Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 2/20/02:

Note: Hyperlinks are blue, visited hyperlinks are purple.

In Praise of Folic Acid - Time Magazine, 2/25/02 - "folic acid plays a crucial role in the development of just about every cell in the body ... subjects who had high levels of a particular amino acid called homocysteine in their blood were twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's as those who didn't. The finding is important because one of the easiest ways to lower homocysteine levels is to get plenty of folic acid ... There is no risk of overdose, although high levels of folic acid can mask the signs of pernicious anemia in people who have developed the disorder" - The way I understand it, taking vitamin B12 with the folic acid will avoid that problem. - Ben

Folic Acid and Parkinson Disease - JAMA, 2/20/02 - "Folic acid deficiency could increase the risk for Parkinson disease, according to research from the National Institute on Aging ... mice fed folate-deficient diets developed severe Parkinsonlike symptoms, which the scientists traced to elevated levels of homocysteine in the brain ... People with Parkinson disease often have low levels of folic acid, but it remains unclear whether this results from the disease process or simple malnourishment"

Healthy Heart: The Ugly Truth About Hypertension - Intelihealth, 2/20/02 - "the real goal isn’t to get your blood pressure under 140/90 mm Hg. “Optimal” blood pressure is below 120/80 mm Hg ... If the numbers are about 130/85, they should recognize that they have a problem" - see my hypertension page for alternative ways to help lower blood pressure. - Ben

Arterial Walls Thicker In Patients With Low Levels of High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol - Doctor's Guide, 2/20/02 - "A low plasma concentration of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol is associated with significant pre-intrusive atherosclerosis. However, an above average level of HDL cholesterol does not lead to a further reduction of arterial wall thickening" - My first choice to raise HDL would be inositol hexanicotinate. - Ben

Light Drinking May Help Keep Leg Arteries Clear - ABC News, 2/19/02 - "women and non-smoking men who reported having 1 or 2 drinks a day were less likely than nondrinkers to have peripheral arterial disease [blockages in the arteries that supply blood to the legs] ... The strongest effect was noted in women who did not smoke and consumed more than 20 grams of alcohol per day--equivalent to 2 glasses of wine. These women were 59% less likely to have PAD than their teetotaler counterparts"

Osteoporosis Drug May Help Heart Patients - ABC News, 2/19/02 - "The drug Evista, made by Eli Lilly and Co., was found to lessen the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular "events" by 40 percent in a subset of post-menopausal women with heart disease or considered susceptible to coronary problems ... Evista, known generically as raloxifene, was designed to mimic the effect of the hormone estrogen to prevent the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis without increasing the risk of breast cancer that accompanies hormone replacement therapy ... Raloxifene is known to cause a drop in low-density cholesterol -- the so-called bad cholesterol that can lead to heart disease"

Folate linked to reduced colorectal cancer risk - Reuters, 2/18/02 - "women with the highest intakes of folate were 40% less likely than those who consumed the least to develop cancer of the colon and rectum ... Researchers suspect that folate and folic acid may also protect against certain cancers by helping with DNA synthesis and repair--processes that, when disrupted, can lead to cancer"

Tiny air pollutants may get into the blood - Reuters, 2/18/02 - "Small particles are abundant in urban air since they are produced by diesel-powered engines--and are possibly the ones that are the most harmful to health ... The fact that they can penetrate into the blood circulation could explain why people may die from cardiovascular causes--like heart attacks--as a result of increased urban air pollution"

Nothing Works Better Than a Nap - Healthscout, 2/18/02 - "With the caffeine, the likelihood of an accident dropped by 66 percent. But when the drivers took a 15-minute doze, even if they didn't really fall asleep, and then had the caffeine, the likelihood of a sleep-related accident dropped by 91 percent"

