Smart Economy

Longevity and Healthy Aging

Aging Gracefully without Chronic Human Diseases

Time Magazine and National Geographic both recently ran cover stories with a baby on the cover. The tagline reads: This baby could live to be 142 years old. So the question that immediately comes to mind  is: Is this possible  and can everyone age gracefully without chronic human diseases? And can we do it with today’s technology ?

To explore this question we first need to compare the mortality in 1900 versus today. In 1900, half of the deaths were caused by pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infections.  These diseases were cured largely with antibiotics and antivirals after world war two. Cancer, diabetes, coronary  heart disease, and Alzheimer’s were present but  not near the rates we see today.  Now, the top causes of death today, according to US statistics are heart disease, lung cancer, lung disease (asthma) , stroke, Alzheimer’s,  diabetes  and hypertension. An interesting question to ask would be: Do all these new, twenty first century diseases all have something in common, just like the top causes of death  in 1900 where from bacterial or viral sources?  A review of the medical literature shows two primary causes. In turns out that most chronic human diseases are 1) triggered by excess free radicals or oxidative stress and 2) are the result of a lack of essential minerals and trace minerals and cofactors in our diets.

Oxidative Stress

Free radicals or oxidative stress is the result of our cells metabolizing or breathing oxygen. Free radical are the “waste” products of life, and they are very destructive to cell membranes, proteins and DNA.  Our body has a natural protective system-antioxidant enzymes that neutralize excess free radicals. If this delicate balance is  disrupted,  this then leads to an inflammation response in the body and eventually, chronic diseases could ensue. As we age, our natural antioxidant protective systems decline and we are told to supplement with natural botanical antioxidants, such as blueberries , green tea or cinnamon or antioxidant supplements such as Vitamin E or coenzyme Q10. But then we run into the “antioxidant paradox”. All these food antioxidants  work great as antioxidants in a test tube in the lab, but in human clinical trials, the beneficial effects are either inconclusive or negative. This is because saliva and gut bacteria metabolise many these botanical antioxidants, before they have a chance to act beneficially.

Ukrainian scientists discovered the world’s highest antioxidant called Carbon 60 hydrated fullerenes, which is stable and inert and not metabolised by bacteria. Carbon 60, a natural product,  was discovered in 1985 and a Nobel prize in Chemistry was awarded for this discovery in 1996.  Scientists and doctors were calling it the panacea or silver bullet in medicine, but because it’s not naturally water soluble, just like diamonds, charcoal or activated charcoal, this frustrated scientists. Ukrainian scientist in Kharkiv the first to discovered how to dissolve Carbon 60 in water in 1994. After 20 years of preclinical, safety and clinical studies,  Carbon 60 hydrated fullerenes  were approved as a  “dietary supplement” by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and has been on the Ukrainian market since 2010. There is now a US patent pending. Scientists are now claiming that most chronic human diseases are triggered by excess free radicals. Just do a search on PUBMED with the key words “oxidative stress” and your own disease and you will find a link. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed ). Reduce excess free radicals and reduce your disease symptoms. A study at the University of Paris in 2010 showed that rats feed a diet supplemented  with Carbon 60 in olive oil, increased the lifespan of rats by 90% from an average of 25-30 months to over 55 months.

Essential minerals and trace minerals.

The National Post ran a story on May 1- “Obese Canadians should be granted legal protection from discrimination, professor says.”  The obesity debate is totally missing the point. Most Doctors are ignoring their own medical research. The cause of the 400% increase in obesity in last 3 decades in Canada and sharp rise in most other chronic human diseases since the 1930’ is due to a chronic lack of essential minerals and trace minerals in our diet (plants, fruits and vegetables) that are needed as co-factors in the body for our biochemical pathways to work efficiently.

The soil minerals concentrations have been dropping  worldwide for the last 100 years, so less and less minerals are  absorbed in fruits, vegetables and other plants. This is due primarily to the fact that  we no longer cook and heat our homes with wood and throw away the ashes (95% minerals) back into the garden to replenish the soil with the 60 essential and trace minerals that our bodies need. Fertilizer only has 3 minerals. Even the nutritional supplements commonly found in most health food stores don't carry the full complement of 90  essential nutrients, which should include 60 essential minerals, 15 essential vitamins, 12 essential amino acids and 3 fatty acids and  the right doses of each and the correct easily absorbable mineral salts.

How do we know that we need 90 essential nutrients? Just talk to any veterinarian. Vets have cured over 600 chronic human diseases in farm animals and in zoo animals by supplementing their food with nutritional pellets. When was the last time you saw a cow with arthritis and a pig with Alzheimer’s?  Vets have to cure an animal after the first time otherwise beef would cost over $500 a pound or eggs $50 a dozen.  Why? Because animals don’t have health insurance. Doctors are quite content to treat your disease symptoms for the rest of your life, billing health insurance and not curing your disease after a few visits. Human  clinical studies in the past 40 years have shown that most chronic human diseases are also caused by essential mineral deficiencies and can be controlled with the proper essential and trace minerals. Diabetes has been controlled with the right amount of chromium and vanadium and other essential cofactors. Arthritis is a lack of proper calcium absorption and cofactors such as Vitamin D and magnesium. Greying hair is a copper deficiency in the diet.

