2189 replies to this topic

[Anthony_Loera]

thanks!

Check this out: http://www.asianjps.....asp?bsid=14493

sax

Beta-cyclodextrin is limited in the USA... we basically can't use it in supplements.

A

[niner]

Beta-cyclodextrin is limited in the USA... we basically can't use it in supplements.

Anthony, Why's that? The bioavailability improvement was pretty impressive. It's possible for people to obtain beta CD and mix their own, although that's a lot of trouble. Early resveratrol work used beta-CD, but people seem to have moved on from it.

[kilgoretrout]

Hi kilgore,

Please read the full thread before commenting or making some pretty silly statements without basis about my company.

Niner has it right on all counts...

Cheers
A

Aha.. just as I suspected. There is indeed someone from this company here in this forum shilling the product, trying to encourage us to believe that it might be a good idea to purchase and consume it.

Even though the company's own statements say, in effect "We don't think this actually does anything. And even if it did by some huge leap of luck cause the effect that we are shooting for... there is no reason to believe that this effect does anything either."

Caveat Emptor! Or... "a fool and his money are soon parted." I'll stick to things with even just a little real science behind them. You are buying $40 bottles of 30 pills containing:

Speculation...........750mg
Wishful Thinking....750mg

That is what they are selling. Don't you think it a little odd that it is so expensive? That's because Speculation & WIshful Thinking are always much much costlier to manufacture than a tiny bit of extract from a common and plentiful herb.

Sorry to rain on the party. I'll go away and leave you all alone now.

[niner]

Even though the company's own statements say, in effect "We don't think this actually does anything. And even if it did by some huge leap of luck cause the effect that we are shooting for... there is no reason to believe that this effect does anything either."

Kilgore, the FDA requires that supplement vendors make no medical claims. They aren't allowed to say that it "does" anything. If they start making claims like that, then they will be treated just like a drug company, and will have to do studies to prove safety and efficacy, among other things. Extremely expensive. Anthony is trying to stay out of that regime.

That is what they are selling. Don't you think it a little odd that it is so expensive? That's because Speculation & WIshful Thinking are always much much costlier to manufacture than a tiny bit of extract from a common and plentiful herb.

If you want a tiny bit of extract from a common and plentiful herb, there are a million places where you can get it, cheap. Try Walmart or Walgreens. If you want high purity resveratrol with a sophisticated formulation, that will cost some money. That's just the way it works. Micronization isn't free; Licaps aren't free.

Sorry to rain on the party. I'll go away and leave you all alone now.

It's not so much raining on the party as just not knowing some things, like that Anthony has been upfront about RevGenetics from day one, (most ImmInsters are aware of this); and that there is a huge difference between cheap low purity resveratrol and the good stuff.

[theflatworld]

Hey all (especially Anthony and VinceG),

I followed this thread for more over a year now, and I found this video since last year which the discoverer of telomerase Elizabeth Blackburn of UCSF talks about how adult cells DOES have a low level of telomerase activity and it is just not very detectable at higher level. and she talked toward the end of lecture that those people with lowered telomerase activity showed increased speed of aging and suscpectibility to diseases.





at 30:00, she talked about a steady level of telomerase activity in normal healthy adult cells, so I guess giving a higher doses of it now when we are young with high p53/p16 activity may be very likely be okay.

"There was a though for a while, when you become a baby, and then you are an adult, your cells turn telomerase off. People actually thought that happened. The method for detecting telomerase in adult cell were not sensitive enough to pick up what is now becomes clear is a minimal but a very real certainly regulated level of telomerase activity in normal adult cells. so telomerase is there in many adult cells. that was surprising but probably now not so surprising because we now know that telomeres is probably protecting chromsones ends starting to make sense that it might present in adult cells perhaps even present not going to do much more of self renewing"

Edited by theflatworld, 08 July 2009 - 08:35 AM.

[AgeVivo]

Elizabeth Blackburn of UCSF (...)

Long but very interesting, and clear while technical presentation of telomerase!!!

I see that she also insists on:
- telomerase promotes cancer cells
- telomerase quantity matter
- shorter telomeres are strinkingly associated with higher mortality rates in humans
- this association does certainly not say what is cause and effect
- chronic stress is associated with short telomeres

I understand why some people might accept to be 'guiney pigs', with supplements discussed here. The more i think about it, the more i'm surprised that there is no such published lifespan test in 'normal' mice/rats...

