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:: Longevity ::

by Dr. Randy W. Martin, OMD, PhD, LAc Doctor of Oriental Medicine

As many as eighty percent of Americans over the age of sixty are suffering from at least one age-related disease, such as cancer, heart disease, arthritis and Alzheimer's disease. It's a fact that as we grow older, and our cellular energy levels decline, our body's ability to repair and regenerate tissue drops dramatically. But correcting our nutritional deficiencies and nurturing our metabolic resources will offset this aging process and can dramatically help to prevent the numerous degenerative diseases that often plague older folks. Essentially, if we know what to do, we can "prevent" ourselves from growing older.

The difficulty arises, however, in deciding exactly who to believe and which nutritional supplements you need to take to meet your personal goals and your specific health needs. There are many soothsayers who make all kinds of claims about being able to extend life and add bundles of energy. But who do you really believe and how do you decide for yourself?

As a Doctor of Oriental Medicine with over sixteen years experience in the health field, what I'm always recommending to my patients and what I do myself, before taking a lot of supplements, is to get tested. The reason I emphasize the need for testing is that if your body doesn't really need something, then it's unwise to take it. Taking a supplement your body doesn't need will further imbalance your system, throwing your body and metabolism off even more, rather than strengthening it.

Although the particular supplement you are taking may feel good in the short run, it may actually be wearing your system down in the long run. Some supplements, such as Blue Green Algae or Ginseng can give you immediate energy, but could be depleting your kidneys and adrenals, much as caffeine does. It's a misnomer to believe that just because a supplement is natural, that it's healthy and a positive addition to your diet!

There a few different types of tests which can accurately determine your health and nutritional status. These tests will also be able to tell you which supplements your body needs in the long run to achieve your personal longevity goals. The types of tests which are the most accurate and commonly used for these diagnostic purposes are the following: hair, stool, and blood. And I'll discuss each one in depth in just a moment.

First, it's very important to understand that in Western medicine, longevity is generally thought to be primarily of function of a healthy immune system, although other factors are also definitely involved, including the cardiovascular, immunologic and digestive systems. So with some of the leading causes of death in the US. being cancer and stroke, it's vital to address immunity and cardiovascular health in any personal longevity program.

To the list of prerequisites for long life and good health, Chinese medical theory also stresses the need to counter weakness in the gastrointestinal system. This is due to the obvious, but often ignored fact, that we need to be efficiently assimilating and digesting the foods we eat and the supplements we take in order to maintain and improve our overall health and to give us a longer life. Chinese medicine believes that digestion is the major cornerstone to good health and increased longevity.

And now for the tests: The hair analysis test has for a long time been the standard measurement used to determine our exposure to any heavy metals. Heavy metals may cause subtle and not so subtle symptoms of poisoning on many levels, from migraine headaches, attention deficit disorder and poor concentration to auto-immune diseases like lupus, Hashimoto's disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

The newer, more sophisticated hair analysis tests can also "red flag" and highlight for us problems like malabsorption, allergies, cardiac risk, stress, hypothyroidism, depression, or in children, a predisposition to violent behavior. When speaking of longevity, we're in the realm of preventive medicine. And whenever dealing in preventive medicine, the sooner we begin to eat the right diet and take the right supplements, the better for us. So it's great to have young children and teenagers tested to determine where their physiology may be "off", or where their weaknesses are, at the earliest age possible.

The next test you may want to consider taking is the stool test. The stool test will reveal four very important factors which affect longevity: Colon health and colon cancer risk, candida and other yeast's, parasite infestations and digestive health. It's important when you take the stool test that you do the stool "purge" test and not the ordinary stool sample. The "purge" test evaluates contents from the entire colon, and not just the last few inches.

Colon health is often ignored as a factor in longevity, but it is a reflection of digestion and assimilation. And remember what I said above, that according to Chinese medical theory, if your digestion is working well, you already have the first pre-requisite to longevity under your belt. If you have a large build-up of yeast, parasites, various types of worms, or a lack of beneficial bacteria in your colon, you will not be able to assimilate your food or nutritional supplements. Common symptoms of this may include gum problems, acne and other chronic skin problems, frequent gas or bloating, chronic and/or alternating diarrhea or constipation, intense stomach cramping or stabbing pains in the stomach.