So can we live to be 100 or over without chronic human diseases? Yes by reducing excess oxidative stress or free radicals in our body and ensuring that we get the right daily balance of 90 essential nutrients including 60 minerals and trace minerals.

If you would like more information on the above or a copy of my presentation on Aging Gracefully without Chronic Human Diseases that  I gave at Ukrainian Canadian Social Services last week, send me an email  [email protected] or call (416) 819-9667 or download it from this link  http://bit.ly/1KzZvm8  For Ukrainian listeners,  catch  my Ukrainian radio interview on Radio KONTAKT archives from Saturday April 25, 2015 http://www.kontaktglobal.com/radio-saturday.html

 

Walter Derzko is the president of the startup C60 Water North America

Aging Gracefully without Chronic Human Diseases

I’m adding  a link to a presentation I gave last week to a group of seniors at the Ukrainian Canadian Social Services –Toronto Branch on Aging Gracefully without Chronic Human Diseases.  It’s designed for a non-technical,  layperson audience. You can download it from the link below.

 

https://www.academia.edu/12124838/Aging_Gracefully_without_Chronic_Human_Diseases_v4_UPDATED_

 

Enjoy and Comments Welcomed

 

Walter  Derzko

Toronto

UPDATE on the Carbon[60] Hydrated Fullerenes-The Highest Antioxidant in the World

Scientists  have made a  significant leap in cancer research.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

R. Buckminster Fuller

90% of all cancer deaths come from cancer spreading in the body from one organ to another, called metastasis. Stop metastasis, stop many unnecessary premature cancer deaths.

Belgium researches in 2014 determined that cancer metastasis  can only occur if there are excess free radicals in the body. Specifically they conclude: “under certain conditions, the mitochondria produce more free radicals known as superoxide ions (O2.-). It is this overproduction of superoxide that leads to the formation of metastasis and, consequently, the growth of a tumor. “ See “A world first: Researchers identify a treatment that prevents tumor metastasis (Université catholique de Louvain)”  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/ucdl-awf072414.php

So, logically, if you can reduce excess oxidative stress and free radical levels in the body back to  normal levels, theoretically, you  should be able to prevent metastasis and reduce the risk of cancer  growth and eliminate most cancer deaths. 

This not only applies to cancer, but many other chronic human diseases, which appear to be triggered by excess free radicals too.

Just do a search on PUBMED using the term “oxidative stress” the name of any chronic human disease and you will see a connection/link  to free radicals and most diseases. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

In fact, researcher in Ukraine have already reduced oxidative stress  in cancer  cases and many other chronic human diseases with a safe, natural, organic molecule, called Carbon [60] or specifically the water-soluble version, called Carbon 60 Hydrated Fullerenes, C60HYFNs. It was approved by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health in 2010, as a dietary supplement and antioxidant, after 20 years of preclinical and clinical studies.  It’s the world’s highest antioxidant and free radical scavenger,  neutralizing excess free radicals. It was discovered in 1985 and a Nobel prize in Chemistry was awarded for the discover in 1996. Two years before that,  Ukrainian researched discovered how to make Carbon[60] water-soluble, since most Carbon allotropes do not dissolve  in water.

 (see  the medical and biological properties in Carbon 60 Hydrated Fullerenes   http://www.ipacom.com/index.php/en/fullerenes-and-water-left/74 )

Most recently (Dec. 2014), Ukrainian researchers showed that C60HYFNs combined with traditional chemotherapy (Doxorubicin) , eliminates tumors in animal models without the toxic effects seen with traditional chemo. They showed that this combination: “resulted in tumor growth inhibition, prolongation of life, metastasis inhibition, and increased number of apoptotic tumor cells and was more effective than the corresponding course of Dox treatment alone.”

See C60 fullerene as synergistic agent in tumor-inhibitory Doxorubicin treatment. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25504158

Carbon 60, a radiation protector,  also reduces the negative effects of traditional radiation therapy. See  Peculiarities of the antioxidant and radioprotective effects of hydrated C60 fullerene nanostuctures in vitro and in vivo.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19539750

The molecule C60 HYFNs is now US patent pending (March 2014). http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0079746.html

We are in the process of submitting the clinical studies to the FDA to get a GRAS designation to sell C60HYFNs as an antioxidant  dietary supplement in the USA, Canada and Mexico.