Garlic may ward off cancer, heart attacks - MSNBC, 2/15/02 - "According to the Journal of Nutrition proceedings of a research conference on garlic, test-tube studies suggest that garlic may protect blood vessels by holding LDL cholesterol in a less damaging form, and by blocking undesirable changes in blood vessel walls ... Research continues to bolster the belief that garlic may help prevent certain cancers. An overview of several studies published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that garlic lowers risk of colon cancer more than 30 percent and reduces risk of stomach cancer almost 50 percent. Several studies in recent years have also shown that substances in garlic can reduce growth of breast and colon cancer"

Cocoa: The Next Health Drink? - WebMD, 2/15/02 - "a substance found in cocoa can stimulate the body's processing of nitric oxide -- a compound critical for healthy blood flow and blood pressure -- and promote overall heart health ... Nitric oxide plays such an important role in the maintenance of healthy blood pressure and, in turn, cardiovascular health"

Syndrome X -- Again! -  HealthandAge, 2/15/02 - "Syndrome X is also known as the metabolic syndrome and the insulin resistance syndrome. It was described to help explain the fact that some men with high blood pressure, although being treated with appropriate drugs (antihypertensives), were still having heart attacks at an unexpectedly high rate. They were usually moderately fat around the middle, had raised blood sugar levels, and showed resistance to the normal effects of insulin (i.e. insulin didn't lower the blood sugar as readily as in normal persons). Their blood lipid levels showed that the "good" cholesterol -- the high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) - was low, while their triglyceride level was increased ... the metabolic syndrome (this is now becoming the more common name) is much more widespread than we thought" - Note: I started a web page on syndrome X

Happily ever after? It's all in your head - CNN, 2/14/02 - This video claims that love is dependent on a cocktail of chemicals (dopamine, norepinephrine and PEA) and that oxytocin (not to be confused with the narcotic pain reliever Oxycontin) is responsible for bonding and that vasopressin is responsible for monogamy.  See my dopamine and norepinephrine pages for ways to increase them.  DL-Phenylalanine is converted to PEA.  One lady emailed me a couple years ago that she purchased oxytocin in Mexico.  Vasopressin is available via http://www.smart-drugs.net/.

Pravastatin Mortality Benefit In Patients With And Without Heart Disease - Doctor's Guide, 2/14/02 - ""For all three trials combined, the mortality among patients assigned pravastatin was significantly lower, at 7.9 percent, than the 9.8 percent among those assigned placebo." This was a highly significant relative risk reduction of 20 percent ... Similarly, the patients actively treated with pravastatin showed a reduction in coronary mortality of 24 percent compared with the placebo group"

Older Women Have Tough Time With Depression - WebMD, 2/14/02 - "The message here is that older women who are being treated for depression, but are not getting better, might want to explore the option of estrogen replacement if the don't have any contraindications to it"

Abdominal Obesity Identified as Independent Risk Factor for Stroke - Doctor's Guide, 2/14/02 - "Subjects with greater than the average waist/hip ratio had almost triple the risk for ischemic stroke compared to subjects with below average waist/hip ratio" - Maybe it's the cortisol:

• Single enzyme to blame for potbellies: study - MSNBC, 12/6/01 - "What they found was that a single enzyme in fat cells that raises levels of cortisol — the “fight or flight” stress hormone — triggers fat accumulation around the belly and its associated ill effects ... The researchers were drawn to the role of cortisol because patients with a rare illness known as Cushing syndrome — who have too much of the steroid hormone in their blood — develop severe obesity concentrated around their middles and become diabetic ... Since overweight people without Cushing syndrome typically don’t have too much cortisol in their bloodstreams, Flier hypothesized that they may be producing high cortisol levels solely in their fat cells — possibly because the enzyme HSD-1, which makes cortisol from an inactive molecule, is overactive ... The level of cortisol in their stomach fat tissue was 15 percent to 30 percent higher than in their non-engineered counterparts" - Note: The way I read this article, the final culprit is still the cortisol and there are ways to reduce cortisol now.