But it's the blood test which is one of the most effective methods of quantifying nutritional deficiencies in your body. The most common indicators and risk factors found by the blood test are the following: dehydration, insufficient electrolytes, various types of cancer, cardiovascular health, kidney health, liver health and digestive and assimilation problems. Modern blood tests and computer analysis will be able to tell you all this and more. If you have low energy, this can often be quickly explained by a simple blood test.

Now let's discuss some specific health recommendations for longevity and building a greater sense of well-being and energy. I want to emphasize that when you "latch onto" the correct diet and regimen for your particular body type, you can and will age more slowly, your energy will increase, you will gradually feel much younger and you will look younger too. This is not a hype. It is something I have seen in myself and my patients over many years.

The first factor to consider is surprisingly never simply which supplements to take. The right supplements should only follow after two other important aspects: Life style and diet. Eliminating stress from your life is by far the number one, most important factor in longevity. More and more scientific studies are confirming the stress factor in many of the common degenerative diseases in our society today. Other stress factors to meditate on are getting enough sleep and rest and reflecting on your coping mechanisms for dealing with relationship stress, work-related stress and environmental pollution and it's resulting stresses.

And a "new" stress factor that has only more recently been identified and acknowledged by health scientists is how we react to and cope with the increasing amount of information overload in our life. Without an effective external and internal "management" strategy for assimilating, "collating", and processing the massive amount of information that comes our way on a moment by moment basis, we will be at a higher risk of succumbing to a stress-related illness.

Once we have confronted head-on and dealt with the realities of the stress in our life by creating a realistic management strategy, it's time to confront what we put in our bodies, and the intimate relationship we have with the food we eat. Food and sex are definitely the most intimate relationships we have. Both affect us in our gut and can affect our energy and energetic system more than other factors in our life. Based on the latest scientific research, most nutritionists today are advising one of two diets: The modified Zone diet and the Blood type diet. There are some differences between the two, but both tend to be higher protein then most "health-conscious" people have been eating in the past and both take into consideration our metabolic and body-type differences.

The main thing to remember is that it's very important for you to eat right for your particular metabolic or blood type, and that you don't eat the way another person has told you to eat. What's right for one person may not be right for you. Soy products may be a great source of protein and work well for one person. But a raw foods diet may work well for another and a high animal protein diet for another. You need to incorporate a scientific attitude when it comes to food and really learn to step back, read a few books and do some objective research to determine which "type" you are, and which foods provide you with the longest, most sustained energy resources.

Another factor to consider, and one I'm finding in many of my patients, is that as we experience the relative "quickening" of time, and the energy around us is apparently becoming more and more dense, many people need more protein and electrolytes in their diets then they did five, ten or fifteen years ago in order to remain grounded. One longevity study I read, which compared the various factors among people who lived the longest, found that one common factor was in the composition of their water. Their water contained very high levels of electrolytes!

Many of us take calcium and magnesium supplements, but if you check your blood chemistry through blood tests, you are likely to find that you are not assimilating the supplements. Furthermore, many of us are even low on sodium, so when we drink our eight to ten glasses of water a day, we are not re-hydrating our cells, but just urinating the fluid right out. We need enough sodium, potassium, chloride, etc., in our body in order to catalyze all the other chemical reactions which create healthy-looking skin, good brain function and high energy. Now we're ready to discuss the specific supplements you might want to try if your goal is to look younger, live longer, live healthier and with more mental clarity and energy. Some of these will be common ones which you have already heard of or tried and others may be more esoteric and lessor known.

The most common supplement, which has been a best seller in Europe for years but only recently has become popularized here in the States is Ginko Biloba, a species of tree that thrived 65 million years ago and continues to thrive today. It's used worldwide to treat conditions associated with aging, and is sometimes referred to as a "living fossil". The tree can live for more than 1,000 years, a feat attributable to its resistance to disease, fires and other environmental hazards. It was, in fact, the only tree to survive the atomic blast in Hiroshima. The Chinese also used ginkgo seeds to treat venereal disease, asthma, and impaired hearing.