Walter Derzko

President

C60 Water North America

416-819-9667

Wedded bliss or blues? Scientists link DNA to marital satisfaction

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | October 7, 2013

BERKELEY —  What makes some people more prone to wedded bliss or sorrow than others? Researchers at UC Berkeley and Northwestern University have found a major clue in our DNA. A gene involved in the regulation of serotonin can predict how much our emotions affect our relationships, according to a new study that may be the first to link genetics, emotions, and marital satisfaction. The study was conducted at UC Berkeley.

New study links gene variant to our level of marital satisfaction (IStockphoto)

“An enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious?” said UC Berkeley psychologist Robert W. Levenson, senior author of the study published online today (Oct. 7)  in the journal Emotion. “With these new genetic findings, we now understand much more about what determines just how important emotions are for different people.”

Specifically, researchers found a link between relationship fulfillment and a gene variant, or “allele,” known as 5-HTTLPR. All humans inherit a copy of this gene variant from each parent. Study participants with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles were found to be most unhappy in their marriages when there was a lot of negative emotion, such as anger and contempt, and most happy when there was positive emotion, such as humor and affection. By contrast, those with one or two long alleles were far less bothered by the emotional tenor of their marriages.

“We are always trying to understand the recipe for a good relationship, and emotion keeps coming up as an important ingredient,” said Levenson, who heads up a longitudinal study that has tracked over 150 married couples for more than 20 years.

The new findings don’t mean that couples with different variations of 5-HTTLPR are incompatible, the researchers note. Instead, it suggests that those with two short alleles are likelier to thrive in a good relationship and suffer in a bad one. The results of the study, which looked at the genotypes of more than 100 spouses and observed how they interacted with their partners over time, bore this out, they said.

“Individuals with two short alleles of the gene variant may be like hothouse flowers, blossoming in a marriage when the emotional climate is good and withering when it is bad,” said Claudia M. Haase, assistant professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University and lead author of the study, which she conducted as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. “Conversely, people with one or two long alleles are less sensitive to the emotional climate.”

“Neither of these genetic variants is inherently good or bad,” Haase added. “Each has its advantages and disadvantages.”

Researchers found that those with one type of gene variant were more vulnerable to the emotional tenor of their marriage (iStockphoto)

Participants in the study belong to a group of 156 middle-aged and older couples whose relationships Levenson and fellow researchers have followed since 1989. Every five years, the couples have come to UC Berkeley to report on their marital satisfaction and interact with one another in a lab setting while researchers code their conversations based on facial expressions, body language, tone of voice and topic of discussion.

More recently, 125 of the study participants provided DNA samples, and researchers matched their genotypes with their levels of marital satisfaction and the emotional tenor of their interactions in the lab setting.

For spouses with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles, who made up 17 percent of the spouses studied, researchers found a strong correlation between the emotional tone of their conversations and how they felt about their marriage. For the 83 percent of spouses with one or two long alleles, on the other hand, the emotional quality of their discussions bore little or no relation to their marital satisfaction over the next decade.

The link between genes, emotion and marital satisfaction was particularly pronounced for older adults. “One explanation for this latter finding is that in late life – just as in early childhood – we are maximally susceptible to the influences of our genes,” Levenson said.

Categories: Health & medicine, News, Press Release, Science, Social science
Tags: genes, marriage, psychology, relationships

This week's health forecast: Sunny with a 40 percent chance of flu (or 0% with hydrated fullerenes)

This week's forecast: Sunny with a 40 percent chance of flu

New computer model takes a page from weather forecasting to
predict regional peaks in influenza outbreaks

NEW YORK (November 26,
2012)—Scientists have developed a system to predict the timing and severity of
seasonal influenza outbreaks that could one day help health officials and the
general public better prepare for them. The system adapts techniques used in
modern weather prediction to turn real-time, Web-based estimates of influenza
infection into local forecasts of seasonal flu.

Results appear online
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Year to year, and
region to region, there is huge variability in the peak of flu season, which,
in temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere, can happen as early as October
or as late as April. The forecast system can provide "a window into what
can happen week to week as flu prevalence rises and falls," says Jeffrey
Shaman, PhD, an assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public
Health.

As a test case, Dr.
Shaman and Alicia Karspeck, PhD, of the National Center for Atmospheric
Research, used Web-based estimates of flu-related sickness from the 2003-2008
influenza seasons in New York City to retrospectively generate weekly flu
forecasts and found that the technique could predict the peak timing of the
outbreak more than seven weeks in advance of the actual peak.

In the future, such flu
forecasts might conceivably be disseminated on the local television news along
with the weather report, says Dr. Shaman. Like the weather, flu conditions vary
from region to region; Atlanta might peak weeks ahead of Anchorage.
"Because we are all familiar with weather broadcasts, when we hear that
there is a 80% chance of rain, we all have an intuitive sense of whether or not
we should carry an umbrella," says Dr. Shaman. "I expect we will
develop a similar comfort level and confidence in flu forecasts and develop an
intuition of what we should do to protect ourselves in response to different
forecast outcomes."

