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Prevention Protocols
Updated: 07/15/2004
It used to be thought that little could be done to postpone what nature has in store for us. Today, a growing scientific consensus indicates that individuals possess a great deal of control over how long they are going to live and what their state of health will be.
Mainstream medicine has relied on simple measures of preventing disease, such as controlling hypertension, yet many doctors are coming to the realization that additional steps can be taken to protect against premature aging and death.
In fact, the results of tens of thousands of scientific studies make it abundantly clear that following the proper lifestyle can add a significant number of healthy years to the average person's lifespan.
The premise of taking actions to maintain youthful health and vigor is based on findings from peer-reviewed scientific studies that identify specific factors that cause us to develop degenerative disease. These studies suggest that the consumption of certain foods, food extracts, hormones, or drugs will help to prevent common diseases that are associated with normal aging.
Therefore, the concept of disease prevention can be defined as the incorporation of findings from published scientific studies into a logical daily regimen that enables an individual to attain optimal health and longevity.
Taking aggressive steps to extend one's lifespan is a major commitment. This Prevention protocol provides practical information about what a person can do to take advantage of the consensus of scientific knowledge obtained from the most prestigious medical journals in the world.
The Basis For Determining What WorKS
People seeking to reduce their risk of disease are often overwhelmed by the volume of technical data on the subject. For the past 23 years, the Life Extension Foundation has meticulously reviewed the published medical literature dating as far back as 1917. Life Extension personnel have dedicated the past 35 years to working with physicians and scientists to develop validated methods of preventing age-related disease.
Each year, the Foundation spends millions of dollars on research projects aimed at extending the healthy human lifespan. Since 1983, the Foundation has reviewed thousands of blood test results of members who have been following antiaging supplement, drug, and hormone-replacement programs.
Based on this vast accumulation of data, the Life Extension Foundation has designed a practical disease prevention protocol that is based solely on scientific principles.
Before you embark on a program to reduce your risk of degenerative disease, it is important for you to know about scientific studies conducted on humans that show these therapies really work. If you are not aware of these published studies, you may be unlikely to methodically follow a long-term disease prevention program.
Conventional Medicine Recommends Vitamin SupplemeNTS
For the greater part of the 20th century, mainstream medicine was openly hostile to the idea of healthy people taking vitamin supplements. This antivitamin position began to change in the 1990s as irrefutable evidence emerged that supplements could reduce the risk of age-related disease without inducing toxicity.
In the April 9, 1998, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, an editorial was entitled "Eat Right and Take a Multi-Vitamin." This article was based on studies indicating that certain supplements could reduce homocysteine serum levels and therefore lower heart attack and stroke risk. This was the first time this prestigious medical journal recommended vitamin supplements (Oakley 1998).
An even stronger endorsement for the use of vitamin supplements was in the June 19, 2002, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). According to the Harvard University doctors who wrote the JAMA guidelines, it now appears that people who get enough vitamins may be able to prevent such common illnesses as cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis. The Harvard researchers concluded that suboptimal levels of folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12 are a risk factor for heart disease and colon and breast cancers; low levels of vitamin D contribute to osteoporosis; and inadequate levels of the antioxidant vitamins A, E, and C may increase the risk of cancer and heart disease (Fairfield et al. 2002).
The FDA's Suppression of Folic Acid
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has spent enormous resources trying to prevent people from supplementing with folic acid. The FDA argues against folic acid supplementation because the presence of folic acid in the blood could mask a serious vitamin B12 deficiency. In a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Losonczy et al. (1996) addressed the FDA's concerns by recommending that folic acid supplements be fortified with vitamin B12 as a prudent way of gaining the cardiovascular benefits of folic acid without risking a B12 deficiency.
Even though major medical journals (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine) long ago endorsed the use of folic acid to reduce cardiovascular disease (Malinow et al. 1998), the FDA still does not accept that folic acid has any benefit other than preventing a certain type of birth defect.
A study by Giovannucci et al. (1998) in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed how fatally flawed the position of the FDA is. Data from the famous Harvard Nurses' Health Study conducted at the Harvard Medical School showed that long-term supplementation with folic acid reduces the risk of colon cancer by an astounding 75% in women. The fact that there are 90,000 women participating in the Harvard Nurses' Health Study makes this finding especially significant. The authors of this study explained that folic acid obtained from supplements had a stronger protective effect against colon cancer than folic acid consumed in the diet. This new study helps to confirm the work of Dr. Bruce Ames, the famous molecular biologist who has authored numerous articles showing that folic acid is extremely effective in preventing the initial DNA mutations that can lead to cancer later in life. This Harvard report, showing a 75% reduction in colon cancer incidence, demonstrated that the degree of protection against cancer is correlated with how long a DNA-protecting substance (folic acid) is consumed. It was the women who took more than 400 mcg of folic acid a day for 15 years who experienced the 75% reduction in colon cancer, whereas short-term supplementation with folic acid produced only marginal protection.
There now exists a massive body of evidence that supplementation with folic acid can prevent both cardiovascular disease and cancer, yet the FDA has proposed rules that would prohibit the American public from even learning about these benefits. Colon cancer will kill 47,000 Americans this year. It is unfortunate that the FDA didn't "allow" these colon cancer victims to learn about folic acid in time.
The Vitamin C Controversy
Does vitamin C cause kidney stones? Some doctors still believe it does, but a report from Harvard Medical School showed no increased risk of kidney stones when evaluating 85,557 women over a 14-year study period. This report, by Curhan et al. in the April 1999 issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, showed that women who consumed 1500 mg a day or more of vitamin C were no more likely to develop kidney stones than women who consumed less than 250 mg of vitamin C a day. The study did reveal that women who consumed 40 mg or more of vitamin B6 were 34% less likely to develop kidney stones compared to women taking fewer than 3 mg a day of B6 (Curhan et al. 1999). So now that kidney stone risk has been ruled out, let's look at some of the human studies showing positive benefits to vitamin C supplementation.