The most common things Ginko can be used for today are longevity, hearing, memory, Alzheimer's, circulatory problems like cold hands and feet and sexual potency.

While we're on the subject of circulation and memory, let's discuss a few other supplements for enhancing memory. Pregnenalone is possibly the most potent intelligence enhancing agent ever researched. Pregnenalone is a hormone precursor that the body normally manufactures using cholesterol as its primary raw material. In the body, it's converted into a multitude of other hormones including DHEA, estrogen, testosterone and progesterone. But pregnenalone levels generally decline with age, and some scientists are experimenting with replacement of pregnenalone to youthful levels as an important step in dealing with symptoms of aging.

Other supplements to include in your mental fitness program include the amino acids L-phenylalanine, L-tyrosine and L-glutamine. Phenylalanine is a precursor to the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, tyrosine increases serotonin and glutamine helps with blood sugar.

More nuts and bolts: Be sure to always take pyridoxal 5 phosphate (a form of vitamin B6) when taking amino acids, since your body needs it to assimilate and process the amino acids. In addition to vitamin B6, vitamin C, folic acid and copper are needed to convert phenylalanine into noradrenaline and dopamine. Your body ordinarily makes these brain chemicals all day long, but after a good night's sleep they are at a high, which is why sleep is so important.

Phosphatidylserine and physphatidylcholine are two other important nutrients which have been shown to help with memory and brain power. Another good one is Acetyl L-Carnitine, which will improve communication between the hemisphere of the brain, improve memory, relieve fatigue, enhance energy metabolism, improve eye-hand coordination, enhance mood and increase immune function. These, as well as the amino acids discussed above, always need to be taken on an empty stomach. This is because the proteins in the food you eat will interfere with and lesson the over-all action and effectiveness of these supplements.

Now, for the heart: I recommend taking Co-enzyme Q10 to help improve energy production on the cellular level, enhance heart muscle function, lower cholesterol, and restore immune functions. Folic acid and L-carnitine have also been shown to protect the heart from disease. Any program for cardiovascular health needs to also include natural stable fish oil in the diet. Marine fish oil supplementation has been shown to protect against many cardiovascular and inflammatory disorders (including arthritis and migraines) and to lower risk factors associated with these diseases.

In particular, fish oils have been shown to significantly improve and normalize parameters associated with HDL's (the good cholesterol) and LDL's (the bad cholesterol), total cholesterol and homocysteine. There is a lot of very recent research which shows that homocysteine levels in the blood have a lot to do with cardiovascular risk. Fish oils are beneficial because they are a plentiful source of omega-3 fatty acids which have been shown to lower homocysteine levels and raise the good HDL's. So they can help to prevent heart attack, atherosclerosis, hypertension and arrhythmia's.

For the heart, I generally recommend my patients also take one of the many Chinese herbal formulas containing an herb called Salvia. This herb has been shown to match and in some studies even out perform the effectiveness of some of the common heart and cholesterol lowering pharmaceutical medications. Salvia works by dilating the vessels and increasing cardiac output. And also always remember that Vitamin E is a natural blood thinner and also increases the oxygen flow to the heart muscle.

Speaking of Vitamin E, it's generally recognized that E, along with the other anti-oxidants are the foundation of any longevity program due to the wide array of functions they stimulate and support. Antioxidants are the major protectors against disease and premature aging. We've all seen butter or oil become rancid when left out, or metal become rusty from exposure to oxygen. In the body, these same oxidative reactions can also take place, deep down at the cellular level, and if these reactions overwhelm your body's natural ability to control or "quench" them, your risk of illness is accelerated.

To assure you are getting everything you need, it's a good idea to take a multiple anti-oxidant formula. Make certain it has all the basics in it. They should include the following: Beta carotene, vitamin C (buffered or ester C), vitamin B1, B2, B3, vitamin E (in a non-oil, water soluable form), folic acid, zinc and selenium.

Additional antioxidants, which are sometimes more expensive, but have been shown to help with immunity and protect from a broad range of aging diseases, include the following: grape seed pycnogenols, Boswellia, (an ancient Ayurvedic herb,) Bilberry extract, (a medicinal herb used for centuries in the West,) Co-enzyme Q-10, garlic, NADH, t(he first nutritional supplement tested by the FDA,) and reduced Glutathione. Reduced Glutathione is one of the "newer" anti-oxidant discoveries which have now been shown to "spare" or "recycle" your other antioxidants, so that you are actually getting maximum benefit, or recycling from whichever other antioxidants you're be taking.