As individuals, a flu forecast could prompt us to get a vaccine, exercise care around people sneezing
and coughing, and better tune in to how we feel. For health officials, it could
inform decisions on how many vaccines and antiviral drugs to stockpile, and in
the case of a virulent outbreak, whether other measures, like closing schools,
is necessary. (or take HYFN's -Hydrated Fullerenes--WD]

"Flu forecasting has the potential to significantly improve our ability to prepare for and
manage the seasonal flu outbreaks that strike each year," says Irene
Eckstrand, PhD, of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of
General Medical Sciences, which provided funding for the study.

Worldwide, influenza kills an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people each year; in the U.S. about
35,000 die from the flu every year.

The seed of the new study was planted four years ago in a conversation between the two researchers,
in which Dr. Shaman expressed an interest in using models to forecast
influenza. Dr. Karspeck "recommended incorporating some of the data
assimilation techniques used in weather forecasting to build a skillful
prediction system" remembers Dr. Shaman.

In weather forecasting real-time observational data are used to "nudge the model to conform with
reality and reduce error in the model simulations," he explains. Applying
this method to flu forecasting, the researchers used near-real-time data from
Google Flu Trends, which estimates outbreaks based on the number of flu-related
search queries in a given region.

Going forward, Dr. Shaman will test the model in other localities across the country using
up-to-date data. This is necessary, he says, since "there is no guarantee
that just because the method works in New York
it will work in Miami."

###

About Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922 as one of the first three public health academies in the nation, Columbia University's
Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and
service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New
Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Mailman School
is the third largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health.
Its over 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries
around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic
diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy,
climate change & health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in
public health education with over 1,000 graduate students from more than 40
nations pursuing a variety of master's and doctoral degree programs. The Mailman School
is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers including the International Center
for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP), the National Center
for Disaster Preparedness, and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more
information, please visit www.mailman.columbia.edu

 

Study advances use of stem cells in personalized medicine in Medical research

 

Johns Hopkins researchers report concrete steps in the use of human stem cells to test how
diseased cells respond to drugs. Their success

 

The project, described in an article published November 25 on
the website of the journal Nature Biotechnology, began several years ago, when
Gabsang Lee, D.V.M., Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine's Institute for Cell Engineering, was a
postdoctoral fellow at Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York. To see if induced pluripotent stem
cells (iPSCs) could be used to make specialized disease cells for quick and
easy drug testing, Lee and his colleagues extracted cells from the skin of a
person with a rare genetic disease called Riley-Day syndrome, chosen because it
affects only one type of nerve cell that is difficult if not impossible to
extract directly from a traditional biopsy. These traits made Riley-Day an
ideal candidate for alternative ways of generating cells for study. In a
so-called "proof of concept" experiment, the researchers
biochemically reprogrammed the skin cells from the patient to form iPSCs, which
can grow into any cell type in the body. The team then induced the iPSCs to
grow into nerve cells. "Because we could study the nerve cells directly,
we could for the first time see exactly what was going wrong in this
disease," says Lee. Some symptoms of Riley-Day syndrome are insensitivity
to pain, episodes of vomiting, poor coordination and seizures; only about half
of affected patients reach age 30. In the recent research at Johns Hopkins and
Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Lee and his co-workers used these same lab-grown
Riley-Day nerve cells to screen about 7,000 drugs for their effects on the
diseased cells. With the aid of a robot programmed to analyze the effects, the
researchers quickly identified eight compounds for further testing, of which
one—SKF-86466—ultimately showed promise for stopping or reversing the disease
process at the cellular level. Lee says a clinical trial with SKF-86466 might
not be feasible because of the small number of Riley-Day patients worldwide,
but suggests that a closely related version of the compound, one that has
already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for another use,
could be employed for the patients after a few tests. The implications of the
experiment reach beyond Riley-Day syndrome, however. "There are many rare,
'orphan' genetic diseases that will never be addressed through the costly
current model of drug development," Lee explains. "We've shown that
there may be another way forward to treat these illnesses." Another
application of the new stem cell process could be treatments tailored not only
to an illness, but also to an individual patient, Lee says. That is, iPSCs
could be made for a patient, then used to create a laboratory culture of, for
example, pancreatic cells, in the case of a patient with type 1 diabetes. The
efficacy and safety of various drugs could then be tested on the cultured
cells, and doctors could use the results to help determine the best treatment.
"This approach could move much of the trial-and-error process of beginning
a new treatment from the patient to the petri dish, and help people to get
better faster," says Lee. Journal reference: Nature Biotechnology Provided
by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 



Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-advances-stem-cells-personalized-medicine.html#jCp