From: hal@finney.org
Date: Mon Feb 25 2002 - 12:39:38 MST
J. Hughes reported on this study on a transhumanist list:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/02/19_diet.html:
Berkeley - Two dietary supplements straight off the health food
store shelf put the spark back into aging rats, and might do the
same for aging baby boomers, according to a study at the University
of California, Berkeley, and Children's Hospital Oakland Research
Institute.
A team of researchers led by Bruce N. Ames, professor of molecular and
cell biology at UC Berkeley, fed older rats two chemicals normally
found in the body's cells and available as dietary supplements:
acetyl-L-carnitine and an antioxidant, alpha-lipoic acid.
In three articles in the February 19 issue of Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, Ames and his colleagues report the
surprising results. Not only did the older rats do better on memory
tests, they had more pep, and the energy-producing organelles in
their cells worked better.
"With the two supplements together, these old rats got up and did the
Macarena," said Ames, also a researcher at Children's Hospital Oakland
Research Institute (CHORI). "The brain looks better, they are full
of energy - everything we looked at looks more like a young animal."
The abstract is at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/4/1870,
along with a link to the full paper if you subscribe.
Hal
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