2189 replies to this topic

[Anthony_Loera]

Hi Tianzi,

Here is an update:

I spoke to the folks a repeat diagnostics about my new results. They 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. Needless to say, it falls within the new test range, and it doesn't appear to be significant either way, although B-cells, T-cells and NK cells were not measured for the last two tests, so we can't be sure about these as they may have benefited. Folks apparently are feeling good when taking Astral Fruit, some say they are receiving benefits that otherwise may not have without it, so I can't rule out any benefits at this time. Specially because I represent only one data point...

I have been taking 2-3 capsules a day with some chitosan, and apparently this may be a low dose for my weight, or the large amount of resveratrol I take daily is inhibiting telomerase and in the end, affecting the results.

As a next step, I really want to make sure the next set of tests show a change of greater than 0.5kb and I will be doubling my dose for may next 6 months starting in April. I will also be checking Telomere length measured for total lymphocyte and granulocyte populations (as I have done previously) as well as the addition of B-cells, T-cells and NK cells that I have not had measured in the past.

Because my large resveratrol intake may also have contributed significantly, I will need to cycle these two (Astral Fruit and Resveratrol) on a weekly basis, for my next 6 months. At this point the results appear to be a wash, as the measurement apparently is within the error range between blood tests.

Personally, I think I miscalculated the amount I needed, and underestimated the effect of resveratrol at inhibiting telomerase, when taking the larger resveratrol doses I am used to. So I will do an initial test again this week, that includes B-cells, T-cells and NK cells, Cycle through Astral Fruit and Resveratrol weekly, then come back with the new results in August/September. I weigh about 175, and will be taking close to 1mg of Astral Fruit (Astragaloside IV) for every pound for the next 6 months. If Cycloastragenol is available within the 6 months, I will calculate the amount of cycloastregenol intake to be 5mg for every 40mg of Astragaloside IV and maybe switch over, I suppose I will determine that if and when Cycloastregenol becomes available.

Cheers
A

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Edited by Anthony_Loera, 23 March 2009 - 01:52 PM.

[tunt01]

what was your original dose? 33mg per day?

[Anthony_Loera]

I started with 33mg a day, then later added chitosan.

About 3 months ago, I continued taking Astral Fruit at 2-3 capsules daily (each having 33mg Astragaloside IV).

Cheers
A

[celegans]

Anthony,

I wouldn't be too worried about the value going down. As you said, if the error rate is +/- 0.5kb it doesn't say much. What would be interesting to see is a historical view of someone who had the tests every 6 months for 5-10 years who wasn't on any sort of supplement (to get some baseline). If only you had an identical twin that had identical environmental influences which you could compare with. Measuring other cell types would be interesting also. I wonder if any companies can measure intestinal cells, keratinocytes, or other cell types. I live in Vancouver and was considering doing the same sort of telomere length testing that you are doing. I may try a few years without taking any supplements before any intervention to get an approximate rate of telomere erosion. Thanks again for sharing your results.

[bdelfin]

Does chitosan need to be the agent to improve absorption? I've seen references to astragalus root powder helping absorption as well. Would taking 400-500 mg. of raw astralagus root powder with each dose be as efficacious? And does taking it at bedtime make a difference? I like the idea of taking it long after most telomerase-inhibiting substances.

[IgG]

Actually the standard deviation is 0.1 for Lymphocytes only. For the old report data and for Granulocytes it is 0.0 which is strange. The data would be more reliable if Anthony could repeat the test 5-10 times more.

[TianZi]

Hi Anthony,

Thank you very much for your honest update. I appreciate it.

Perhaps it is more likely that "astral fruit" / telomerase will simply slow the rate of telomere shortening in humans rather than reverse it. But demonstrating that would require, in your case, knowledge of the amount by which your telomeres would be expected to shorten in a given period, as compared against their actual length at the end of that period.

