Stuart Cracraft became a father four years ago at age forty five and as the moderator of the Resveratrol Users Group, he takes it with the hope it will buy him a few more precious years with his young daughters. He is concerned that as he ages, his mind and body will have a difficult challenge to keep pace with his children.
He also recently watched as his mother passed away after fighting an illness for eight tough years. Cracraft, who works as an IT employee would love nothing more than to spare his two kids that same burden with him, as he went through with his mother.
He took action and changed his dietary plan, cutting back on sugar and loading up on egg proteins and fish. He began drinking tea and consuming fish oil supplements along with multivitamins. Not exactly a freakish change to his routine, but he remained open minded about further change.
He spent three years studying a compound that is located in red wine called resveratrol, which has proven to extend the life of animals and decrease their risk of disease. He started taking fifty mgs. per day. He is excited by the research stating it is the most powerful of all antioxidants together and having all of that in a single pill is too great to pass up on.
These days the search for a fountain of youth continues as never before. Normally skeptical, well educated individuals are joining the rank and file in the search for youth. Scientists who are trained professionally to be dubious in their search for concrete evidence are joining the bandwagon. Many experts argue that it is a fools run without any convincing evidence about any specific therapeutic treatment.
Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, has been an advocate for life extension for a number of years now and has written about it in his books. The co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel, not long ago donated $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation, A research organization devoted to longevity founded by renowned gerontologist and life extension advocate, Aubrey de Grey. De Grey will tell anyone who will listen that we can live up to one thousand years old.
Another devoted resveratrol enthusiast and a computer programmer who wished to stay anonymous has taken his anti aging routine to the next level and begun caloric restriction. This is yet one more far-reaching technique to extend one’s life that worked in monkeys but has no conclusive data for human trials. By all accounts, it is also very hard on the body from an appearance perspective.
He states that engineers understand that when someone understands a system, they also have the power to change the system. He goes on to say that, a real engineer will refuse to accept bugs in any programming code, his tools, and his operating system or within his own body.
Resveratrol has shown to safeguard animals from numerous diseases like heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s, and jarred the public’s mind last year when several high profile studies displayed evidence that mice receiving the substance survived for a longer period than mice that were not receiving it. That said the science community is not at all convinced it will have the same effect on humans.
Cracraft believes he does not have the time to wait for conclusive verification. He thinks it will add perhaps another thirty percent to his life expectancy so by delaying things for another ten years means he has wasted three. In the end, Cracraft says he could get another ten years if he is lucky.
Another IT worker in Switzerland, who at thirty two years old is even more excited by the prospects. He says that if resveratrol can add a few more years to his life span, he may be around to enjoy some new scientific breakthroughs in life extension, perhaps allowing him to live to two hundred years old.
As a computer geek, he believes technology is the answer for everything! That according to a cellular biologist and longevity investigator from the University of Texas. He says people who do the research think of mice as tiny little furry humans with long tails, obviously they are not so there are no firm ideas about what will happen.
Scientific study on resveratrol’s effect on humans is just now commencing. Researchers caution that individuals consuming the substance are literally running uncontrolled experiments on their body’s – these could cause people to get sick or at the least, with no positive outcome.
History is full of these kinds of risky ventures into unproven clinical treatments that have causes unexpected issues. The Fen-phen and ephedra gambits are typical instances of compounds used by folks who thought they may be effective and so were administered by physicians no less, before they were properly vetted by clinical trials. The science is made public, proper studies are not conducted and in the end, problems are encountered by humans as the lab rodents.
Fen-phen showed much promise as a diet supplement until research showed it might induce deadly heart ailments and hypertension. Ephedra was a promising stimulant, that is until unexpected fatalities and strokes began to occur resulting in a panicked public and FDA ban. Human Growth hormones when utilized in off labeling treatments, has been associated with diabetes and nerve pain.
As one of numerous highly educated resveratrol users, Cracraft follows the news and various trials, sends question to scientists doing research and contributes to forms and message boards to understand as much as possible from other users. His fifty mg dosage was decided on by charts used by scientists and extrapolated animal doses to human stats and has eventual plans to increase the dosage up to four hundred milligrams.
Since there were no obvious adverse reactions in the lab mice, the resveratrol advocates believe it to be a safe elixir. They also like the fact that the author of the mouse studies David Sinclair, is also ingesting the product as well. Sinclair has also started the company named Sirtris Pharmaceuticals built around his findings. He has made a point of recommending against anyone ingesting resveratrol before comprehensive clinical testing has been concluded.
People taking resveratrol believe the risk they are taking is reasonable.
The thought process is that for someone like the thirty two year old devotee, true technologies to extend life may take another thirty years or more and anyone wishing to take advantage of these needs to be in reasonable health. He will be in his early sixties by then and needs to do whatever he can now to ensure his health will be as good as possible by then.
The same importance placed on longevity is the quality of that life in a person’s latter years. Cracraft has a best friend who also uses resveratrol religiously with the same idea of sparing his family his eventual suffering. He is fifty years of age and a professor at UofC, Irvine, and he adds fifty mgs. of resveratrol each day to a precise diet and regular physical training regimen. When taking higher doses he finds he bruises more easily, though he plans to carry on, not wanting to miss any benefits that could be achieved while he waited for the trials to conclude.
He watches his parents suffering and declining from diabetes, they are overweight, and their quality of life is drastically reduced. It is difficult to witness and they are only twenty one years older than he is! This motivates him to take action.
However, according to the experts, though these users may have righteous objectives, being ahead of the curve is not the point. The science is the key factor and it is far too soon to utilize the interventions – and not even that is accurate. They are not even classified as interventions at the present time. This is all just initial data with no thorough confirmation and this is worrisome to many in the scientific community.
Anti Aging, Anti Aging Supplements, Anti Aging Theories, Longevity
Sat, Jan 23, 2010
Anti Aging, Anti Aging Supplements, Anti Aging Theories, Longevity