Anti-Aging is growing up, no question about it. What were only tantalizing theoretical concepts about aging reversal ten years ago are now becoming a reality.

In its infancy, anti-aging medicine experts were quick to formulate a model that helped point toward future therapies. In that model, they looked at several different avenues by which aging seemed to change the body internally over time, leading to the outward signs of aging we are all familiar with

Researchers have underscored several separate mechanisms of aging, including:

• The Hormonal Clock (waning secretion of important hormones)

• Glycation of Proteins (stiffening supple tissues and harming functional molecules)

• Oxidative Damage (“rusting” of our cellular machinery and precious genetic material)

• Accumulation of Cellular Debris (cellular “landfills” fill up over time)

• The Hayflick Limit (our cells can reproduce only so many times)

• Biological Catastrophes (the diseases that cut life short – cancer, heart disease, etc.)

By creating a model of the many ways our bodies “wind down,” and age, researchers have been able to “divide and conquer” by independently working on each of these “problems,” or mechanisms. The benefits of this strategy are now becoming the seeds of real strategies for dealing with each of these aging pathways.

What is really exciting to me is that, just as the aging process itself is a “negative synergy” of all these different aging pathways, the many, new anti-aging therapies are synergistic, as separate therapeutic avenues converge, helping real folks realize extraordinary benefits; benefits that were the province of science fiction not long ago.

In the 1990’s, as anti-aging entered the public consciousness, it became synonymous with Growth Hormone. The ‘90s could be called the Decade of Hormone Replacement Therapy, from an anti-aging perspective. Clinics offering nothing more than HGH prescriptions and a few supplements thrown in for window dressing, boomed.

Many of them are still going strong, although the excesses of a few misguided athletes have cast a bit of a pall over the use of HGH. This is unfortunate, as the benefits of careful HRT (hormone replacement therapy) proved to be worthy of the hype. Many patients have undergone such treatments for over a decade, and most of them would not choose to discontinue treatment if they had a choice in the matter.

But, as satisfying as the effects of simple HRT, in particular HGH replacement therapy, have been – dramatic improvements in skin, muscle and connective tissue integrity, sexual and cognitive function, and sense of overall vitality – there is clearly more to aging than can be addressed by HRT.

It has long been known among anti-aging experts that glycation bonds were key to aging. These bonds, formed when glucose circulating in the blood stream and inside cells, binds to protein molecules, causing them to become stiff and dysfunctional. Proteins each have a characteristic shape that allows their function to be expressed. Glycation bonds prevent proteins from maintaining these critical shapes.

Over time, as more and more body proteins become “glycated,” connective tissue stiffens, skin becomes visibly wrinkled, and enzymes critical for cellular functions don’t work as well. Cell membranes – incredibly complex machinery regulating the flow of substances in and out of cells – malfunction.

The results of these unfortunate glycation bonds are called Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGE’s), and they are now known to be responsible for many disease processes. Until recently, there was little hope for dealing with these AGE’s. Fortunately, this aging pathway is now yielding to research efforts and workable strategies are here.

As you might suspect, it turns out that there is a built in strategy for dealing with glycation and AGE’s, in the form of a small amino acid complex called carnosine, that our cells produce in abundance when they are healthy and young, to do just this sort of internal cleanup and garbage collection.

Levels of carnosine decline with age, allowing toxic garbage to pile up inside cells – not just AGE’s, but lipid peroxide radicals, aldehydes, toxic metals, and other compounds detrimental to normal cellular function. A 70 year old has less than half the carnosine of a 10 year old!

Fortunately, we can now supplement carnosine, and studies are showing a reversal of conditions associated with glycation and these other intracellular toxin accumulations. I believe this is a very powerful, new source of synergy with other available anti-aging supplements.

Carnosine does some really unique things that can’t be accomplished by any other mechanism. When cell membranes are damaged by oxidation, the byproducts of this are also toxic – molecules called aldehydes. Carnosine binds and quenches these, rendering them harmless to other cellular components.

