Category Archives: Aging

Post #15 – Is taking multivitamin and supplements helpful, harmless or harmful?

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Aging, Optimal Health, Vigor, Vitality

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So, my son Dan visited us over the last weekend. He is 22, generally eats well, is in great health and has no health issues whatsoever. As he watched me taking my multivitamins and a handful of supplements he asked, “What is all this stuff you are taking Dad? Should I be taking any of this stuff for optimal health?”

So, here is what I told Dan.

Through all my reading and learning, I have come across all three points of view on multivitamins:

  1. Unless you have deficiency in some vitamin or mineral, you don’t really need to take daily vitamins and mineral supplements. If you do, they just get secreted out of the body in urine. So, by taking multivitamin as supplements, all you get is expensive urine.
  2. You have to be careful very careful with the supplements. They can actually cause harm to your body. For example, have you not heard about the study about taking too much antioxidants is harmful?
  3. To get all vitamins and minerals, you really need to eat all the various foods during the week. Besides, many of our fruits and vegetables are depleted of nutrition due to the present day methods of farming. Moreover, there are many studies that demonstrate effectiveness of the many supplements in Optimal Daily Allowance, which can be significantly more than the minimum Required Daily Allowance (RDA). So, not only one should take multivitamins every day, but make sure to take based on optimal daily allowance.

I have come to subscribe to number 3, i.e., for optimal health we must take daily optimal quantity of multivitamins and minerals.

While there is no shortage of material out there discussing this topic, I would briefly share here some information and sources that have influenced my thinking.

Kimberly and I attended a presentation by Chris D’Adamo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Director of Research at Center of Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, in Baltimore, MD. I found his presentation, D’ADAMO – Supplementing Your Dietary Supplement IQ – 2013 to be very objective and informative. He discussed each vitamin and mineral, their impact on health, the required and optimal intake and sources from which we get those. And, culturally, do we get sufficient quantity or not. Bottom line: Consider taking the following: Multivitamin, Vitamin D, Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Probiotics. Add other supplements for specific issues as needed.

Pretty much the same conclusion is described in “Blood Sugar Solution”, by Dr. Mark Hyman, “The Life Plan: How Any Man Can Achieve Lasting Health, Great Sex, and a Stronger, Leaner Body”, by Jeffry S. Life M.D. Ph.D., and in The Joe Dillon Difference, by Joe Dillon.

The next question is which brand. Should I just go to Safeway, Giant, Cosco and pick the cheapest multivitamin? Is there difference between any of these brands?

Before you pick a brand, I advised Dan, you need to do some research, since there are no guidelines or standards or compliance audits for supplements.

Multivitaminguide compares and ranks multivitamin brands. ConsumerLabs also tests supplements and assigns Approved or Not Approved designations. These websites claim they have tested brands for composition, bioavailability, safety and potency.

From the Multivitaminguide check out the top five. Some of them have extensive information on what is in the capsules and why. For example, two of the top five brand websites, Xtend-life and LifeExtension, describe in detail not only the different ingredients, but also cite research studies from where they derive the reasons for including a particular ingredient as well as the quantity of the ingredient.

National Institute of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements is also a great place to get educated on this subject.

You will also notice that in addition to the basic 26 vitamins and mineral, some multivitamins on the list (including the ones from Xtend-life and LifeExtension) have other ingredients, e.g., green tea extract, Lycopene (from tomatoes, alfalfa extract etc. So, that becomes another consideration in selecting a multivitamin. Do you want to add these other ingredient, “everyone” is talking about being important for wellness, curcumin, ginger, turmeric, resveratrol (from Red wine) and so many others.

Given all this information, what would I recommend? Just like Dr. D’Admo recommends: a good multivitamin, omega-3’s, vitamin D and probiotics as a baseline. Then add specific supplements that you may need due to specific health condition.

These days, I am taking the following:

  1. Xtend-life Men’s Total Balance Premium. Comes in 7 capsule a day
  2. Xtend-life Omega 3 / QH Ultra. 4 capsules a day.
  3. Nature’s Bounty 1200 mg Flaxseed Oil Softgels. 2 capsules a day
  4. Vitamin D3 2000 mg. One capsule a day
  5. Raw Probiotics – Ultimate Care. One capsule a day. Just today ordered for the first time.
  6. Nature’s Plus – Extended Release 600mg Red Yeast Rice. 2 capsules a day for managing my cholesterol.
  7. Now Foods Calcium Citrate Plus Caps 600mg, 2 a day for bone health.
  8. Cosamin ASU Active People Capsule. 2 a day for joint health
  9. Male Rejuvinator. 3 capsules a day for Prostate Health
  10. Life Extension Super MiraForte with Standardized Lignans. 4 capsules a days. Added recently to restore Testosterone level – indicated as low by blood work. Too early to say if it works.
  11. Miracle Phytoceramides. One capsule a day. Another experiment for healthy moist skin and wrinkle prevention.