Edited by AgeVivo, 08 July 2009 - 01:40 PM.

[theflatworld]

Long but very interesting, and clear while technical presentation of telomerase!!!

I see that she also insists on:
- telomerase promotes cancer cells
- telomerase quantity matter
- shorter telomeres are strinkingly associated with higher mortality rates in humans
- this association does certainly not say what is cause and effect
- chronic stress is associated with short telomeres

I understand why some people might accept to be 'guiney pigs', with supplements discussed here. The more i think about it, the more i'm surprised that there is no such published lifespan test in 'normal' mice/rats...

yes but these things we already know, but what is important is that telomerase is actual present at this moment in our cells, which was not only surprise to you and me but to her the discoverer of telomerase as well.

[theflatworld]

I think the bottom line is, if you have a good immune system, such as high acticity of NK killer cells, or p53/p16/p27, you should be fine with higher level of telomerase, there is actually cancer cells in our body right now. but they are dormant because they are kept in check by tumor supressors.
and mushroom extracts such as AHCC seems to promote NK killer cells. read this:
http://www.iherb.com...Vcaps/4252?at=0

Edited by theflatworld, 08 July 2009 - 05:49 PM.

[Anthony_Loera]

Anthony, Why's that? The bioavailability improvement was pretty impressive. It's possible for people to obtain beta CD and mix their own, although that's a lot of trouble. Early resveratrol work used beta-CD, but people seem to have moved on from it.

I think 2% is the GRAS limit... which is bad. Remember the cyclodextrin is shaped like a douoghnut, then you place the resveratrol (or Astragaloside IV) into the doughnut hole to produce a complex that is soluble. Problem is that you generally need a lot of beta-cyclodextrin and I believe a spray-drying process to make this happen.

The results generally tested at 10%-15% resveratrol in the past, at the most...

The EPA says it's ok for use in pesticides:
http://www.epa.gov/E...y-06/p13263.htm

Toxicology and other stuff:
http://www.inchem.or...ono/v32je13.htm

GRAS:
http://www.foodsafet...b/opa-g074.html

Cheers
A

Edited by Anthony_Loera, 09 July 2009 - 08:30 PM.

[taurus]

Kilgoretrout, RevGenetics sells products containing Resveratrol and Astragaloside IV.

Do you think it was wishful thinking that prompted GlaxoSmithKline to purchase Sirtris Pharmaceuticals for ~720M USD? An unusually large amount for the purchase of a startup company with drug products barely going into initial stage clinical trials. It was their research on Resveratrol, that led to their current small molecule drug development.

And then there is Geron... Do you think they've been researching natural telmerase activators out of idle curiosity?

Aha.. just as I suspected. There is indeed someone from this company here in this forum shilling the product, trying to encourage us to believe that it might be a good idea to purchase and consume it.

Even though the company's own statements say, in effect "We don't think this actually does anything. And even if it did by some huge leap of luck cause the effect that we are shooting for... there is no reason to believe that this effect does anything either."

Caveat Emptor! Or... "a fool and his money are soon parted." I'll stick to things with even just a little real science behind them. You are buying $40 bottles of 30 pills containing:

Speculation...........750mg
Wishful Thinking....750mg

That is what they are selling. Don't you think it a little odd that it is so expensive? That's because Speculation & WIshful Thinking are always much much costlier to manufacture than a tiny bit of extract from a common and plentiful herb.

Sorry to rain on the party. I'll go away and leave you all alone now.

Edited by taurus, 09 July 2009 - 11:00 PM.

[unglued]

I realize this is getting off-topic. Aren't there forums for philosophy? But I can't resist responding either.

And then there's the fact that cells, even if they have very long telomeres, cells STILL find some way to knock themselves out. Death is a VERY important part of nature's design, and, more to the point, a crucial part of the DNA/RNA-driven evolutionary process (remember "The Selfish Gene"?) and there are no doubt multiple mechanisms to ensure that it happens on schedule.

