Vitamins : Part 5

How and When To Be Your Own Doctor
by Dr. Isabelle A. Mose, Steve Solomon

(Page 11 of 14)

A few older clients of mine reported that they noticed nothing from the life extension program, but these are unique people who have developed the ability to dominate their bodies with their minds and routinely pay their bodies absolutely no attention, driving them relentlessly to do their will. Usually they use their energies to accomplish good, Christian works. Eventually, these dedicated and high-toned people break down and die like everyone else. Will they do so later on life extending vitamins than they would have otherwise? I couldn't know because I can't know how long they might have lived without supplementation and since they refuse to admit the vitamins do them any good, they won't pay for them.

Many on life extension programs experience a reverse aging process for awhile. However, after the full benefit of the supplementation has worked itself through their body chemistry, they again begin to experience the aging process. I believe the process will then be slowed by their vitamins compared to what it would have been without supplements. But I can't prove it. Maybe we will have some idea if the program worked 20 to 40 years from now.

At this time I know of only two companies that make top quality life extension vitamin supplement formulas. One is Prolongevity (Life Extension Foundation), the other, Vitamin Research Products. I prefer to support what I view as the altruistic motives behind Prolongevity and buy my products from them. Unfortunately, these vitamin compounders can not put every possibly beneficial substance in a single bottle of tablets. The main reason they do not is fear of the power-grabbing Food and Drug Administration. This agency is threatening constantly to remove certain of the most useful life-extending substances from the vitamin trade and make them the exclusive property of prescription-writing medical doctors. So far, public pressure has been mobilized against the FDA every time action was threatened and has not permitted this. If some product were included in a mix and that product were prohibited, the entire mixed, bottled and labeled batch that remained unsold at that time would be wasted, at enormous cost.

Were I manufacturing my own life extension supplement I would include the following. By the way, to get this all in one day, it is necessary to take 6 to 12 large tablets daily, usually spread throughout the day, taken a few at a time with each meal. If you compare my suggested formulation to another one, keep in mind that variations of 25 percent one way or another won't make a significant difference, and adding other beneficial substances to my recommendations probably is only helpful.

Please also keep in mind that there are many other useful substances not listed above. For example, every day I have a 'green drink,' an herbal preparation containing numerous tonic substances like ginseng and also various forms of algae and chlorophyll extracts. My green drink makes my body feel very peppy all day, so it certainly enhances my life and may extend it. It costs about $25,00 a month to enjoy that. I also use various pure amino acids at times. Phenylalyanine will make me get more aggressive whenever I am feeling a little lackluster; this nutrient has also been used as an effective therapy against depression. Melatonin taken at bedtime really does help me get to sleep and may have remarkable life-extending properties. Other amino acids help my body manufacture growth hormones and I use them from the time I begin training seriously in spring through the end of the summer triathlon competition season. Pearson and Shaw's book (see Bibliography) is a good starting point to begin learning about this remarkably useful subject.

The Future Of Life Extension

I beg the readers indulgence for a bit of futurology about what things may look like if the life extension movement continues to develop.

Right now, a full vitamin and vitamin-like substance life extension program costs between $50 and $100 dollars per month. However, pharmaceutical researchers occasionally notice that drugs meant to treat and cure diseases, when tested on lab animals for safety, make these animals live quite a bit longer and function better. Though the FDA doesn't allow any word of this to be printed in official prescribing data, the word does get around to other researchers, to gerontologists and eventually to that part of the public that is eagerly looking for longer life. Today there are numerous people who routinely take prescription medicines meant to cure a disease they do not have and plan to take those medicines for the rest of their long, long life.

These drugs being patented, the tariff gets a lot steeper compared to taking vitamins. (Since they are naturally-occurring substances, vitamins can't be patented and therefore, aren't big-profit items. Perhaps that's one reason the FDA is so covertly opposed to vitamins.) Right now it would be quite possible to spend many hundred dollars per month on a life extension program that included most of these potentially beneficent prescription drugs.

As more of life-extending substances are discovered, the cost of participating in a maximally effective life extension program will escalate. However, those who can afford chemically enhanced functioning will enjoy certain side-benefits. Their productive, enjoyable life spans may measure well over a century, perhaps approaching two centuries or more. Some of these substances greatly improve intelligence so they will become brighter and have faster reaction times. With more time to accumulate more wisdom and experience than 'short livers' these folks will become wiser, too. They will have more time to compound their investment assets and thus will become far more wealthy. They will become an obvious and recognizable aristocracy. This new upper class will immediately recognize each other on the street because they will look entirely different than the short-lived poorer folk and will probably run the political economic system.