So, based on my experience, I advised Dan to read up some of the related literature and start with the following:

  1. Xtend-life Multi-Xtra. $18.95 + 4.49 shipping from Amazon or Xtend-life.com. 2 capsule a day.
  2. Xtend-life Omega 3 / DHA Fish Oil. $17.95 + 4.49 shipping from Amazon or Xtend-life.com. 2 capsules a day.
  3. Nature’s Bounty 1200 mg Flaxseed Oil Softgels. $8.95 from Amazon. 1 capsules a day
  4. Nature’s Bounty Vitamin D3 2000 mg $11.52 from Amazon for 240 capsules. One capsule a day

You should take it for three months and see how you feel. Then may be stop taking it for a week or two and see how you feel. Based on that comparison you should be able to see for yourself if it is worthwhile for you to keep taking these.

Dan told me that this was a good topic for my future blog posts. So, here it is Dan and feel free to share it with others.

What is your experience with multivitamins and supplements?

Do you have your favorite brands or supplements that have had major impact on your physical and mental health?

Post #13 – Ever heard of Functional Medicine?

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Aging, Functional Medicine, Living to 120, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Vigor, Vitality

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In my previous blog posts, I have talked about curing my allergies, fixing migraines, and curing a whole host of other issues without pharmacological medicines. Yes, actually curing these issues and not just managing or controlling the symptoms.

For the longest amount of time, I found it difficult to talk about to these things with my physicians or even lay people. I must admit it all sounded so much like woo doo even to me as I would talk about it. A common refrain from doctors was, “We only practice evidence based medicine.” I did not know what to believe or not believe, except that from my personal experience (evidence of n=1), I could prove that these things work.

All that changed, when last year Kimberly and I attended the Health and Wellness Conference 2013 at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine at the Center of Integrative Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. There we heard talks about yoga, Qi Gong, nutrition, meditation, detoxing, and many other so called “alternative” therapies in the setting of Evidence Based Medicine.

Key note speaker was Mark Hyman, MD. He has a private practice Ultra Wellness Center in Massachusetts. He wrote a book, The Blood Sugar Solution, which received endorsement from President Bill Clinton. He talked about the diagnosis and cure of Diabesity, a term he has coined as combination of diabetes and obesity. And, he talked about diabesity in the context of what he called Functional Medicine.

Since then I have studied up quite a bit on Functional Medicine and I do believe that many of my conversations in my blog posts fit in that framework. More I dig into this topic the more entranced I am getting with this topic. I feel that functional medicine is the key to the kingdom, when it comes to wellness, vitality and living the optimal health span and life span.

Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D. is considered “father” of this field. Mark Hyman calls him his mentor. Among Bland’s other accomplishments, he has founded Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute and The Institute for Functional Medicine. Recently, he has written a book, “The Disease Delusion, Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, and Happier Life.”

Institute for functional medicine describes functional medicine as follows:

“Functional medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, using a systems-oriented approach and engaging both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership. It is an evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century. By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach, functional medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. Functional medicine practitioners spend time with their patients, listening to their histories and looking at the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease. In this way, functional medicine supports the unique expression of health and vitality for each individual.”

So, the basic idea of functional medicine is to take a systems approach to disease and wellness rather than either chasing symptoms or taking germ theory approach that generally focuses on single point of correction. In his book, Jeffrey Bland talks of seven different systems for our bodies:

  1. Assimilation and Elimination
  2. Detoxification
  3. Defense
  4. Cellular Communication
  5. Cellular Transport
  6. Energy
  7. Structure

So the objective in functional medicine is to investigate symptoms to pinpoint one or more of these seven systems that are not working properly and then to change diet, exercise and lifestyle to fix the system imbalance and thereby the diseases and the symptoms.

The end result is often pretty low tech, and may seem underwhelming. That is, implement changes in diet, exercise and lifestyle to redirect expression of certain genes to cure a disease.

However, approach to getting there can be fairly high-tech in identifying the true root cause, identifying the systems that are out of balance and gene expressions that may be responsible for the underlying imbalance. And, as you see from the stories, results can be very profound and almost magical.