I read The Selfish Gene recently, and here's my interpretation of it in this context:

Each of your genes "wants" to survive as long as it can, which amounts to countless millennia if it plays its cards right. In a multi-cellular organism, of course, it works well to program the cell to kill itself for the good of the organism, since the gene "knows" that copies of it reside all the other cells. At the organism level, the gene can pursue various strategies. It can program you with a desire to eat as much as possible so you'll survive. (All of this is in the natural environment we evolved for -- they haven't been keeping up with all these new game-changing inventions, like agriculture). It can program you with desires that will tend to lead to reproduction, or to helping others who have a high likelihood of bearing a copy of the same gene (people who seem to be your biological children or siblings, for example). It can build color visual systems for detecting ripe fruit, and a big brain for processing the images and remembering where the best fruit is.

Genes in some species emphasized some strategies more than others. For example, genes in flies seem to have adopted the strategy of putting the energy into making lots of eggs rather than taking care of the young or making the individual's maximum lifespan longer. (What's the point, when they'll probably starve or freeze or get eaten before reaching it?)

Keeping the individual organism alive is a survival strategy for the gene, because survival tends (in our original environment) to be correlated with reproduction. Nothing in the theory says that the death of individuals is an important part of any gene's strategy. If it's already found a set of other genes it's been successfully cooperating with (the ones in your individual genome), it's worth some investment in maintaining that rather than putting all its efforts into rolling the dice again. (Though rolling the dice again is a useful strategy for keeping up with changing needs.) There's no law of nature that says that the human lifespan is fixed by some design at 25-30 years, or whatever it was in our natural environment, or even at what it is today (35-60 in the Third World, 77-83 in industrialized countries, longer in a few cases). We started messing with that schedule a long time ago.

I think the Selfish Gene theory predicts that it's natural for humans to try to use our brains to extend our own survival. (That's what they're for, from the point of view of the genes directing brain growth -- that, and sexual strategies and child rearing.) We've done pretty well so far already at extending the lifespan by engineering clean water supplies, for example -- call it an obsession with escaping death if you like. After all, unless you have a twin, there's no other individual in the world that is 100% certain of carrying a copy of any one of your genes. To stretch it further, the theory might also predict that if the genes "know" they're in a female body this time, that extending that individual's survival is only a good strategy until she reaches menopause, and might try to nudge her toward other ways of enhancing their survival. So it might predict that if you looked at the gender of people looking for information on taking these supplements (for their own use and not a relative's or pet's), you'd find more men and fewer women than you'd expect statistically.

Anyway, the 30th edition of The Selfish Gene makes it very clear that Dawkins does not mean to suggest that we need to do what everything our genes "want" us to do. Or that we're unable to defy them. He points out that many people are able to bring themselves to use birth control, which is just about the most direct defiance possible.

[tintinet]

After a three week break in taking AIV (3 x 33mg), I started taking the new 100mg dose with Chitosan today (1 x 100mg). It's pretty strong, but I hope to have grown accustomed to the larger dose in a few days.

After another three months with 1 x 100mg I will take another telomere test and see if there's been any effect.

In either case, I think I will try the Cycloastragenol when it gets available.

"Pretty strong"? What effects did you notice?

[kilgoretrout]

Kilgoretrout, RevGenetics sells products containing Resveratrol and Astragaloside IV.

Do you think it was wishful thinking that prompted GlaxoSmithKline to purchase Sirtris Pharmaceuticals for ~720M USD? An unusually large amount for the purchase of a startup company with drug products barely going into initial stage clinical trials. It was their research on Resveratrol, that led to their current small molecule drug development.

And then there is Geron... Do you think they've been researching natural telmerase activators out of idle curiosity?

Of course not. They want to make lots of money. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I feel that here there needs to be more acknowledgement of the profit motive and less mawkish acceptance of implications by the company that its extremely expensive products could accomplish things like repairing cells, improving health, and extending lifespan.

Many many billions have been spent on things that went all the way to large-scale placebo-controlled trials, only to be thrown in the trash when results were properly analyzed. In fact, far more than actually make it to market. Company purchases like you mention are happening constantly and are utterly meaningless in the context of deciding whether to buy this companies products and swallowing them (along with hook, line and sinker I might add).

I applaud the fact that they are doing the research; it is partly through private companies and the free-enterprise system that we will end up with products available to us that actually accomplish such goals.

But I feel it is irresponsible, misleading, greedy and cruel for them to be hawking these substances as if they will do anything useful when consumed by a live human organism. I find their business model and sales efforts, in a word, sleazy.