Although the antioxidants are your easiest and best protection against any and all immune problems, you may also want to consider other specific supplements which strengthen the thymus gland. It's a well accepted fact that the thymus gland function declines with age, and in many individuals, is barely functioning by age forty. The thymus gland is the primary gland in the body which controls T-cell production. And our T-cells are our bodies protection, and first line of defense, from disease.

There are many different types of T-cells, including T-4 helper white blood cells and T-8 killer, or lymphocyte, white blood cells. Cancer, AIDS, colds, flu, herpes and every other type of virus', are only able to get a foot-hold in the body because these T-cells, which are our first line of defense, are not responding strongly enough or not "programmed properly. Products which help directly with T-cell production include herbs such as astragalus and echinacea and glandular supplements made from the thymus gland.

Of the many different types of ginseng, Siberian Ginseng is known to stimulate mental clarity and give physical energy while not depleting the body. Siberian ginseng is generally the only one I recommend for women, since the other types may be too yang in nature. Korean ginseng and American ginseng are also used for energy and vitality, and it's important that these only be used for a quick "pick-me-up" or to recover from an acute illness, and not used on a regular basis.

The Chinese have a long tradition of preserving youth and have a host of herbal formulas with a proven track record of mitigating the aging process. But these Chinese herbal formulas need to be selected based on the individual weakness a person has. Some examples are the following:

*Dynamic Warrior is used to tonify Kidney Yang and build Jing (essence) *Women's Precious is used to nourish and tonify Liver and Heart blood and support the Spleen Rehmannia 6 is used to tonify Kidney Yin and protect from sexual weakness and poor eyesight and to nourish the tendons and ligaments *Central Chi Pills are used to tonify and help digestion and Spleen chi *Shou Wu is used as a general tonic against aging.

Generally, each Chinese herbal company has it's own specific line of formula's to combat the aging process. But each needs to be prescribed based on your own individual constitution. If you take a formula that is not indicated for your particular weakness, you may cause an imbalance in your meridians and organs. I consider the well-selected Chinese formula to be an essential part in any anti-aging strategy.

Finally, you may also want to consider consulting a classical homeopath. In conjunction with the right diet and supplements, a well-selected constitutional homeopathic remedy will work on a cellular level to strengthen all your body's physical and mental functions.

Here are three very important general guidelines you need to always remember when taking any and all supplements: Begin by taking the smallest potency you can find. You can even cut a tablet in half or take only a few drops, if it's in a liquid form. Reactions are always possible, as are allergies to substances, so you should always begin with the smallest amount possible and slowly work your way up.

Second, never take any supplement, whether it be an herb, vitamin or mineral, on an on-going basis. In my medical practice, I generally tell my patients never to take anything more than three months. This is because of a little-known law, or rule, of natural healing: Any substance you take can, and will eventually, cause a "proving" in your system. A proving is when your body becomes saturated, either energetically or physiologically, with the substance. When this happens, the substance itself will begin to create in you, the exact symptoms you were taking it to eradicate!

For example, if Ginko was initially raising your libido and you were to continue taking it, eventually it will decrease your libido. To prevent this, rotate your supplements, so that you are not "addicted to" any one single product. In the case of vitamins and minerals, always rotate the product by changing the company or the chemical composition of the product. For example, don't always take colloidal Calcium, or Blue Green algae, but change to something else which has the same benefits, but acts in a slightly different way.

Lastly, please remember that none of the advice in this or any article should be taken as gospel. Everyone writes from his or her own point of view and experience. You should always check with your own health practitioner or doctor before embarking on a new program or supplement. And never discontinue any prescription medication or combine a prescription medication with a natural supplement without sitting down and discussing it with your doctor.

Over the past year, I have recently been invited to lecture on vitamins, herbs and homeopathy to various groups of medical doctor. This says to me that there is finally an increased openness and acceptance, even from traditional medical doctors, about integrating different health care approaches.

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