I remain concerned when I reads things like this from the wiki stub on telomerase:

"Some experiments have raised questions on whether telomerase can be used as an anti-aging therapy, namely, the fact mice with elevated levels of telomerase have higher cancer incidence and hence do not live longer." No citation. I recognize the argument in this thread that elevated telomerase levels may simply be a by-product of cancer, and/or that there is no proven causality chain showing that telomerase causes cancer. The article "Telomerase is not an Oncogene" is reassuring, but then again the author Calvin B Harley works for Geron Corporation. But even Harley says, "... deregulated expression of telomerase could increase the frequency of cancer... caution is still warranted in telomerase activation therapies..."

Are there significant independent studies underway in mice / humans studying the effects of Astragalus / Astragaloside IV and telomerase generally on influencing telomere length, with a goal of lengthening teloremeres, or at least slowing down the rate at which they shorten? More significantly, what work is being done to see if any intervention lengthening telomeres results in life extension for mice? If so, when can we expect results from them?

Edited by TianZi, 24 March 2009 - 08:49 AM.

[Anthony_Loera]

Actually the standard deviation is 0.1 for Lymphocytes only. For the old report data and for Granulocytes it is 0.0 which is strange. The data would be more reliable if Anthony could repeat the test 5-10 times more.

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.

Tianzi,

without a proper citation for the Wiki stub, there is no reason to believe it is only an opinion at this time. I understand that the issue is in regards to cancer, and the simple fact is that cancer takes over many normal functions of your body for it's own purposes. Telomerase is a normally used by your immune system to combat disease. In this case some cancers (not all types) can take over the function of telomerase to maintain the cancer cells alive.

In healthy cells, telomerase does not function to make them cancerous as it is not an Oncogene.

Now that we both repeated things, are there new studies regarding telomerase and animals? I believe the studies being done at this time revolve around fighting different degenerative diseases that ravage telomere length, using telomerase activators.

This older cattle study may suggest that even if you increased telomere length, then give birth, the new calf may have similar telomeres as a regular calf.
http://www.pnas.org/...3/1077.abstract

as always, please check google scholar for new studies:
http://scholar.googl...amp;btnG=Search

A

Edited by Anthony_Loera, 24 March 2009 - 02:04 PM.

[mikeinnaples]

I started with 33mg a day, then later added chitosan.

About 3 months ago, I continued taking Astral Fruit at 2-3 capsules daily (each having 33mg Astragaloside IV).

Cheers
A

Hmm ....I am guessing the 33mg I am taking won't be even close to enough then. I weigh quite a bit more (205) and have not been using chitosan.

[maxwatt]

There are also immortal cancer cell lines with very short telomerase, so I doubt we have something that directly induces cancer.

On another note, we have a study HERE that finds mult-vitamin use correlates with longer telomere length. (Anthony, did you forget to take your vitamins?)

I think six months may be simply too little time to show a significant improvement in telomere length. As for resveratrol interfering, it should pretty much clear your system in under two hours, no?

[Hotpot]

Anthony, have you a timescale in place for introducing an Astral Fruit product that contains chitosan? Thanks.

[Roses]

Just a thought

mouse studies have been done with Resveratrol which proved that the tumerogenesis is stopped and cancer in them are prevented. They have long telomeres. So, what happens to the telomeres when they die? Do they exhaust the telomeres?

So what happens when they are fed bothe astrogalosides and resveratrol? Do they have long life?

I think such an experment has not been done. Somone can start doing such tests on T-Elegens and such short lived animals.

[TianZi]

There are also immortal cancer cell lines with very short telomerase, so I doubt we have something that directly induces cancer.

On another note, we have a study HERE that finds mult-vitamin use correlates with longer telomere length. (Anthony, did you forget to take your vitamins?)

I think six months may be simply too little time to show a significant improvement in telomere length. As for resveratrol interfering, it should pretty much clear your system in under two hours, no?