In the early 1990s, several large population studies showed a reduction in cardiovascular disease in those who consumed vitamin C. The media reported on some of these findings and this favorable publicity helped push a bill through Congress that prevented the FDA from banning high-potency vitamin C and other supplements.
The most significant report emanated in 1992 from UCLA, where it was announced that men who took 800 mg a day of vitamin C lived 6 years longer than those who consumed the FDA's recommended daily allowance of 60 mg a day. The study, which evaluated 11,348 participants over a 10-year period of time, showed that high vitamin C intake extended average lifespan and reduced mortality from cardiovascular disease by 42% (Enstrom et al. 1992).
A study by Nyyssonen et al. (1997) in the British Medical Journal evaluated 1605 randomly selected men in Finland ages 42-60 years from 1984-1989. None of these men had evidence of preexisting heart disease. After adjusting for other confounding factors, men who were deficient in vitamin C had 3.5 times more heart attacks than men who were not deficient in vitamin C. The scientist's conclusion was "vitamin C deficiency, as assessed by low plasma ascorbate concentration, is a risk factor for coronary heart disease" (Nyyssonen et al. 1997).
In a study in The Lancet (Khaw et al. 2001), researchers at Cambridge University in England looked at serum vitamin C and length of life. People who had the lowest levels of vitamin C were twice as likely to die when compared to those with the highest serum vitamin C levels. This study was based on the findings in more than 19,000 people. The question for those who want to achieve maximum health is: Do you want your blood to contain the lowest levels or the highest levels of vitamin C? Because being at the lowest level appears to double your risk of dying, we suggest that you consume fruits, vegetables, and supplements that are high in vitamin C.
In the March 9, 1999, issue of the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, elevated homocysteine levels were shown to cause rapid onset of endo-thelial (arterial lining) dysfunction (Chambers et al. 1999). This type of dysfunction reduces blood flow and can facilitate a lethal arterial spasm. Vitamin C inhibited arterial dysfunction by interfering with oxidative stress mechanisms. The doctors conducting the study stated that acute impairment of vascular endo-thelial function can be prevented by pretreatment with vitamin C.
In a double-blind study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Watanabe et al. (1998) compared the effects of nitrate drugs in people receiving vitamin C to a placebo group not receiving vitamin C. The doctors administered nitrate drugs to healthy people and patients with coronary artery disease and then measured vasodilation response and cellular levels of cGMP, an energy substrate that is depleted by nitrate drugs. At day zero, all participants were measured to establish a baseline. After 3 days of vitamin C administration (2 grams 3 times daily), there was no change in either group. After 6 days of vitamin C therapy, an impressive 42% improvement in vasodilation response was observed, and a 60% improvement in cellular cGMP levels was measured in coronary artery disease patients receiving vitamin C compared to those receiving placebo. A similar improvement occurred in the healthy subjects taking vitamin C compared to the placebo group. The doctors concluded the study by stating that "these results indicate that combination therapy with vitamin C is potentially useful for preventing the development of nitrate tolerance" (Watanabe et al. 1998).
In another study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Bassenge et al. (1998) looked at the effects of nitrate drug therapy on human patients. Tolerance development was monitored by changes in arterial pressure, pulse pressure, heart rate, and activity of isolated patients. All patients experienced the deleterious effects of nitrate tolerance. However, when vitamin C was coadministered with the nitrate drugs, the effects of nitrate tolerance were virtually eliminated. The most significant improvement was a 310% improvement in the arterial conductivity test. The nitrate drugs induced a dangerous upregulated activity of platelets, but this too was reversed with vitamin C supplementation (Bassenge et al. 1998). The doctors who conducted this study indicated that vitamin C may be of benefit during long-term, nonintermittent administration of nitrate drugs in humans.
Chronic heart failure is associated with reduced dilating capacity of the endothelial lining of the arterial system. Scientists tested heart failure patients by high-resolution ultrasound and Doppler to measure radial artery diameter and blood flow. Vitamin C restored arterial dilation response and blood flow velocity in patients with heart failure. The scientists determined that the mechanism of action was that vitamin C increased the availability of nitric oxide, an important precursor to cGMP. This study was in the February 1998 issue of the journal Circulation (Rodes et al. 1998).
Also in 1998, another aspect of the effect of vitamin C on coronary artery disease was discovered. A study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (Vita et al. 1998) showed that low plasma ascorbic acid levels independently predict the presence of an unstable coronary syndrome in heart disease patients. According to the doctors, the study's results showed that the beneficial effects of vitamin C in treating coronary artery disease may result, in part, by an influence on arterial wall lesion activity rather than a reduction in the overall extent of fixed disease (Vita et al. 1998).
The published research findings suggest that vitamin C may reduce mortality in coronary artery disease patients, increase life span, and possibly eliminate the effects of nitrate tolerance in those taking nitrate drugs. Although not recognized in the medical establishment as a therapy for coronary artery disease, there now exists an accumulated wealth of evidence that vitamin C has beneficial effects in the treatment of heart-related illnesses.
Historically, mainstream medicine has ridiculed vitamin C supplementation. In today's modern world, conventional medicine says that only 200 mg a day of vitamin C is needed, despite findings showing that high doses of vitamin C are required to produce optimal benefit. Meanwhile, the FDA continues to hold with the position that no more than 60-100 mg a day of vitamin C is needed. |