There needs to be PEER REVIEWED IN-VIVO PUBLISHED RESEARCH before making even suggestions or implications that they might have the desired health benefits. It is fine to offer products for sale as "research supplements", and to provide information on what is known about what they actually do.

But the vast majority of their web site is full of all sorts of glowing discussion of numerous possible health benefits that are TOTALLY IMAGINARY AND HYPOTHETICAL... in order to induce people to buy things from them.

Here is what is actually known so far as I can tell: In test-tube experiments on isolated cells, they have effects on mitochondria, telomeres, and lifespan. In living complete organisms they lengthen the lifespan of YEAST AND WORMS. BUT NOT MICE!!! Which should be an immense red flag to anyone contemplating buying these things and consuming them.

It is not even known if they penetrate the blood brain barrier or even anything about their general pharmacodynamics... how long they stay in the body, how much if any actually gets inside of cells of a living human being.

And yet, go to their web site, and you are immediately blasted with a huge smiling face and material manipulating people's emotions, fantasies, and wishful thinking. FIRST SENTENCE: "... supplements to help you and your loved ones live longer, healthier lives..."

Which is complete and utter BS. There is ZERO evidence that these things do anything at all when consumed by a live human.

Frankly, I feel that they are just begging to be sued by the FDA over unsupported health claims. And that would be very bad for the field and for the research. The research is important, but their desire to fund it tempts them to jump the gun and publish this sort of hyper-inflated utopian fantasy advertising. And to have company representatives come into forums like this, even without making implicit health claims, implicitly encourages all the wishful thinking about what the current products might really do when consumed, which I would expect more people to take offense at, but apparently not.

Most such companies pursue their research mostly quietly, publishing verified results in proper scientific journals, making occasional press releases, and pursuing funding from private sources. Major pharmaceutical companies have thousands of things with extremely exciting properties in development, but you do not see them offering preliminary versions for sale in capsules to the public, hyping them on flashy websites, implying all manner of health benefits, even making implication and innuendo of science-fiction fantasies of immortality by putting a link on their home page to a newspaper article titled; "Immortal Fiction Becoming Fact".

What rubbish! There they are hinting at fabulous health effects and "immortality" a click away from "Buy Now" end "Enter Credit Card Number" links.

Can you say "Snake Oil"?

Edited by kilgoretrout, 10 July 2009 - 03:34 PM.

[stephen_b]

There needs to be PEER REVIEWED IN-VIVO PUBLISHED RESEARCH before making even suggestions or implications that they might have the desired health benefits.

I value an honest presentation of the issues and the right to make up my own mind. In going after RevGenetics, in my opinion, you've chosen one of the most above ground suppliers to make a point that would be better directed towards the real snake oil pushers.

Edited by stephen_b, 10 July 2009 - 03:52 PM.

[kilgoretrout]

I value an honest presentation of the issues and the right to make up my own mind. In going after RevGenetics, in my opinion, you've chosen one of the most above ground suppliers to make a point that would be better directed towards the real snake oil pushers.

I am not "going after" RevGenetics to "make a point". I have concrete issues specifically with THEIR marketing contents. (1) I feel all the strong implications about totally unproven products are in essence dishonest, and are basically lying to the gullible in order to increase their revenues; (2) I think they are great substances, and want to be able to buy them myself, but RevGenetic's marketing approach could endanger that.

I just don't think they ought to be making all these outlandish almost-claims on the same website that also sells the supplements. I mean, come on - "Immortality" ?!

And how is the company so strongly implying powerful health benefits for products with NO evidence of efficacy or even cellular absorption "an honest presentation of the issues"? Doesn't that border on being blatently misleading?

This creates a very strong risk of them being sued by the FDA. Which might end OUR ability access these substances for our own experimentation. I am right there with you - I want to be able to continue to buy these things and use them. But their over-the-top promotion & advertising puts that in danger.

Are my motives clear now? (Yes, my posts may have been somewhat inflammatory, but that's just a technique to instigate actual thought and discussion. I find anything less tends to go in one ear and out the other.)

Edited by kilgoretrout, 10 July 2009 - 04:59 PM.

[Hedrock]

Hi Astragalus-fans,

at the moment I take 400 mg Astragaloside IV every day for planned two weeks. 200 mg in the morning, 200 mg in the evening.

While the Astragaloside cycle (14 days) I don't want to take Resveratrol.

