MCVitamins News
Your Nutritional Education Site
1) Natural Anti-Oxidants Decline in Aging Body: Cell’s Defense Reserves Shrink With Age
2) Use this when you Fly to Protect Yourself from Radiation Damage
3) A Practical Guide to Avoiding
Drug-Induced Nutrient Depletion
4) Withdrawal from psychotropic drugs (including Cymbalta)
5) Taking Cymbalta for Neuropathy?
Follow us on Twitter 
Natural Anti-Oxidants Decline in Aging Body: Cell’s Defense Reserves Shrink With Age
When the body fights oxidative damage, it calls up a reservist enzyme that protects cells – but only if those cells are relatively young, a study has found. Biologists at USC discovered major declines in the availability of an enzyme, known as the Lon protease, as human cells grow older.
The finding may help explain why humans lose energy with age and could point medicine toward new diets or pharmaceuticals to slow the aging process.
The researchers showed that when oxidative agents attack the power centers of young cells, the cells respond by calling up reinforcements of the enzyme, which breaks up and removes damaged proteins.
As the cells age, they lose the ability to mobilize large numbers of Lon, the researchers reported in The Journals of Gerontology.
Senior author Kelvin J. A. Davies, a professor at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, used a war analogy to explain that no "standing army" of Lon protease can endure an attack by invading oxidants without calling up reserves. "Once the war has started, what's your capacity to keep producing … to protect your vital resources and keep the fight going?" he asked.
Since aging is the longest war, the USC study suggests a more important role for the reservist enzyme than previously known.
Lon protects the mitochondria – tiny organisms in the cell that convert oxygen into energy. The conversion is never perfect: Some oxygen leaks and combines with other elements to create damaging oxidants.
Oxidation is the process behind rust and food spoilage. In the body, oxidation can damage or destroy almost any tissue. Lon removes oxidized proteins from the mitochondria and also plays a vital role in helping to make new mitochondria.
"We know that mitochondrial function declines with age, which is a major limitation to cells. One of the components of that decline is the loss of Lon. The ability of Lon to be induced by [oxidative] stress is a very important component of overall stress resistance," Davies said.
Davies and his team worked with a line of human lung cells. They exposed the cells to hydrogen peroxide, a powerful oxidant that is a byproduct of energy production and that also can result from metabolism of some drugs, toxins, pesticides and herbicides.
To fight the oxidant, young cells doubled the size of their Lon army within five hours and maintained it for a day. In some experiments, young cells increased their Lon army as much as seven-fold.
Middle-aged cells took a full day to double their Lon army, during which time the cells were exposed to harmful levels of oxidized proteins.
Older cells started with a standing Lon army only half as large and showed no statistically significant increase in Lon levels over 24 hours.
The Davies group, which discovered Lon in 2002, previously had shown that Lon's standing army gets smaller with age and that the anti-oxidant power of Lon depends more on its reserves than on enzymes present when stress first hits the body.
The latest study completes the picture of Lon's sluggish response as senescent cells – a technical term for cells that mimic several key features of the aging process – try to cope with stress. "In the senescent cells, the Lon levels are drastically low to begin with, and they don't increase" in response to stress, Davies said.
Scientists have known for decades that mitochondria become less efficient with age, contributing to the body's loss of energy. "It may well be that our ability to induce Lon synthesis and our loss of adaptability to stress may be an even more significant factor in the aging process," Davies said.
Davies and others are investigating potential treatments to boost the function of Lon. Costly enzyme supplements are useless, Davies noted, since the digestive system breaks down the enzyme to amino acids before it can reach its target.
"It's a lot cheaper to buy a piece of meat and get the same amino acids," he said.
Source: The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.
Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information:
http://www.orthomolecular.org
1. Download any Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers from 1983-2009 free of charge at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/NPDSPoisonData/NPDSAnnualReports.aspxThe "Vitamin" category is usually near the very end of the report.
2. Most recent year: Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2009 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers' National Poison Data System (NPDS): 27th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology (2010). 48, 979-1178. The full text article is available for free download at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2009%20AR.pdf
The vitamin data mentioned above will be found in Table 22B.
I Use This When I Fly To Protect Myself From Radiation Damage by Dr. Mercola
For the complete story go to Protect from Radiation Damage
A Practical Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Nutrient Depletion
We want to repeat this article as it is important to those who have to take medications. You can read the article Nutrient Depletion
Trouble getting off of psychotropic drugs?
Having dealt with many people on this subject and knowing that trying to get off these drugs can be as mild as a few aches and a headache to all sorts of horrific side effects that put the person right back on the drug, we thought we'd refer you to a site with a program to help.
Their site says
"Since 1999, the most widely used outpatient drug withdrawal program in the world. We are a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. Over 40,000 people have used this program to become drug free.
Many of you may have tried in the past to come off of psychotropic medications only to find it too overwhelming to cope with the anxiety, insomnia, fatigue, brain zaps, headaches or flu like symptoms. These side effects from withdrawing off of medications can be truly debilitating.
Many of you may be on a medication and simply don’t like the weight gain or the way it makes you feel. You may have anxiety and insomnia even though you are taking an anti-anxiety or sleep medication.
It is possible to take control and get your life back. Thousands of individuals have done just that by following the step by step guide laid out in The Road Back Program. We are the #1 out-patient withdrawal program in the world."
Read about The
Road Back
Taking Cymbalta for Neuropathy?
The drug Cymbalta is manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Here is what author and investigative writer Martha Rosenberg found out about this drug:
"The first antidepressant to be introduced since FDA investigations into suicide/antidepressant links, Cymbalta itself was marred with suicides before it was approved. Five (deaths) occurred during Cymbalta clinical trials.
"Including previously healthy volunteer, Traci Johnson who hung herself in Lilly's Indiana University Medical School lab in 2004."
"Last May, the FDA ordered Lilly to add a black box to Cymbalta warning about suicides and antidepressants in young adults."
Here is a quote from Lilly's Cymbalta web site:
"Patients on antidepressants and their families or caregivers should watch for worsening depression symptoms, unusual changes in behavior, thoughts of suicide, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, restlessness, or extreme hyperactivity. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have thoughts of suicide or if any of these symptoms are severe or occur suddenly. Be especially observant within the first few months of antidepressant treatment or whenever there is a change in dose."
And here is a quote from the FDA's web site and what it has to say about Cymbalta:
"Suicidal thoughts or actions: Persons
taking Cymbalta may be more likely to think about killing
themselves or actually try to do so, especially when Cymbalta
is first started or the dose is changed. People close to
persons taking Cymbalta can help by paying attention to
changes in user's moods or actions. Contact your
healthcare professional right away if someone using Cymbalta
talks about or shows signs of killing him or herself. If
you are taking Cymbalta yourself and you start thinking about
killing yourself, tell your healthcare professional about this
side effect right away."
The investigative writer then went on to state:
"And in October Lilly was told [by the FDA] to "immediately cease" its Cymbalta campaign for diabetic nerve pain --an approved use-- which promises "significantly less pain interference with overall functioning." In a letter, the FDA says the claim "has not been demonstrated by substantial evidence or ... clinical experience" nor do the Cymbalta marketing pieces give precautions about liver toxicity or reveal risks for patients with certain conditions."
Martha Rosenberg is an author and investigative writer that has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Arizona Republic, New Orleans Times-Picayune and other newspapers.
(If you know of friends or relatives taking Cymbalta, feel free to forward this article to them. You just might save a life!)
There is a natural and safe way to address and help reverse neuropathy. Go to Neuropathy and find out how.\
To Your Health,
MCVitamins
www.mcvitamins.com