If you know someone, who is being treated for certain symptoms of chronic diseases by meds. e.g., high blood pressure, obesity, brain fog, constant fatigue, high cholesterol, inflammation, muscle aches, etc..  The meds being used often lead to side effects that need to be treated by other meds, which in turn are causing other side effects etc.. Such a person is the perfect candidates for functional medicine.

Have you heard of functional medicine?

Do you have any experience with functional medicine?

I have been looking for good certified functional medicine practitioners in our area that we could consult and also recommend to our friends and family. We have access to some lists, but no personal experience yet. Do you know of such a practitioner?

I would love to learn if you know someone.

Post #9 – When it comes to health, vitality, and aging what is really possible?

27 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Aging, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Vigor, Vitality

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We have all heard the story. Until Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile barrier, most folks believed that it was not possible to run at that speed. Few years after Bannister demonstrated that it was possible to run a 4 minute mile, even high schoolers were attempting that record. It became not just possible but an achievable goal.

I believe the same is also true in health, vitality and aging. It was not really that long when the first successful open heart surgery was demonstrated. Now, over half a million bypass surgeries are performed every year in the U.S. alone.

So, it is with this expectation of possible becoming achievable and eventually pervasive, I find it very inspiring to learn what is really possible when it comes to health, vitality and aging., without the intervention of “modern medicine”. Is possible to bypass the bypass surgery?

Through my personal and others experiences and documented studies, I have been collecting examples of what is possible in prevention of diseases or restoration of health and even more importantly how.

Here are some exciting possibilities I have discovered, so far:

  1. Allergies can be reversed

Evidence – My personal experience (see my blog post from last week)

How – By changing what we eat, detoxifying colon, liver, and kidneys and taking supplements to rebuild liver, e.g., CoQ10, Milk Thistle.

  1. Cartilage in Joints such as knees (often diagnosed as Arthritis) can be rebuilt

Evidence – My personal experience

How – By realigning joints if necessary, Bikram Yoga, nutritional supplements Glucosamine/Chondroitin, strength training and realigning joint to eliminate the root cause of wear and tear (see item 10 below). 

  1. Early symptoms of prostate enlargement can be reversed

Evidence – My personal experience

How – By taking supplement such as Saw Palmetto Complex

  1. Losing Inches of height as one ages is reversible

Evidence – My personal experience

How – By doing Bikram Yoga              

  1. Coronary Heart Disease can be prevented and reversed

Evidence – “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.

How – By changing what we eat and drink

  1. Many types of cancers can be prevented and (in mice) turned on and off by changing diet

Evidence – “China Study”, by T. Collin Campbell, PhD

How – By changing what we eat

  1. Live to 93 years old and still be performing heart surgeries

Live to be over 100 and be disease free, fully functioning, independent, supporting family and community

Evidence – “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived The Longest”, By Dan Buettner

How – By living certain lifestyle that includes what we eat, how much we eat, who we associate with, having a purpose, staying active, taking time off and managing our perspective.

  1. Reverse diabetes

Evidence – “Blood Sugar Solution”, by Dr. Mark Hyman

How – Changing what we eat and drink, taking appropriate supplements and engaging in physical activity

  1. Make a phenomenal transformation in matter of months, even at 60

Evidence – “The Life Plan: How Any Man Can Achieve Lasting Health, Great Sex, and a Stronger, Leaner Body”, by Jeffry S. Life M.D. Ph.D.              

“Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength”, by Bill Phillips and Michael D’Orso

“The Joe Dillon Difference”, by Joe Dillon

How – Creating a health plan and sticking to it rigorously

  1. Make dramatic difference in back, neck, joint pains through body realignment

Evidence –   Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain Paperback by Pete Egoscue; Egoscue Treatment Clinics; Personal Experience

How – Learning and practicing the appropriate eCises

Are such possibilities not exciting?

Have you run into some exciting possibilities in the area of health, vitality and aging?

Do you have some personal experience of making something considered impossible possible in the area of health, vitality and aging?

I would love to hear your stories and add those to this list to further explore and make them achievable.

Post #7 – Can biomarkers help in the quest for vitality and longevity?

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Aging, Life-Span, Living to 120, Vigor, Vitality

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How do we die and how do we lose vitality questions so far have focused my attention on the hurdles to overcome. Some of these have to do with challenges that shorten or bring end to our lifespan. Other items are “diseases” that can decrease our vitality and vigor.

All of these items are, of course, important. For the moment, however, let me step away from these hurdles and reframe the questions.

Let us say, I don’t really have any disease, but I want to live a lifestyle to achieve the optimal health and lifespan. How can I objectively assess where I am presently and then either maintain or improve from here? In other words, how to pursue living an optimal health and vitality, not merely trying to be disease free?