To my personal opinion it is better to have a short cycle of telomere longing with high telomerase levels than a medium dose over a long time. I am aware that it is some new terrain. But I am ready to bear the risk with all consequences (no risk - no chance!)

Holding the cycles very short should maybe minimize the possible risks.

After this short Astragalus cycle I will start with again with high dose Resveratrol and active anti-cancer-regimen at minimum 1 month to hold down telomerase and kill possible promoting cancer cells.

There has not been shown a high risk for cancer with astragaloside, so I should have a fair chance to win a few years.

After every Astragaloside cycle my health will by checked by a doctor.

I will inform you about the results.

Any comments to this?

BR, Hedrock

[Anthony_Loera]

Kilgore,

First of all there is a difference in the FDA rules language as to what we can and cannot claim as a supplement company. The rules are followed and hence we have never received any warning letters by the FDA while others, have received one of these letters due to marketing claims. I understand that there are a lot of companies who are stating some outlandish claims, using images of Oprah, Dr. Oz and it has been discussed here:
http://www.imminst.o...ing-t31024.html

Second, where the heck do we talk about immortality with any of our products? As I have mentioned before, you need to read this full thread before making your statements. Part of the thread is a discussion of what the material is shown to do, who claims it can do that is very important, and the fact that the material comes from a natural source allows us (again a supplement company, not a pharma) to make it available for those that think it may help because of a UCLA study, or data from public sources. You are aiming your cross hairs at my company, but the fact is that we were asked by our customers to check the Telomerase Activator by TA Sciences out, and see if they were crazy or not.

About 2 years ago, I saw their booth at a conference. I sat there asking questions about this, and realized that they used the supplement to leverage other "medical services" throughout the year, and folks paid a yearly premium for it all. At the time, I thought they were nuts, and the business model they used was very different and wondered how many people could afford it since insurance couldn't cover this. The fact is that later the same year, I kept receiving emails from customers to look into it, to find out what the TA-65 was, to see if I can provide a Telomerase Activator to folks that did not cost $20,000 a year. (And you think WE are expensive?)

I talked to our consultant, a Phd grad and professor in a University about Geron's material. Then he looked at me and said, that in fact, he was involved and training folks at UCLA when the initial work was being done. He didn't know what the substance was, but that he had been trained by Geron and then trained some UCLA student in Geron's techniques, and I believe he finished a thesis on the matter. Of course, this coincidence was spectacular. I then started to bombard him with the typical questions a skeptic would ask about telomerase, telomeres, etc... (will it cause cancer? can it help us live a longer life? could it work in humans? Why is cancer associated with telomerase? Is the association of telomerase an issue?). I then asked questions to a member of the GRG, and was given some information regarding another students thesis on the subject. I had three sources (folks much smarter than I) showing and telling me about telomerase activators.

Well, needless to say a new picture started appear, and my attitude toward this was starting to change. The fact is the Telomerase Activators have not been tested in any clinical trials, in humans but has been tested in vitro on human blood a couple times. I am also trying to see if this will work, by testing my own telomeres. Will they grow, will they shrink faster? It is a difficult process, but it is one I am doing for my own well being. At the worst, Astragalus components are good for heart support, and other things... At best the specific Telomerase Activators may increase telomere length. Folks reading this full thread will see my personal tests and my comments so far... but only if you decide to read through this thread (hint, hint... is this part sinking in yet?)

If you read this thread, you will see that I tell folks to wait for more data if they are sitting on the fence. There is no one being forced into buying anything we provide.

I don't think you have validated to any one of us, the issues regarding marketing. It is apparent that you have not read the language regarding supplement claims on the FDA website, as well as what we can and cannot state. If your intentions are to deal with "marketing and promotion" of supplement product, I suggest you read the FDA rules concerning this before commenting further as it will help, specially if you want to change my mind regarding our current marketing on our website. If you live in Las Vegas, drop by the NPA conference that is being held over the weekend and look for the FDA booth. I think they will have one this year... and ask all the questions you want, in person to them. (Also note the marketing in the different booths, and then tell me again how we compare...we are very low key compared to most.)

For now, I suggest reading this full thread. At the very least

Cheers
A

Edited by Anthony_Loera, 10 July 2009 - 05:32 PM.

[bsm]

Been reading this thread for awhile and I suggest not taking so much time and effort responding to a troll post.

