Sheesh. Ya know, we've seen many great minds and writers and thinkers chased away in frustration from this (formerly more awesome) longevity site due to easy ad hom attacks like that one expressed above by blue moon.
Hey: wide angle lens: we're all in this frozen anti-aging drama together: nothing now slows, stops, or reverses aging yet: nothing: no matter how hard we dream and how much we'd like for some simple solution like a pill or a lifestyle behavior to do it: it ain't there. We're innocent babes. And vulnerable, we need all the objective, focused thinkers who aren't pushing some product on us for their own personal stock market gains, or whatever.
Michael Rae has contributed a huge amount of unbiased thought regarding the unpopular "science" of lifespan extension. I do have a biology degree and background, and I'm unable to follow along anywhere near as well as he does. Who has time to calmly investigate the many overly-optimistic claims brought to market by these for-profit-only supplement companies? One after another these companies -- they know they have us in a corner, they know they have a captive audience willing to spend, they know people are desperate and suffering -- and so they're eagerly making money off of our ignorance and despair.
And before I sway this back onto topic, consider this: Donald Trump has expressed sharp disdain for the US FDA, for the consumer regulatory process in general (since it protects consumers from predatory, dishonest corporations), and if he and the right wing are successful in relaxing consumer protection laws, we're gonna need help. We're gonna need to rely more often on unbiased thinkers like Rae to point out the relevant peer reviewed science that many of us are too busy to chase, to break down, and to figure out the difference between what's fake news and what's real. Fraud and hucksterism pervades the supplement industry, and with retarded regulation ahead, more fraud and hucksterism is likely headed our way.
The Longecity community should be encouraging thinkers -- Michael Rae is a SENS insider with valuable info to pass along -- don't push him out of these fora. Who gives a crap about Michael Rae's "science background" when he writes so coherently and well (backed with thorough references for nearly every post)?
Swerving the topic back onto ChromaDex's Niagen, I've still not seen answered -- despite the many studies posted here in this thread -- some basic questions presented by Rae here:
http://www.sens.org/...ng-mitochondriaIf you don't feel like reading that simple text, here are the issues:
(1) "...[I]t must be clarified that the substance used in the Harvard research was not actually NR, but another compound called nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN). But NMN is unsuitable for oral supplementation, as it is rapidly hydrolyzed in the intestine, so the Harvard researchers (like a previous team of scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine at St. Louis and others thereafter) injected their mice with NMN rather than giving it to them in their feed...."
(2) "...[M]any supplement vendors assert or imply that the results with NMN can also be gained with NR. Promoters of NR also point to studies showing that NR yields improvements in metabolic health in rodent models of diabetic obesity promoted by a high-fat/high sugar diet that are similar to those reported for injected NMN. These vendors furthermore note positive results of NR supplementation in mouse models of genetic neurological and mitochondrial disorders, and in mice genetically engineered to develop liver cancer..."
(3) "...[N]o study has actually been done demonstrating that NR has similar effects to NMN in the muscles of otherwise-healthy aging mice. In fact, one study found that high-dose NR supplementation was unable to increase NAD+ levels in muscle tissue or the mitochondrial fraction of normal, healthy mice...."
(4) "...Moreover, even if NR supplements do provide an immediate jolt to muscle mitochondrial metabolism in the way that the Harvard NMN studies suggest, it’s not clear that doing so is a good idea in the long term. NMN injections don’t improve mitochondrial function by repairing molecular damage wrought by the aging process in the organelles, nor in other cells and biomolecules whose damage with age results in a dampening-down of mitochondrial activity..."
(5) "...Instead, NMN injections leave the existing damage in place, and induce the still-functional mitochondria to work harder and pump out more energy. This is rather like pushing harder on the gas pedal when your car is not running at full power due to damage to its cams and push rods: it may make the car go faster in the short term, but the underlying damage hasn’t been fixed, and will likely get even worse from the excessive wear..."
(6) "...Because the Harvard study of NMN-treated mice only lasted a week, it did not examine the long-term effects of NMN treatment on the mice. Previous studies with other dietary supplements, however, have revealed that the potential for such effects does exist and cannot be neglected in risk/benefit evaluations...."
(7) "...It’s also important for readers of the press coverage of the Harvard report to understand just what was involved when such stories reported that NMN treatment “reversed the effects of aging” on the mice’s muscles. Readers would be forgiven for imagining the muscles of frail, elderly mice suddenly swelling to youthful size, able to perform tiny rodent bench presses with the strength and endurance of much younger animals. In reality, though, as the investigators were careful to point out in the original scientific paper, while their treated animals’ muscle cells exhibited biochemical evidence of improved (“rejuvenated”) metabolism and insulin-stimulated glucose uptake, “we did not observe an improvement in muscle strength (data not shown), indicating that 1 week of treatment might not be sufficient to reverse whole-organism aging and that longer treatments might be required.”
(8) "...Additionally, interpretation of the Harvard report is greatly hampered by the lack of information of the animals’ weight or food intake, which raises the possibility of effects mediated by Calorie restriction or (contrariwise) by the simple overfeeding of all the animals in the study.
(9) "Also, an earlier report by Dr. Shin-ichiro Imai of the Washington University School of Medicine at St. Louis, who was a pioneer in working with this compound, had identified some gender-discordant effects of NMN on glucose metabolism, and unfortunately the Harvard report does not disclose the sex of the animals. In fact, some of the reported findings in the new report seem to be contradicted by Dr. Imai’s earlier studies. It will be good to see these issues clarified and ironed out in future research."
(10) "....The studies showing benefits of NR supplementation in mouse models of disease have used doses of 400-500 milligrams of NR per kilogram of mouse body weight. Even after adjusting for the different metabolic rates of mice and humans, an approximate equivalent adult dose would range from 2000 to 4000 milligrams of NR per day. Commercially-available NR supplements contain between 75 and 125 mg NR per capsule, at a cost of roughly 0.6-0.8 cents per milligram of NR; to experiment with even the lower end of the human-equivalent dosage range would thus involve swallowing 18-30 NR pills a day, at a cost of $400-550 a month."
Has any progress been made here? Maybe some progress has been made here, and I've just missed it? This is a very long thread indeed.
Focus this thread on answering some of dat shit, man, instead of pulling up some speech from 2008 (which, btw, I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Michael Rae is "six feet tall and weighs 115 pounds..." Is that shit still true?! Damned! people tell me I'm way to skinny and I'm 6'2" 145....
Appeal: don't blow this light-heavy weight away with more rudeness because when you do, the entire community here loses. And we've seen that ugliness happen to many great contributors in the past, sadly & repeatedly
This topic is locked
What is your science background, Michael since you implied above that you have a science background of some sort, so can you tell us what it is? I think nothing since high school. Again, I applaud your cheerleading because that does help.
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