which may be responsible for their benefits; however green tea’s flavonoids may be more potent than those of black tea because the leaves have not undergone oxidation.

“These findings have important clinical implications,” stated study coauthor Dr Charalambos Vlachopoulos. “Tea consumption has been associated with reduced cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in several studies. Green tea is consumed less in the Western world than black tea, but it could be more beneficial because of the way it seems to improve endothelial function. In this same context, recent studies have also shown potent anticarcinogenic effects of green tea, attributed to its antioxidant properties.”

“Green tea consumption has an acute beneficial effect on endothelial function, assessed with flow-mediated dilatation of the brachial artery, in healthy individuals,” the authors conclude. “This may be involved in the beneficial effect of tea on cardiovascular risk.”

There is a growing body of scientific research and clinical data to support how natural and holistic supplements consisting of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs, and antioxidants – help delay the onset of disease and help us live more healthy lives.