Stated another way, Carnosine breaks glycation bonds, repairing the damage to our fundamental cellular proteins caused by glucose cross-linking – the stiffening of our normally supple, flexible proteins.

How significant are these carnosine effects for us as humans? Very. It turns out that the work that carnosine does inside cells is so basic and important, that old cells – ones that look distorted and deranged under the microscope, and which have lost the ability to divide normally, actually resume a youthful appearance, and begin dividing normally again.

Does carnosine actually have noticeable effects? Effects we can feel? Absolutely. So noticeable that body builders have discovered the supplement, because it allows them to bounce back after a workout much more quickly, and it literally makes them stronger. (Don’t worry, just taking carnosine won’t make you look like a body builder!)

What carnosine does for muscle it also does for many other tissues, some more noticeable than others, but if you use it, you can be sure that positive changes are taking place in every body system. In mice supplemented with carnosine, twice as many lived to their maximum life span.

In another group of mice, their average lifespan increased by 20%. Bear in mind that carnosine was the only advantage these mice had. You and I have many more options to go along with the carnosine and provide synergy.

My dosing recommendation differs a bit from mainstream opinion. There are 500mg capsules available, but I believe that we should stay below 200-300mg per day. The best regimen would be 100-150mg twice a day.

Another approach to increasing carnosine is to take one of its constituent amino-acids, beta-alanine. Many health food stores carry beta-alanine, for this purpose. The dose is pretty high, though; 4 grams per day. That amounts to four to eight capsules a day. For this reason, most folks take carnosine directly, instead.

Now that we can deal with AGE’s, what about the other mechanisms of aging, such as the Hayflick Limit; can we do something about that? Excitingly, the answer seems to be, “yes.” Since Dr. Leonard Hayflick discovered that human cells, cultured in a petri dish could only reproduce so many times before “petering out,” scientists have been hard at work to determine what causes this “brick wall” limit to human lifespan.

As most folks know, our body is in a constant process of replacing old, damaged cells with new ones. Old cells divide, creating their own “cloned” replacements. In fact, for a long time, we thought that only neurons in our brain escaped this need to be replaced. We now know that in some cases, even neurons in our central nervous system need to divide.

Unfortunately, as Dr. Hayflick showed, each type of cell has a finite number of chances to divide and create a replacement for itself. We now know that the reason for this is that our genetic code, carefully stored away in our cell nuclei, has to be duplicated perfectly during cell division. Each chromosome has little “handles,” called telomeres that allow this safe handling during cell division.

Every time a cell divides, these handles are shortened a bit. Eventually, they become so short that the genetic material cannot be handled correctly enough to make a perfect copy. Any cell division after that results in a corrupted cell; a cell that must either self destruct, or worse, become cancerous or otherwise dysfunctional.

There is one group of cells that do not have this limitation: our reproductive cells. In order to perpetuate our race, our germ cells (sperm and egg), have been continuously reproducing themselves down through the millennia, and doing just fine, thank you.

Their secret is another built-in mechanism, called Telomerase. This enzyme allows those little handles we talked about earlier to be lengthened, enabling a cell to keep dividing as long as necessary. The question is, can this mechanism be safely turned on in humans? The answer was discovered in the late 1990’s in some of the most exciting research ever, in the area of anti-aging.

It turns out that all cells have the ability to make telomerase, and that this ability can be “turned on,” by certain, natural substances. You might call this the “Methuselah Switch,” since it could theoretically allow humans to live for upwards of 500-750 years.

Is it safe to turn on this switch? Won’t this cause cancer? No. It has become very clear that telomerase does not cause cancer. Cancer cells, once they become cancerous, have other means for lengthening telomeres. We know that just turning on telomerase does not in any way move a cell in the direction of cancer.

After putting all these puzzle pieces together, it was clear to researchers that a fundamental, new strategy for dealing with aging was at hand. We will no doubt see prescription drugs in the future that “turn on” this Methuselah Switch.”