I don't mean to derail the thread, but it would be nice if someone with access to the full text of that multivitamin study would summarize the significant findings for us. The abstract tells us very little. What dosage of what vitamins, minerals, and other supplements were the participants taking? Were longer telomeres observed on average in people taking higher as opposed to lower doses? How did the study account for other lifestyle choices that affect telomere length, like exercise (it seems reasonable to hypothesize that people who take multivitamins are more likely to exercise and otherwise take care of themselves than those who don't).

[tunt01]

Just a thought

mouse studies have been done with Resveratrol which proved that the tumerogenesis is stopped and cancer in them are prevented. They have long telomeres. So, what happens to the telomeres when they die? Do they exhaust the telomeres?

So what happens when they are fed bothe astrogalosides and resveratrol? Do they have long life?

I think such an experment has not been done. Somone can start doing such tests on T-Elegens and such short lived animals.

i think it is problematic to make direct comparisons from mice to humans on a telomere/telomerase basis for a variety of reasons including the fact that telomerase is in the skin cells of mice but not humans, their life spans and survival strategies are different, and they tend to die from different things more frequently (cancer vs. cardiovascular disease).

[Anthony_Loera]

Anthony, have you a timescale in place for introducing an Astral Fruit product that contains chitosan? Thanks.

Yes,

Probably 2-3 weeks from now. I think we are going to reformulate it a bit after these last results.

A

Edited by Anthony_Loera, 24 March 2009 - 07:11 PM.

[Roses]

i think it is problematic to make direct comparisons from mice to humans on a telomere/telomerase basis for a variety of reasons including the fact that telomerase is in the skin cells of mice but not humans, their life spans and survival strategies are different, and they tend to die from different things more frequently (cancer vs. cardiovascular disease).

Agreed. But as we cannot always test the humans to arrive at a workable hypothesis, we need to start somewhere from shortest living animals to Chimpanzees to see if that works.

I like to know on what conditions, the rats under sinclair Resveratrol studies died.

For those dead rats, the telomeres were really very long, how that would affect the studies if the telomeres are made even larger artifically by astrogalocides/cycloastragonal etc.

Giving both resveratrol and astrogalocides to the animals and see how long they live and what is their median lifespan would be a good study.

Because that is what Anthony and others are trying to do. So it is better to test in the worms and rats before attempting on humans.

Again just my 2 cents

[unglued]

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.

I'm impressed with Anthony's integrity for promising to post his results and then doing so (at least on this forum), rather than selectively posting only good news. But I'm disappointed that this test turns out to be so imprecise -- five times more imprecise than we would have guessed from the standard deviation listed in the report. (I wondered about that, but a later post explained it: my understanding is that +/- 0.1 is how close they come to accurately measuring the telomeres in the sample, and +/- 0.5 is how much one sample can vary from the next due to random or short-term fluctuation.) I'm frustrated because it originally sounded like this test would give us some indication of whether the stuff works or not, even if the sample size is one person. But if it's only accurate enough to measure a person's biological age to +/- 15 years, Anthony's semiannual tests are not going to give us much feedback about whether the money we're spending is helping us or not. If a test result is consistent with any of "You've aged 15 years in 6 months", "You've aged 6 months in 6 months", and "You've gotten two years younger in 6 months" -- and is too expensive to repeat more often or on more people -- how can we learn anything from it?

Anthony, maybe it would be more cost-effective to visit a bunch of carnivals, where there's always a guy who's in the business of guessing your age to within a few years. Presumably he can do much better than +/- 15 years. If he can't, you can accumulate quite a collection of stuffed animals, which you can then sell on eBay to finance repeating the Repeat Diagnostics diagnostics more often.

[Anthony_Loera]

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.

I'm impressed with Anthony's integrity for promising to post his results and then doing so (at least on this forum), rather than selectively posting only good news. But I'm disappointed that this test turns out to be so imprecise -- five times more imprecise than we would have guessed from the standard deviation listed in the report. (I wondered about that, but a later post explained it: my understanding is that +/- 0.1 is how close they come to accurately measuring the telomeres in the sample, and +/- 0.5 is how much one sample can vary from the next due to random or short-term fluctuation.) I'm frustrated because it originally sounded like this test would give us some indication of whether the stuff works or not, even if the sample size is one person. But if it's only accurate enough to measure a person's biological age to +/- 15 years, Anthony's semiannual tests are not going to give us much feedback about whether the money we're spending is helping us or not. If a test result is consistent with any of "You've aged 15 years in 6 months", "You've aged 6 months in 6 months", and "You've gotten two years younger in 6 months" -- and is too expensive to repeat more often or on more people -- how can we learn anything from it?