Study of Biomarkers has been an area of aggressive research and pursuit in vitality and aging since the 1980’s.

Biomarkers (short for biological markers) are biological measures of a biological state. By definition, a biomarker is a characteristic that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biological processes, pathogenic processes or pharmacological responses to a therapeutic intervention.

In the context of aging, an important focus for biomarkers has been on finding “the clock” that potentially ticks away our lifespan. Discovery of telomere as a potentially genetic clock is one example of a biomarker that won Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California San Francisco a Nobel Prize. More recently, Steve Horvath of UCLA has introduced another important biomarker to measure human aging through epigenetic signatures.

Both of these works have sparked fascinating research into areas of aging and extending lifespans. I would like to explore these topics in future blog posts.

On the other hand, for vitality, William Evans, PhD, and Irwin H. Rosenberg, MD, professors of nutrition and medicine, respectively, at Tufts University introduced a concept of biomarkers back in 1991 through their book Biomarkers (Simon and Schuster, 1991), updated in their book, BIOMARKERS: The 10 Keys to Prolonged Vitality (Simon and Schuster, 1992) and more recently updated in the Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter.

In these publications, Evans and Rosenberg isolated the following signposts of vitality that can be altered for the better by changes in lifestyle:

  1. Muscle Mass
  2. Strength
  3. Basal Metabolic Rate
  4. Body Fat Percentage
  5. Aerobic Capacity
  6. Blood-sugar Tolerance
  7. Cholesterol/HDL Ratio
  8. Blood Pressure
  9. Bone density
  10. Ability to regulate Internal Temperature

These same 10 biomarkers keep showing up everywhere in preventative care, in strength training, in other training programs, in nutrition/diet plans and so on.

Additionally, other important biomarkers I have seen show up in various medical and scientific literature and studies on health, vitality and longevity are:

  1. Stress
  2. Inflammation
  3. Sleep
  4. Body’s pH
  5. Flexibility
  6. Balance
  7. Musculoskeletal alignment
  8. Physical and mental reaction time

So, the way I see it is this: the goal of achieving optimal health and lifespan should focus on developing lifestyle that optimizes these objectively measureable / observable biomarkers.

Any exercise plan, nutrition plan, lifestyle adaptations, and any medical program for achieving optimal vitality and lifespan thus must be measured against these criteria.

What do you think?

Do you know of other biomarkers that we can impact that are important for attaining optimal vitality and lifespan?

Post #6 – How do we lose vitality?

06 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Aging, Uncategorized, Vigor, Vitality

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So, just to be sure, my goal (and hopefully your goal) is to purposely live to 120 (or the maximum possible lifespan) with the highest attainable vitality. To achieve that, I feel, I must understand about anything that might get in the way.

In the posts so far, I have been talking about achieving the lifespan of 120 and thereby about a subject that might have sounded morbid to some of you. That is about death and dying.

Let us change our focus to the second part of the goal: Maintaining Vitality. More specifically understanding the potential hurdles to  maintaining vitality, i.e., answering the question: how do we lose vitality?

A good definition of vitality I have seen is in the Free Dictionary, as “the capacity to live, grow or develop.” A good synonym of vitality for our purpose here is vigor, including physical, mental, intellectual vigor.

You have seen it. A fried or a family member is full of vitality and then you notice that he/she starts “going downhill”. The person used to be out and about all the time, went running, then started merely walking, then walking but not as often, and then stared to just hang around the house, then on the couch more and more and then … – you get the idea. Decline happens, at times very slowly, and other times rather rapidly.

Another scenario could be that someone you know experiences a physical, mental or emotional traumatic experience and then never really recovers from it, with increasing physical pain or mental/emotional aguish rapidly goes downhill.

So, what can cause such a decline?

Well, as I started to compile a list of causes for losing vitality, I noticed that there are three broad categories: 1) acute illness, 2) chronic diseases, and 3) senescence or aging related causes. As you would suspect, there is much overlap between these categories, especially among lists for 2 and 3.