The reason for this is that so many diseases, from Alzheimer’s, to heart disease, chronic liver disease, skin problems – the list goes on and on – are directly attributable to shortening of telomeres.

Already, much of the research to find a magic bullet to lengthen our telomeres is centered on – you guessed it – natural compounds derived from a plant! Astragalus, long a mainstay of herbal medicine practitioners, is now known to contain a family of compounds that can turn on our telomerase gene.

Unfortunately, it takes quite a lot of Astragalus to get enough to do the job. Wealthy individuals are already paying a small fortune to have access to the active ingredient in Astragalus right now – about $10,000 a year! Why would they pay that much? Because this may just be the single, biggest breakthrough in anti-aging, ever.

What if you can’t afford $10,000 a year? Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of entrepreneurship, competitors have come along with an affordable Astragalus extract that contains the ingredient needed to lengthen telomeres. This supplement is called Astral Fruit. It is available from RevGenetics for about $30 a month. And yes, I take it myself! I take 200mg per day.

Beyond telomeres lies another frontier in anti-aging, and one that is also accessible via a cellular switch. Decades ago, it was discovered that mice who were fed a calorie restricted diet lived significantly longer than their well-fed compatriots.

For a long time, this was the only certain mechanism for lengthening lifespan in animals. Some humans even famously began to use this “calorie restriction” mechanism for their own life-extension. These folks eat less than 1000 calories per day to “stay young.” Most would feel that to be a pretty miserable existence.

Fortunately, researchers have discovered the reasons for the life-extension produced by calorie restriction. What is more exciting, they have discovered natural mechanisms to access it, without the restricted diet.

It turns out that severe calorie restriction turns on a gene – Silent Information Regulator 2 – Sir2p or “Sirtuin.” This gene “switch” seems to have a key purpose for the human race. During periods of “environmental stress,” like severe famine, or meteors hitting the earth, the survival of the race is threatened. That’s when Sirtuin comes to the rescue, by turning on a whole host of hidden adaptive mechanisms built-in to our cells like a genetic Swiss Army knife.

When Sirtuin is activated, our cells become much more hardy, and less prone to many of the things that would damage and “age” normal cells. Until recently, the only way to access this genetic “Swiss Army knife,” was caloric restriction. We now know that it can also be done with Resveratrol, a plant compound found in a number of plants. We can have the benefits without needing to live a life of self-imposed starvation!

Resveratrol not only turns on Sirtuin, unleashing the potential benefits of our built-in survival genes, it also has many other benefits. In another article (http://www.naturalhealthinformer.com/news/164-it-made-old-mice-into-ultra-marathoners-what-can-it-do-for-us) I discuss many of these exciting effects, and how they can be harnessed to aid our quest for peak wellness, and disease prevention.

I take 500mg per day, which I believe to be a safe, effective dose for accessing many of these benefits, including activation of Sirtuin.

The oxidative side of aging is also starting to yield up its secrets. We now know quite a bit more about how cells are damaged by oxidation – our internal version of “rusting.” As in the areas we discussed earlier, there are powerful, accessible strategies that go beyond the garden variety “anti-oxidant” nostrums we find in the health food store.

While virtually everything you can buy in the health food store these days gets billed as an “anti-oxidant,” this just doesn’t work that way inside the body. Once again, we have discovered powerful, built-in mechanisms that, when stimulated and supported, do far more than the nostrums we have been taking for this purpose.

Our cells make their own anti-oxidants. These incredibly powerful substances are designed to protect us from the ravages of oxidation and environmental damage. One of them is carnosine, which we have already discussed. Two other key substances, found in all of our cells, are glutathione and Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD). Without these protective substances, our cells would die within minutes.

Like virtually everything else in our bodies, glutathione and SOD levels decline with age, leading to increasing damage from oxidation, cellular damage and even premature cell death. When glutathione is abundant, many of the common diseases of aging do not occur.