[Anthony_Loera]

Been reading this thread for awhile and I suggest not taking so much time and effort responding to a troll post.

I think you are right... I will probably not respond to this type of post anymore.

A

[bsm]

What is the average rate telomeres shrink in humans or any animal that we can detect?

Edited by bsm, 12 July 2009 - 01:33 AM.

[unglued]

What is the average rate telomeres shrink in humans or any animal that we can detect?

The lab Anthony had himself tested with, which is apparently the only one anyone knows of that performs this test, stated in its first report that the test has an accuracy (standard deviation) of plus-or-minus 0.1 kb (+/- 100 bases, or "letters") for one of the two cell types in the test. (They also state +/- 0.0 for the other one, and in the later report they show 0.0 for both of them, which is not very informative.) The curves on the reports suggest that the average young to middle-aged adult loses about 33 bases per year (and that there's a lot of individual variation; e.g. 40-year-olds can have telomeres from about 5500 to 8000 bases, not even counting the upper and lower 10% of people). That would imply that the measurement is accurate enough to detect about three years of aging in a given individual. (This is all derived from looking at the results Anthony kindly shared with us, attached the the post linked below.)

However, Anthony reported that the lab told him verbally that the real accuracy is effectively 5000 bases (0.5 kb). My understanding is that 1000 is the accuracy with which they can measure a given blood sample -- if they repeated it several times, some of the results would come out 1000 bases longer or shorter than the real length. But a given person's blood has some random variation, so that a sample taken the next day could have telomeres 4000 bases shorter or longer. That implies that the best test available can only measure your effective age within 15 years. This is disappointing; people do better than that every day by looking at someone's skin and hair, and I'd think a simple test to measure maximum heart rate or something would be a more accurate measure of real aging.

[The] new tests show a shortening of about 0.5kb for lymphocytes and granulocytes. Puzzled, I called Repeat Diagnostics in Canada to talk about this, as it has only been 6 months and did not expect this. I have found out that they have an error range at about 0.5kb between blood tests.

The information I got from Repeat Diagnostics is that the error rate I mentioned was between the different blood draws, not for the same sample of blood.

In Anthony's case, the test indicated that he got about 15 years older in 6 months, but he says that's within the expected error range, so the test doesn't really show him getting either older or younger. I and others applauded him for being honest about reporting his results, even though they would tend to make people less eager to buy a product he's selling. I do have to note, though, that he didn't post the new results on his commercial web site as promised. He just summarized them as "no statistical difference", which is consistent with what he said here, but then went so far as to say "Some folks may consider that no change in my telomere length is great, since my telomeres may not be shortening. However ... my goal is to not merely slow or stop telomere shortening." After having praised his honesty, I have to say that that last statement comes very close to be misleading, even though he carefully said "may not be". It makes it sound like the the test indicated zero change. If people were expected to normally lose 50 bases in 6 months, and the test was accurate to plus or minus 10 and showed them getting 9 bases shorter, that would be the good kind of "no statistical difference". What actually happened, apparently, was it says he aged somewhere between 0 months to 15 years in the course of 6 months, which is nothing for his strawman to get so excited over.

But maybe a picture will emerge over the next few years, beginning with the test Anthony is planning to take in August. I don't suppose anyone else is willing to both shell out the money and share their personal results? That would give us more data faster.

[Anthony_Loera]

Thanks for the summary Unglued.

I am a bit upset that 0.5 kb, ok... Very upset that the lab explained the issue of 0.5fkb AFTER I took both tests instead of before. However thinking back, I am not sure I could have found another lab that would have a more accurate test.

The other issue I personally have is that because I take resveratrol, I attribute most benefits from that at this time. I simply don't think I will physically feel or look different because of A4. The fact is that my cells, if the material works... Will likely maintain my current physical appearance longer. I may just have to go to the gym afterall...

[Anthony_Loera]

Sorry, been trying to post from my phone and it double posted.

I have been thinking about other tests that may help, something similar to the neosporin commercials... But the issue is that this is a supplement and not a medication. So... I am having a difficult time considering it because of FDA limitations for a supplement_ or cream that may support cell repair.