Anthony, maybe it would be more cost-effective to visit a bunch of carnivals, where there's always a guy who's in the business of guessing your age to within a few years. Presumably he can do much better than +/- 15 years. If he can't, you can accumulate quite a collection of stuffed animals, which you can then sell on eBay to finance repeating the Repeat Diagnostics diagnostics more often.

Hehehe...

Unglued, I think you are on to something there! Subsidize my telomere testing by going to carnivals... sounds like fun.

I do think need to cycle res and astral fruit, if only simply for my curiosity within the next 6 months. Specially with the telomere lengths that were not measured before.

A

[tunt01]

anyone familiar with this study:

http://www.spandidos...com/mmr/2/1/107

[Roses]

anyone familiar with this study:

http://www.spandidos...com/mmr/2/1/107

and this
http://carcin.oxford.../full/28/6/1347

and this
http://www.nature.co...aps200627a.html

so confusing!

[Anthony_Loera]

Prophets, check this one:

<deleted>

let me send you the link, maybe you can see why I deleted it.

It was found in this area which I believe was mentioned earlier in this thread. I am just copying it again for you here from the earlier post someone else made:
Yes This Is A Public Area

A

Edited by Anthony_Loera, 31 March 2009 - 10:05 PM.

[stephen_b]

"The upper dose of 40 mg. TA-41 daily is essentially equivalent to a daily dose of 5 mg. of TA-65" I read in 2005TrialSummaryofSafetyAssessment.doc.

Any thoughts on what TA-41 is?

StephenB

[TianZi]

Apparently the punchline in the Chinese study of Astragaloside IV was this:


"Astragaloside IV can significantly potentiate insulin-induced preadipocyte differentiation at concentrations of 3, 10, and 30 g/mL, improve high glucose-induced insulin resistance in adipocytes at a concentration of 30 g/mL, and prevent tumor necrosis factor (TNF)--induced apoptosis and viability loss at concentrations of 10 and 30 g/mL, and 30 g/mL, respectively, in endothelial cells. Furthermore, we found that these effects were partly due to the promotion of PPAR expression and to the inhibition of abnormal TNF--induced intracellular free Ca2+ accumulation in endothelial cells."

Implications?

[Anthony_Loera]

"The upper dose of 40 mg. TA-41 daily is essentially equivalent to a daily dose of 5 mg. of TA-65" I read in 2005TrialSummaryofSafetyAssessment.doc.

Any thoughts on what TA-41 is?

StephenB

I believe it could have been Astragaloside IV from the extrapolation from the Geron patent info.

A

[tunt01]

anecdotally I took 40 mg of astragaloside IV one time and it had a massive effect on me. it was way too powerful. i'm on the light side ~145 lbs. I'd have to imagine a dose of 15 mg or less would be an optimal for me.

im done w/ it tho... i may supplement w/ astragalus itself, intermittently. seems like a low risk way to achieve nearly what I'd like.

[Roses]

anecdotally I took 40 mg of astragaloside IV one time and it had a massive effect on me. it was way too powerful. i'm on the light side ~145 lbs. I'd have to imagine a dose of 15 mg or less would be an optimal for me.

im done w/ it tho... i may supplement w/ astragalus itself, intermittently. seems like a low risk way to achieve nearly what I'd like.

what effect?

[mikeinnaples]

anecdotally I took 40 mg of astragaloside IV one time and it had a massive effect on me. it was way too powerful. i'm on the light side ~145 lbs. I'd have to imagine a dose of 15 mg or less would be an optimal for me.

im done w/ it tho... i may supplement w/ astragalus itself, intermittently. seems like a low risk way to achieve nearly what I'd like.

what effect?