An abundance of these molecules protects the brain from processes leading to dementia, heart and blood vessel cells from the damage that leads to blockages and heart attacks. It protects blood components from processes leading to abnormal blood clotting.

SOD and glutathione protect all cells from DNA damage that can lead to cancer, and the liver from toxic damage that can lead to liver disease and failure. Lungs are protected from myriad forms of damage that can lead to chronic respiratory difficulty. Our retinas are protected from damage that can lead to blindness.

The list of benefits to healthy glutathione levels is a very long one. Unfortunately, in our world of poor nutrition and environmental toxicity and very high stress, glutathione levels are rarely optimal. That is why breakthroughs in this area are cause for celebration among those of us interested in anti-aging.

While research and development is underway on a host of future, prescription drugs designed to mimic the actions of our own anti-oxidant dynamic duo, we can once again take comfort in the knowledge that we already have access to non-prescription anti-oxidant substances that really work. These substances actually facilitate the function of our own glutathione and SOD workhorses.

Lipoic Acid, is a remarkable substance that, while discovered decades ago, has only recently come to prominence as a nutritional supplement. In fact, it just may be one of the most powerfully beneficial nutraceuticals ever discovered. In study after study, common, serious diseases are responding dramatically to lipoic acid supplementation.

Available in any good health food store in the form of either Alpha-lipoic acid – or even better, R-Lipoic acid, this supplement is nothing short of revolutionary. I believe it will be a household word within ten years; it is that important. The importance of it in this context is that this substance dramatically improves the functioning of our built-in cellular anti-oxidant mechanisms.

Lipoic acid enables our own glutathione anti-oxidant mechanism to work much better, by helping “recycle” our internal glutathione stores. In this way, our cells are able to deal with the onslaught of environmental oxidation, and just day to day wear and tear, much more effectively.

Lipoic acid has other, positive effects as well, such as helping us eliminate mercury from the body. It also dramatically improves control of blood glucose in diabetics. For this reason, diabetics who begin taking it should watch their blood sugar carefully and report any changes to their doctor, since many patients are able to reduce or even eliminate the use of oral diabetes medicines when they take Lipoic acid faithfully. Insulin doses can sometimes be reduced in Type II diabetics, as well.

I take 50mg per day of the R-Lipoic acid form of this supplement. If you choose to take the Alpha form, you need to take more (100-200mg per day). There are slow release forms available as well, containing up to 600mg per day. These higher doses are not needed to see the benefits of this supplement.

N-Acetyl Cysteine is another readily available, but lesser known nutraceutical, which works synergistically with Lipoic acid. Studies have shown NAC can activate SOD inside cells, dramatically improving function and reversing some kinds of heart damage, simply by empowering these internal anti-oxidant mechanisms.

By combining NAC and Lipoic acid, we achieve a very powerful, anti-aging synergy, that is now thought by anti-aging experts to be a revolutionary development, as it finally addresses the oxidative component of aging effectively. I take 500mg of, twice daily, along with the R-lipoic acid, to engage the benefits of this amazing synergy.

To summarize these anti-aging breakthroughs:

These are real breakthroughs, and deserve to be a part of any serious health maintenance program. The overall cost of adding the supplements we have discussed to a daily nutraceutical regimen is very small when compared with the likely benefits in terms of disease prevention, and improved vitality

By making use of the synergy of multiple anti-aging mechanisms, the total effect is much more powerful than would be expected from the sum of the individual effects. I would be very surprised to find an individual that did not notice palpable benefits from a regimen like the one outlined above, for this reason. When combined with a sensible diet, and a natural hormone replacement therapy program, the results can be even more impressive.

I hope this information has been illuminating for you, and ultimately empowering as you refine your own anti-aging and wellness regimen. I will try to keep readers apprised of new breakthroughs in this very exciting area. Until then, we have a lot to be thankful for, in the form of these fundamental anti-aging strategies.