Your Choice: Treat Aging or Treat Disease

It is unlikely that physicians are going to adopt what has just been described in the journal of Rejuvenation Research. The reason is that physicians are mired in the treatment age-related disease as it occurs, and the habit of affixing a billing code number to an insurance claim to receive reimburse for treatment rendered, rather than intervention at the molecular level to slow the aging process itself. The latter would prevent age-related disease from ever occurring, but there is no diagnosis of premature aging and no insurance billing code number for ageing prevention either. Dr. Vadim Fraifeld of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, says a paradigm shift that only recently became imaginable would be to treat aging rather than the outcome of aging, which is disease. [Rejuvenation Research 8: 207-10, 2006] Dr. Fraifeld says aging and age-related disease are indistinguishable from each other.

By focusing on slowing the aging process instead of treating each disease, a more proactive rather than defensive strategy towards health and longevity could be achieved. Dr. Fraifeld suggests this can be accomplished through epigenetics, the manipulation (switching) of existing genes to reverse inherited changes in gene function (aging) rather than alteration of the sequence of DNA or insertion of new genes. This is called epigenetic control. After physical development of the human body, which requires expression (activation) of many genes for the purpose of childhood growth, the post-developmental era of life could involve efforts to silence (inactivate) genes used for growth which in later life may facilitate the development of tumors, viruses, bacteria, etc.

While there are ~30,000 human genes, a very short list of just two gene-controlled mechanisms, DNA methylation and histone deacetylation, are responsible for gene silencing and lifespan extension. This is remarkable if humans could find out how to manipulate just these two epigenetic mechanisms. It appears this can be accomplished by consumption of just two dietary supplements. The following explanation gets a bit technical. Methylation of DNA (the donation of a methyl group) is a major biological controller of gene silencing. Folic acid, a B vitamin that inhibits the formation of an undesirable blood protein called homocysteine, facilitates methylation and therefore gene silencing. Histone deacetylation is where an enzyme (histone deacetylase) is inhibited so that bands of DNA remain tightly wrapped around histones, thus preventing the reading of DNA instructions. When DNA is coiled tightly around histones, genes are silenced.

A very low calorie diet, or the red wine molecule resveratrol, inhibit histone deacetylase so that genes remain silenced. Of particular interest is the fact that resveratrol also suppresses homocysteine accumulation, mimicking what folic acid accomplishes as well. [Clinical Chemistry Laboratory Medicine 43:1084-8, 2005] This is another likely reason why resveratrol continues to exhibit unusual anti-aging properties. The challenge here is to get the public to depart from its over-reliance upon doctoring and begin to self prescribe their own brand of anti-aging medicine. Not only are doctors brain washed into prescribing a pill for every disease, but so are patients. Will they ever break the habit? How does humanity get started on such a program? Restriction of calories, even for a short period of time (short duration fasting) activates the Sirtuin 1 DNA repair gene.

Resveratrol and folic acid supplements would be the self-prescribed youth medicines of longevity seekers. Only a few people are likely to catch on to this remarkable possibility. So far, folic acid and red wine resveratrol pills have not become as much of a sensation as the current faddish enthusiasm for human growth hormone, Goji berries and noni juice, which appear to be distractions to the pursuit of health and longevity. When it comes to aging, the best defense is a good offense. Copyright 2006 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.