Yeah what effect? I started cycling a week on week off ...and I notice that during my week on I have unexplained itching sensations that I dont have during my week off.

I switched to 66mg / day split during the on week... and 2g resv during the off week.

[tunt01]

it's hard to describe, because it was one of the more unusual experiences ive had. i can't point to being drunk/high/tired etc. as a corollary. i think the best way to describe it is sort of a building intensity, a combination of vasodialation and a combined tingley/foggy feeling in brain/neurons. i took it in the mid afternoon on an empty stomach w/ water. that tends to be the protocol for pro-hormone growth factors, so i figured it made sense (dont want to interfere w/ food). a few hours later, i could tell it had kicked in a very material way. i exchanged emails w/ someone on here about it. read another additional study (mostly inconclusive) about astragaloside and decided to take curcumin, resveratrol pills, to try to blunt the impact of it. i slept very hard that night, had minor prostate pains/urinated a lot in the 12-18 hrs after first ingesting. i felt very healthy/stronger the next day (like i got one of the best nights of sleep i'd had in the last year).

my system is pretty sensitive to substances, partially i'm on the small side at ~145 lbs. i also tend to metabolize and digest foods faster than the average person. compared to other pills ive taken, from aspirin to arginine, it was clear to me, that 40 mg was way too much for me. i may try using astragalus itself on an intermittent basis, because 1) the dose of astragaloside would be lower 2) there are other parts of the plant that seem healthful, and 3) there is more research on astragalus that gives me a higher confidence in its safety profile.

that's about the extent of the feedback i can provide.

-pro


ps: i took a PSA test by mail and had my annual physical/bloodwork done a couple months ago, so i felt i had a precautionary set of data figures to know what my liver/kidney/prostate looked like before taking something like this. i would suggest everyone else consider the same thing when digesting a relatively under-researched substance.

Edited by prophets, 02 April 2009 - 10:59 PM.

[tomnook]

it's hard to describe, because it was one of the more unusual experiences ive had. i can't point to being drunk/high/tired etc. as a corollary. i think the best way to describe it is sort of a building intensity, a combination of vasodialation and a combined tingley/foggy feeling in brain/neurons. i took it in the mid afternoon on an empty stomach w/ water. that tends to be the protocol for pro-hormone growth factors, so i figured it made sense (dont want to interfere w/ food). a few hours later, i could tell it had kicked in a very material way. i exchanged emails w/ someone on here about it. read another additional study (mostly inconclusive) about astragaloside and decided to take curcumin, resveratrol pills, to try to blunt the impact of it. i slept very hard that night, had minor prostate pains/urinated a lot in the 12-18 hrs after first ingesting. i felt very healthy/stronger the next day (like i got one of the best nights of sleep i'd had in the last year).

my system is pretty sensitive to substances, partially i'm on the small side at ~145 lbs. i also tend to metabolize and digest foods faster than the average person. compared to other pills ive taken, from aspirin to arginine, it was clear to me, that 40 mg was way too much for me. i may try using astragalus itself on an intermittent basis, because 1) the dose of astragaloside would be lower 2) there are other parts of the plant that seem healthful, and 3) there is more research on astragalus that gives me a higher confidence in its safety profile.

ps: i took a PSA test by mail and had my annual physical/bloodwork done a couple months ago, so i felt i had a precautionary set of data figures to know what my liver/kidney/prostate looked like before taking something like this. i would suggest everyone else consider the same thing when digesting a relatively under-researched substance.

Pro - I was very interested to read your post and the apparrant effects which you experienced.

I'm a fast metabolizer also and have been taking astragaloside IV for the past five months on a 2-wk on 2-wk off protocol as suggested by James Green. Whilst, I haven't experienced the immediate dramatic effects as you've noted I have had some abnormal (for me) blood test results. I can't specifically point the finger at Astragaloside IV since I changed two other supplements around the same time.