Mortality Associated With Sleep Duration and Insomnia - Archives of General Psychiatry, 2/02 - "The best survival was found among those who slept 7 hours per night. Participants who reported sleeping 8 hours or more experienced significantly increased mortality hazard, as did those who slept 6 hours or less. The increased risk exceeded 15% for those reporting more than 8.5 hours sleep or less than 3.5 or 4.5 hours. In contrast, reports of "insomnia" were not associated with excess mortality hazard. As previously described, prescription sleeping pill use was associated with significantly increased mortality after control for reported sleep durations and insomnia" - I hate the way the media hypes things up.  What they should have asked is was the sleep causing the bad health or was bad health causing the sleep:

• Sleep Deprivation May Trigger Insulin Resistance - Clinical Psychiatry News, 10/01, user=benhess, pwd=asdfgh - "sleep deprivation leads to the release of tumor necrosis factor-, which triggers cortisol release, and that, in turn, causes insulin resistance"
• Experts challenge study linking sleep, life span - CNN, 2/14/02 - "The data can't be used to establish a cause and affect relationship because there are flaws in the study ... You can't tell how people rated their own sleep quality and looked back at their sleep, which is a subjective reaction to how much sleep they were getting"

Policosanol: Clinical pharmacology and therapeutic significance of a new lipid-lowering agent - Am Heart J 2002 Feb;143(2):356-65 - "At doses of 10 to 20 mg per day, policosanol lowers total cholesterol by 17% to 21% and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol by 21% to 29% and raises high-density lipoprotein cholesterol by 8% to 15%"

Psychiatric Manifestations of NSAIDs in Older Adults - Geriatric Times, 2/02 - "there have been persistent reports of significant changes in mood, cognition and behavior in nonpsychiatrically ill patients treated with NSAIDs, with children and older adults being the most susceptible to these psychiatric side effects. Additionally, psychiatric patients treated with NSAIDs for pain have been reported to have these symptoms"

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of coenzyme Q10 in isolated systolic hypertension - South Med J 2001 Nov;94(11):1112-7 - "conducted a 12-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with twice daily administration of 60 mg of oral CoQ ... The mean reduction in systolic blood pressure of the CoQ-treated group was 17.8"

Thyroid and Aging - The Golden Years - MedicineNet.com, 6/01 - "Approximately 25% of the elderly population suffer from some form of mental illness. A significant number of these cases may be related to thyroid disease"

Physical and Psychological Effects of Stress - MedicineNet.com, 2/02 - "Under excessive stress, we tend to produce cortisol, the classic anti-stress hormone produced by our body, perhaps to conserve energy. However the side-effect here is sexual dysfunction and infertility as cortisol also inhibits production of the hormones essential for sexual function"

Serum Levels of Micronutrients, Antioxidants and Total Antioxidant Status Predict Risk of Breast Cancer in a Case Control Study - The American Society for Nutritional Sciences J. Nutr. 132:303-306, 2002 - "Blood samples were collected from 153 breast cancer cases and 151 controls. Serum samples were analyzed for retinol, -tocopherol, lycopene, - and ß-carotene by HPLC, and total antioxidant status by the Trolox-equivalent antioxidant assay ... After adjustment for age at menarche, parity, dietary fat and alcohol intake, we observed the following reductions in odds ratios for breast cancer risk comparing the highest with the lowest quartiles: 0.47 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.24, 0.91] for ß-carotene; 0.53 (CI 0.28, 1.01) for retinol; 0.50 (CI 0.26, 0.97) for bilirubin and 0.47 (CI 0.24, 0.94) for total antioxidant status. We conclude that increased serum levels of ß-carotene, retinol, bilirubin and total antioxidant status are associated with reductions in breast cancer risk"

Lipid, protein and carbohydrate intake in relation to body mass index - European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1/02 - "calculated changes of BMI per increments of energy intake from protein, carbohydrates, saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated lipids and ethanol ... There is evidence indicating that protein intake is conducive to obesity. Moreover, our data suggest that neither saturated or monounsaturated lipids nor carbohydrates are likely to play a major role in increasing BMI over and beyond that indicated by their energy content"

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