My take on c60/OO, or any anti-oxidant regiment is it must be intermittent to be of maximum benefit.
I have serious questions, due to the supposed potency of c60/OO and the immediate effects felt by Turnbuckle and myself, among others, whether a "loading" dose is even necessary.
We've seen NO anecdotal evidence of large doses producing more pronounced effects, either negative, or positive.
I agree, except for the part about intermittency. I don't think a 'loading dose' is necessary, and I've seen no evidence whatsoever of a dose-dependent effect, as long as people are over the "threshold dose", whatever that may be. There's been some evidence that if you are on a low dose, then you stop taking it, the effects fade after several days. I hypothesize that with larger doses, the time it would take for results to fade would be proportionately longer. This would presumably have to do with the kinetics of membrane de-saturation, i.e., the amount of time it takes for the C60-oo adduct to migrate out of the mitochondrial (and other) membranes and get excreted. I don't see a benefit to intermittency, however. If your membranes are sufficiently loaded, you could stop for a while and it wouldn't matter, but neither would it help, imho. Hydrated fullerenes seem to be effective in microgram doses, suggesting that a little bit of fullerene goes a long way.
I have some hypotheses in mind for possible longevity mechanisms of adsorbents such as activated charcoal:
- Adsorption of dietary toxins.
- Adsorption of bile, dietary cholesterol, and preexisting circulating toxins that are in various entero- circulation loops.
- Possible adsorption of non-native and/or inflammatory and/or pathogenic microbiota, quite preferentially over non-inflammatory probiotic microbiota.
These are all believed to happen to some extent. The question I have is - which ones are most important for longevity? If even intermittent usage of sufficient activated charcoal can lead to life extension, #2 seems to make most sense to me.
Both 1 and 2 are probably contributory. Dietary toxins might be larger or smaller, depending on your diet. Exogenous AGEs have been demonstrated to be significantly detrimental to lifespan in the mouse. If you happen to have a cholesterol problem, as many humans do, then the documented cholesterol lowering effect of AC is probably helpful. I think that pre-existing circulating toxins may be a significant factor, particularly in older animals. Senescent cells are known to secrete pro-inflammatory substances, and ablation of senescent cells has been shown to reverse the aging phenotype in rodents. That particular experiment (discussed here recently) showed the importance of those circulating toxins. Another experiment involved linking the circulatory system of a young and an old animal, whereupon the younger animal started to show aging effects, and, IIRC, the older one got 'younger', by some measure or other. At any rate, we know these secreted substances are bad. The question is, do they mingle in the intestinal lumen such that AC could extract them enough to lower their systemic level? I don't know, but it seems plausible. #3 is an interesting hypothesis. I hadn't thought of that before. There might be something to it, but it seems like it would be hard to test.
Edited by niner, 22 August 2012 - 11:36 AM.