A

[bsm]

The lab Anthony had himself tested with, which is apparently the only one anyone knows of that performs this test, stated in its first report that the test has an accuracy (standard deviation) of plus-or-minus 0.1 kb (+/- 100 bases, or "letters") for one of the two cell types in the test. (They also state +/- 0.0 for the other one, and in the later report they show 0.0 for both of them, which is not very informative.) The curves on the reports suggest that the average young to middle-aged adult loses about 33 bases per year (and that there's a lot of individual variation; e.g. 40-year-olds can have telomeres from about 5500 to 8000 bases, not even counting the upper and lower 10% of people).

Anthony, can you and your company do more research into labs that have a lower standard deviation for base pairs? +/- 15 years is not going to show anyone anything although I appreciate the effort.

[creso]

Hello you all!

It's a pleasure to have read all the more than 4 hundred posts you've kindly offered to all people of good will!

I have a scientific and historic formation.

I love our - the ocidental - way of doing science: observation, metaphoras, hipotesis, tesis, tests, conclusions, new proposals, peer revision, replication... repeat... new cicle... new breakthroughs...

but...

In a very subtle way, academia is somewhat exclusivist... and

the ocidental medicine/phisicians are very elitist and focus only on cure not prevention. A relation between inequals: authority x a pacient who is supposed to be quite inert:

Even when the otomans and chinese already knew a technic for vaccination aganinst measles for centuries, in England and other ocidental countries there was only a lot of expensive curative treatments with no good results.

And the ocidental social contract, in the tradeoff between security and liberty, privileges security. And this and all the tecnology envolved make the new medicines very expensive.

And this slows progress: less risk, less progress.

Outside the academia the enterprises, considered the costs, only have the incentives to study brand new usefull molecules that can pay off those costs.

And this is the way that thousands of years of human dreaming and experimenting and suffering - the oder Medicines - get overlooked...

But now... another breakthrough: The Internet has leveled the field all around the earth!

Everyone can use some racionality and time and reach and read the work of science around the world and can understand better how his own organism is faring - and what are his more urgent needs - in order to make informed decisions. For example, trying some of the now truly universal medicine based on his personal contract with risk! Be it the molecules and technics of the academia/enterprises or the oral and writen traditions from all cultures of the world that have survived the passage of centuries and recently also been tested/papered somewhere in the world! So...

Now and here we're the peers!!!

And each one might keep the best records about his how organism is faring - test and records - and what are his habits and what is he eating and supplementing and in what quantitities. Soon we will be thousands and one of us - may be Anthony - or anybody else will devise a way of getting all the bulky of our records together to be analised so hopefully putting the road of science moving once more...

Oh, and never mind that some incendiary young person come - knowingly or not - in name of academia/phisicians telling us to conform and just be p a c i e n t.

In this point we're the best of the occidental civilization! We take responsability, study, decide and yes, we try to live longer and healthier lives. Readiness is all!

Peace and joy to all!
creso

[Anthony_Loera]

bsm,

the lab we use is the one TA Sciences appears use for their folks as well. If you have a better choice please let me know, as there appears to be no other labs with a lower standard deviation for base pairs.

With the current lab the best I can do, is to see if any future tests appear to show a telomere lengthening over 0.5 kb.

LEF New magazine just came out... has an article about "Should you lengthen your telomeres". It has a discussion from an expert for this, and it also has a discussion of a different expert, against it. Both folks appeared to have worked at Geron at one time.

LEF states that they are neither for, or against it... however they do have an "apple" skin product that may lean them toward selling an oral telomerase product in the future...

Update: Ok, after reading it, it sounds like an a targeted advertisement (for older seniors) for TA-65, as it appears they try to balance the Pros and Cons in favor of TA-65 for folks who are already very old and about 5-10 years away from death, and have very few choices regarding additional years. At least that is what it appears to me, specially with the 10% discount mentioned at the end for LEF members.

This thread has more information regarding pros and cons, than the LEF article. So if you have read through this thread, you are going to have more information than the article, and see a lot of what is in this thread repeated in the article.

Cheers
A

[tunt01]

i thought the pro article was a pretty weak endorsement. it was basically, "if you are dying and have nothing to lose, take TA-65.."

[niner]

However, Anthony reported that the lab told him verbally that the real accuracy is effectively 5000 bases (0.5 kb). My understanding is that 1000 is the accuracy with which they can measure a given blood sample -- if they repeated it several times, some of the results would come out 1000 bases longer or shorter than the real length. But a given person's blood has some random variation, so that a sample taken the next day could have telomeres 4000 bases shorter or longer. That implies that the best test available can only measure your effective age within 15 years. This is disappointing; people do better than that every day by looking at someone's skin and hair, and I'd think a simple test to measure maximum heart rate or something would be a more accurate measure of real aging.