Firstly, my testosterone level has been high-normal for as long as I've been testing it - in November, after the first 2-wk period of Astragaloside, it had halved in 10 months from 24.3 nmol/L (Int Units) to 12.5 (range 7.4 - 26.2), with my Testosterone /SHBG ratio having also declined to 37.9 (range 41 - 159). Secondly, my PSA had shown a slight increase from 1.1 ug/L (Feb 08) to 1.22 (Nov 08). Free PSA in Nov 08 was 0.53 (range 0 - .90) with Free:Total ratio 0.42 (normal >0.19). In February 09 my PSA had risen to 1.69 (at the same rate of increase this would represent a worriesome doubling in a year) with the Free PSA declining to 0.41 and the Free:Total ratio being 0.24. My PSA level in Oct 04 was 0.8 ug/L. In February 09 I also had my Free testosterone and Bioavailable Testosterone checked with the results being 8.69 pg/ml (range 7.2 - 23) and 1.51 nmol/L (range 1.4 - 6.1) i.e. both low-normal.

During last six months, in addition to taking Astragaloside IV, I have switched from an LEF prostate formula (1 capsule per day rather than the suggested two) to a couple of other specific prostate products in an attempt to keep my PSA low. It seems that something has had the reverse effect and I've now switched back to the LEF formula at 2 capsules a day and will have my PSA tested again in a month's time at a different lab and then again in six months time at the original one (the first lab is in the UK and I don't live there).

I read that there is generally a 20% error margin with PSA testing btw, however, the tests which I am quoting the results for were both high sensitivity tests and I'd abstained from sexual activity for at least three days as instructed with the test info. so they should be fairly accurate.

I am genetically predisposed to prostate cancer (lifetime risk 31% compared to population average lifetime risk 16%) and will therefore be omitting Astragaloside IV from my protocol for the time being even though I've been having great success with hair regrowth on my scalp - possbily due to a decline in DHT?

I'd be interested to hear if VinceG or any other older folk in my age group have had any similarly negative experiences.

My general bloodwork in November 08 was fine although my lymphocytes were slightly elevated at 44.5% (range 20 - 40%).

[mikeinnaples]

it's hard to describe, because it was one of the more unusual experiences ive had. i can't point to being drunk/high/tired etc. as a corollary. i think the best way to describe it is sort of a building intensity, a combination of vasodialation and a combined tingley/foggy feeling in brain/neurons. i took it in the mid afternoon on an empty stomach w/ water. that tends to be the protocol for pro-hormone growth factors, so i figured it made sense (dont want to interfere w/ food). a few hours later, i could tell it had kicked in a very material way. i exchanged emails w/ someone on here about it. read another additional study (mostly inconclusive) about astragaloside and decided to take curcumin, resveratrol pills, to try to blunt the impact of it. i slept very hard that night, had minor prostate pains/urinated a lot in the 12-18 hrs after first ingesting. i felt very healthy/stronger the next day (like i got one of the best nights of sleep i'd had in the last year).

my system is pretty sensitive to substances, partially i'm on the small side at ~145 lbs. i also tend to metabolize and digest foods faster than the average person. compared to other pills ive taken, from aspirin to arginine, it was clear to me, that 40 mg was way too much for me. i may try using astragalus itself on an intermittent basis, because 1) the dose of astragaloside would be lower 2) there are other parts of the plant that seem healthful, and 3) there is more research on astragalus that gives me a higher confidence in its safety profile.

that's about the extent of the feedback i can provide.

-pro


ps: i took a PSA test by mail and had my annual physical/bloodwork done a couple months ago, so i felt i had a precautionary set of data figures to know what my liver/kidney/prostate looked like before taking something like this. i would suggest everyone else consider the same thing when digesting a relatively under-researched substance.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

If you have ever taken niacin to the point of experiencing flush, I would say my feeling from the Astral Fruit I am taking is akin to the tingling/itching sensation of the flush minus the actual reddening of the skin.