From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Mon Jun 25 2001 - 22:33:07 MDT
LIFE EXTENSION UPDATE JUNE 22 2001
IN THIS ISSUE, JUNE 22 2001:
LIFE EXTENSION UPDATE EXCLUSIVE: Vitamin C headlines misleading
PROTOCOL: Common cold
FEATURED PRODUCTS OF THE WEEK: Vitamin C Capsules, Dual C by Durk Pearson &
Sandy Shaw
LIFE EXTENSION MAGAZINE: An Unjustified Attack on Vitamin E
LIFE EXTENSION UPDATE EXCLUSIVE
Vitamin C headlines misleading
Life Extension Update received a significant volume of mail last week
concerning the frightening headlines that appeared in various media
inferring that vitamin C could cause cancer. While the intent of these
headlines is to grab one's attention, a perusal of the accompanying
articles reveals conflicting statements. A June 14 Reuters article
captioned, "Vitamin C found to promote cancer-causing agents" contained
the following: "Lead resercher Ian Blair of the University's (of
Pennsylvania) Center for Cancer Pharmacology cautioned that the study was
conducted in a test tube and not with living human cells or in actual
people. 'Absolutely for God's sake don't say vitamin C causes cancer,'
Blair said in a telephone interview."
Nutritional experts have been quick to provide the public with their
responses. A June 16 Internet Wire article featured vitamin C expert and
former Linus Pauling collaborator Matthias Rath MD's comments that the
Science article was inconclusive because it was conducted in a test tube,
and that there are protective mechanisms in human cells, including
cooperative antioxidant systems and cell membranes. Dr Rath explained
that if vitamin C caused cancer, animals would experience a high rate of
the disease since they produce thousands of milligrams of vitamin C per
day, yet animals have low rates of cancer. He stated in the Internet Wire
article, "This is only one experiment and it wasn't even conducted in
living organisms. There are several clinical studies that show vitamin C
actually repairs cellular damage, and those studies were conducted in
humans and animals, not test-tubes."
Other studies, for example, one that appeared in the July 2000 issue of
Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, have shown vitamin C has no
effect on oxidative damage. However, it has long been known that vitamin
C in some instances can function as a pro-oxidant. Readers of Life
Extension's June 5 "What's Hot" section may recall that this function has
been proposed as one of the vitamin's possible mechanisms of action in
killing cancer cells.
In light of the many studies demonstrating vitamin C's benefits,
particularly the study summarized in the March 2 2001 issue of Life
Extension Update in which higher serum vitamin C levels were found to be
associated with lower mortality from all causes, it would be wise to
consider all of the evidence in favor of vitamin C, rather than rely on
irresponsible media headlines.
PROTOCOL
Common cold
Modern medicine can probe the depths of the human brain and successfully
transplant limbs, but for the most part, conventional physicians have been
hard-pressed to cure the common cold or find a vaccine to prevent it. Why
is this the case? The common cold is caused by over 300 serologically
distinct viruses belonging to many groups such as rhinoviruses and
adenoviruses. Since there are so many different types, it is impossible to
develop a single vaccine effective against them all.
The common cold is spread by airborne droplets from an infected person
breathing, coughing, or sneezing. Viruses will generally not stay alive on
inanimate objects long enough to be a problem, as on a phone for instance.
The droplets must be inhaled. However, when considering any infection, one
must keep in mind a number of things. Infection is by no means automatic.
Just because a person is exposed to an infection does not mean that an
infection will ensue. Infection is dependent on three important aspects;
virulence of the organism, inoculation size of the organism, and host
resistance.
One of the things that physicians find most frustrating in treating
patients is the continual demand by patients for antibiotics to treat the
common cold. Simply put, viruses do not respond to antibiotics. Taking
antibiotics inappropriately only contributes to antibiotic resistance and
placing patients at risk for serious disease. The majority of the
infections adults have throughout the healthy time of their lives are
viral in origin. Having a common cold with congested sinuses is not
sinusitis. Patients may even have greenish nasal discharge with sinus
congestion due to a common cold. Sinusitis is a bacterial infection of the
sinuses that is very painful and is associated with fever, moderate sinus
pressure, and nausea. Only with bacterial sinusitis is an antibiotic
necessary.
Vitamin C in doses of 5,000 to 20,000 mg has been used by many people as a
natural antihistamine and antiviral therapy to treat common colds. In
1971, Linus Pauling carried out a meta-analysis of four placebo-controlled
trials, concluding that it was highly unlikely that the decrease of common
cold symptoms in vitamin C groups was caused by chance alone. Studies
carried out since then have found that high doses of vitamin C alleviate
common cold symptoms, indicating that the vitamin does indeed have
physiologic effects on colds. However, despite the large number of
placebo-controlled studies showing that vitamin C supplementation
alleviates the symptoms of the common cold, widespread skepticism about
vitamin C persists.
http://www.lef.org/cgi-local/welcome.cgi/id=151064896/sgroup_id=699/welcome.
html
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FEATURED PRODUCTS OF THE WEEK
Vitamin C Capsules
Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, is a white, crystalline, water-soluble
substance found in citrus fruits and green vegetables.
Vitamin C may help to:
Prevent heart disease and some forms of cancer
Improve immune function
Maintain healthy skin and blood vessels
Accelerate healing
Reduce allergic reactions
http://www.lef.org/cgi-local/welcome.cgi/id=151064897/sgroup_id=699/welcome.
html
Dual-C capsules
Fat-soluble vitamin C (ascorbyl palmitate) may be as important as
water-soluble vitamin C, yet most vitamin consumers have not even heard of
ascorbyl palmitate. If you take Life Extension Mix, you are receiving a
potent dose of fat-soluble ascorbyl palmitate. The only vitamin C
supplement in the world to our knowledge, to combine water and fat soluble
vitamin C is Dual-C; each capsule of Dual-C contains 677 mg of fully
reacted calcium ascorbate (gentle on the stomach and supplies calcium) and
ascorbyl palmitate (to protect fat tissues from oxidation). Designed and
used by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw.
http://www.lef.org/cgi-local/welcome.cgi/id=151064898/sgroup_id=699/welcome.
html
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LIFE EXTENSION MAGAZINE June 2001,
An Unjustified Attack on Vitamin E, by Bill Faloon and Angela Pirisi
In article recently published in The Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA) showed that high doses of vitamin E did not lower
urinary measurements of lipid peroxidation in healthy people. Since the
primary purpose of taking vitamin E is to protect against these kinds of
free radicals, the authors of this study questioned the rationale for
healthy people consuming supplemental vitamin E. The media jumped all over
this story and attacked the value of vitamin E supplementation.
The fact that vitamin E by itself failed to demonstrate suppression of
lipid peroxidation is not surprising. It has long been known that vitamin
E requires other antioxidants in order to recycle itself back into a free
radical scavenger. The people who participated in this study were
screened to make sure that none of them had taken a multivitamin
supplement in the preceding month. During the course of the study, the
subjects were not allowed to take any supplement other than the prescribed
vitamin E. This meant that there were no other antioxidants available to
recycle vitamin E end-products back into effective suppressors of free
radicals.
Studies published many years ago showed that for vitamin E to function as
a continuous antioxidant, ample levels of vitamin C must be present to
regenerate (donate more electrons) to vitamin E in the body. The subjects
who participated in the JAMA study were not allowed to take vitamin C or
any other supplement that would have enabled the vitamin E to function as
an effective antioxidant.
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