So, a list of acute illnesses may include:

  1. Tuberculosis
  2. Syphilis
  3. Typhoid
  4. Streptococcal
  5. Diphtheria
  6. Whooping Cough
  7. Smallpox
  8. Pneumonia/flu
  9. Depression
  10. Accident or Injury
  11. Heart attack
  12. Stroke
  13. Blood Clot/Thrombosis/Pulmonary Embolism
  14. Rheumatoid Arthritis
  15. Cirrhosis
  16. Kidney failure
  17. Other infectious diseases

A list of chronic diseases may include:

  1. Diabetes
  2. Coronary diseases
  3. Obesity
  4. Cancer
  5. Osteoarthritis
  6. Alzheimer’s diseases
  7. Depression
  8. Kidney diseases
  9. Liver disease
  10. High Blood Pressure

And, finally, the list of aging/senescence causes might include:

  1. Insulin resistance
  2. Hardening of the arteries
  3. Loss of muscle mass
  4. Osteoporosis or Loss of bone mass
  5. Gaining excess fat
  6. Inflammation
  7. Arthritis
  8. Stress
  9. Buildup of toxicity
  10. Loss of flexibility
  11. Loss of balance
  12. Slowing reaction times
  13. Slowing basal metabolic rate (BMR)
  14. Loss of appetite

It is interesting to ponder the implication of the overlaps between the lists.

For example, if you have known someone to have had a heart attack, it was definitely an acute illness event that probably changed their vitality curve and sent that person downhill.

Then again, may be that person was already going downhill since he/she had been losing cardio capacity due to chronic coronary disease.

And, may be the heart attack was in-part the result of hardening of the arteries due to old age.

To achieve longevity and vitality, we must overcome acute illnesses, chronic diseases and also slow the aging /senescence process.

What I am really excited about is first and foremost looking for those lifestyle activities that positively impact items on all three lists at the same time.

And, my search so far, indicates that there are such activities. The most challenging part seems to be picking through the controversies to find the optimal activities.

In any case, I think it will be an exciting journey. I look forward to sharing results of my search in the future posts.

What do you think?

Do you feel there are other hurdles that one must overcome to maintaining optimum vitality?

Post #5 – Why do I want to live to 120?

31 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Aging, Life-Span, Living to 120, Uncategorized

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As I start this conversation of purposely living to 120, I usually get a wide variety of reaction from people. Frankly, the one that took me by surprise the first time I heard, and, to some extent, still does is, “Why would you want to live to 120 even if you could?”

Now, I have to admit, before I started to get into such conversations, I just naively assumed that most people wanted to live as long as possible. After all, just look at the heroic efforts doctors, hospitals and patients put up to extend life just by few years, months and often even days.

When I was discussing this topic with my father-in-law recently, he remarked, “I will be happy to die at 90.” Then he quickly calculated and figured out that that was only 13 years away. So, he immediately added, “Wait a minute. That seems too soon. Scratch that thought. Let us make it 95.”

My mother-in-law on the other hand queried, “I’m wondering if anyone has interviewed those very old people to determine if they would have chosen to live to 120 or more, had there been a choice. Also curious to know why you would make that choice [of living to 120], since the possibility of your peers and loved ones not being with you seems to be very real. Or do you anticipate the “community” being a replacement for others?”

According to a detailed survey Pew Research Center conducted last year, comments of my in-laws are well represented in the mainstream of views across the US. As the following figures show, only 38% of people in the US would want to live to 120 and most Americans expect to live to between 85 to 90 years.

Figure 5-1

Figure 5-2

Only about 4% feel that ideal lifespan is between 100 and 120 and another 4% think it is over 120.

Figure 5-3

A majority of people think that living to 120 will be a bad thing for society.

Figure 5-4

A surprising result survey researchers noted is that most of these measures are fairly constant across various religions, gender, education or political party affiliations in America.

In my conversations, I have found that three reasons come up most often when people mull over if they personally want to live to 120:

  1. What would be the condition of their personal health? Will it be joyful living or a painful living?
  2. Will they have financial means to sustain themselves? Being broke is not much fun.
  3. Will their peers and loved ones be around? If not, will it be worth living?

As for myself personally, I feel that there are two major objectives of life: Growth and Contribution.

Thus my rationale for wanting to live to 120 is to simply maximize the time I have available to grow and contribute. Additionally, purposely living to 120, learning some things along the way, sharing with others as I learn, seem to fit in with my personal growth and contribution model of life.

In this sort of context, I see the three common objections cited above, as challenges to overcome as I pursue the goal of purposely living to 120. Moreover, not only I want to live to 120, but I wish to do it healthfully, purposefully and joyfully.

Looking at it another way, I feel, if it is okay to expect to get to 90 healthfully, purposefully and joyfully, why not to 120?

And, of course, as my mother-in-laws suspected, a key purpose for me to write this blog and engage in conversations with family, friends, loved ones is to motivate them and along the way find others who would want to share this journey together.

How do you feel about living to 120?

What do you think it would take to live to 120 healthfully, purposefully, and joyfully?

Please leave comments to this post. I and others following this blog would love to hear your perspective!