Wait a minute. 0.5 kilobases is five hundred bases, not five thousand. So Anthony didn't "get 15 years older", but rather 1.5 years "older" in six months. I think we just need to wait a little longer until the time span is commensurate with the accuracy of the test.

[unglued]

Wait a minute. 0.5 kilobases is five hundred bases, not five thousand.

Right so far. Sorry, my post should have read:

However, Anthony reported that the lab told him verbally that the real accuracy is effectively 500 bases (0.5 kb). My understanding is that 100 is the accuracy with which they can measure a given blood sample -- if they repeated it several times, some of the results would come out 100 bases longer or shorter than the real length. But a given person's blood has some random variation, so that a sample taken the next day could have telomeres 400 bases shorter or longer. That implies that the best test available can only measure your effective age within 15 years. This is disappointing; people do better than that every day by looking at someone's skin and hair, and I'd think a simple test to measure maximum heart rate or something would be a more accurate measure of real aging.

So Anthony didn't "get 15 years older", but rather 1.5 years "older" in six months.

I added one too many zeros when I tried to convert kilobases to a whole number for clarity, but my conversion to years was independent of that.

I've just taken yet another look at the charts, and it still looks to me like the Average line takes about 30 years to drop 1 kilobase. That's where I got my estimate of .5kb = 15 years. Obviously Repeat Diagnostics gets its name from the fact that telomeres are a "repeat sequence" and not from claiming to have a particularly repeatable test.

And as a double-check, Anthony's dot on the upper chart (lymphocytes) was almost centered on the Average, 50th percentile line above his chronological age of 37, whereas on the new chart, where it's .5kb lower, if you draw a horizontal line to the right, it intersects Average at the age of about 57, which implies .5kb = 10 years.

Am I doing something wrong? Anyone interpret the chart differently?

I think we just need to wait a little longer until the time span is commensurate with the accuracy of the test.

If the accuracy really is 10-15 years, none of us who are taking Astragaloside IV or resveratrol are willing to wait that long, or we'd be patiently waiting for long-term human clinical trials before we took anything. What we need is more samples, preferably from more than one subject, but they're expensive.

Edited by unglued, 13 July 2009 - 05:51 AM.

[kilgoretrout]

Been reading this thread for awhile and I suggest not taking so much time and effort responding to a troll post.

I was not trolling. I could not care less if no one responded. I was expressing a personal reaction to some of the discussion and the web page relative to the lack of actual published tests in humans and results.

I had a real concern that the material on their web page came so close to making health claims (related to telomere lengthining) for a product that is not known to actually do that, that it presents a danger that the FDA could eventually target them, which would be a terrible thing for this important research/development.

The opening sentance:

Welcome to RevGenetics
RevGenetics is engineering the supplements to help you and your loved ones live longer, healthier lives.

....vague and generic sure, but still worryingly close to a health claim for something with no published in-vivo research behind it. But Anthony obviously knows better about what sets the FDA off and what is seen as so general as to be harmless.

And with respect to Anthony's haughty objection that they never said anything about immortality, THIS used to be on their home page:

Other Items:
Immortal Fiction Becoming Fact
03/25/2009 Telomere Article.

...which goes along with the unproven claims about modifications to telomeres and just seemed a bit too out-there and gave the site the taint of classic "Take This And Live Forever!" snake-oily silliness, and probably raised an eyebrow or two at the FDA that are best not raised.

That appears to have been removed, which is good.

I HAVE now read the entire thread, and one remark is that some of the discussion seems a bit too self-confident in the posters' ability to try and overlay the combined implications of many dozens of complex, test-tube bio-science lab results and come up with various theoretical conclusions about what these things are doing when consumed by a human.

Real-life results are alot harder to determine than that; many things at this cell-culture level of testing act very different in a full grown live organism, so don't be so sure about some of those very certain-sounding analyses folks seem to think they are so expert at making. If you are not a BioMed researcher with a couple PhDs behind your name, I guarantee you do not fully comprehend the individual research, let alone how dozens of them might hypothetically interact when combined.

Edited by kilgoretrout, 13 July 2009 - 03:17 PM.