Slam The Brakes On Aging

Dr. Frank Shallenberger’s

Vol. 7, No. 3

March 2008

Slam the Brakes on Aging Imagine if the scientists of the future were to discover a medical breakthrough that could actually reverse the aging process. Imagine if that breakthrough could reduce your biological age by as much as 10 or 20 years. Imagine if it could give you greater energy, increased libido, and more strength and stamina. Imagine if it could improve your brain function, lower your body fat, and improve your mood and sleep. And imagine if it could protect you

In this Issue Q

Avoiding breast cancer might be a lot easier than you thought .... p. 4

Q

Three reasons you don’t get enough of this vitamin .............. p. 7

Q

Diagnosed with hepatitis C? Here’s what you have to do now ........................................ p. 8

Coming Next Month • Now that you know how to evaluate

your energy levels, what does it take to improve it? I'll show you easy steps you can do at home.

•

Folic acid deficiency can cause everything from gingivitis to cancer. This surprise cause is easy to avoid, but most people don’t.

against degenerative diseases like arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis. Well, imagine no more. Such a breakthrough already exists. And I’ve used it with great success on hundreds of my patients. Sound hard to believe? Then let me tell you about one of those patients. That patient is … me!

Meet Patient Frank S. If you were to look at the picture on my driver’s license, you’d see a 60-ish face looking back at you. And if you were to look at the date of birth on that same driver’s license, you’d see that I was born 61 years ago. But what if you were to look at my medical chart instead? Well, in that case, you wouldn’t know I was 61. In fact, you’d probably think I was 20 years younger. That’s not a boast or an exaggeration. Here are some of the numbers you’d find on my chart: « My blood pressure is 110/60 « My resting heart rate is 57 « My fasting blood sugar is 85 « My fasting insulin is under 5 « My HDL cholesterol is 63 « My LDL cholesterol is 103 « My triglycerides are 78 « My body fat is 12% « My functional strength is 98%, which

Is it due to a strenuous exercise regimen? Nope. During the week, I do just a half hour of exercise per day. And it’s moderate exercise.

is only 2% less than the average 40 year old. « My energy production efficiency, the single most important measurement of aging there is, is 133%. That’s 33% better than the average 44 year old!

Is it because I take fistfuls of supplements at every meal? Again, the answer is no. I take three different supplements a day and that’s it.

« My lung capacity is 106%, which is 6% higher than the average 40 year old.

Maybe it’s because I’ve had healthy habits my entire life? No again. As a young adult, I smoked, drank, and popped prescription drugs like they were candy.

« My cardiac capacity is 135%, which is 35% higher than the average 40 year old. « My equilibrium (sense of balance) tests out like that of someone much younger. But more important than my “numbers” is what those numbers enable me to do. At an age when many are slowing down, I’m busier than ever. I put in a full 8-hour day seeing patients at the clinic. And in my spare time I do research, write books and articles, do radio interviews, and teach training seminars for doctors. Plus … I have no trouble skiing down difficult slopes in the Sierra mountains… balancing on the top of a mast on my sailboat … keeping up with the 30-year-olds in my bicycle club … or making the 215-mile drive to San Francisco to visit my granddaughter. In short, I do pretty much whatever I want, without limiting myself. Is this health and youthfulness due to my “good genes?” Hardly. My family history includes diabetes, heart disease, senility, and neurological disorders.

Real Cures (ISSN 1062-4163) is published monthly by Soundview Publishing, LLC. Publisher: Wallis W. Wood; Editor: Frank Shallenberger, MD. Subscriptions $49 per year; foreign addresses add $13 U.S. per year. Send new subscriptions or changes of address to our Business Office: P.O. Box 467939, Atlanta, GA 31146-7939, 800-728-2288 or 770-399-5617. Real Cures is a newsletter containing general comments on health, nutrition, and medicine. Readers are advised to consult with their own physician before implementing any health idea they read about, whether here or in any other publication. Copyright © 2008 by Soundview Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of this newsletter or its contents by xerography, facsimile, or any other means is illegal.

In fact, I spent a lot of times in my 30s feeling just plain lousy. But then I discovered an anti-aging secret so powerful that it revolutionized my health and the health of my patients.

And Today, I’m Going to Share That Secret With You… If you watch professional sports, you know that most athletes peak sometime in their early 30s. The really good ones can stay at the top of their game until they turn 40. But most have already started to lose a step or two (or more) well before then. That’s because we all peak physically some time in our 30s. After that, we begin to go downhill. We age. We notice aches and pains more often. Our muscles tighten up and our limbs, especially our legs, stiffen. And we just can’t move like we used to. Of course, if you’re not a professional athlete, you may not notice the difference for a while. But we all begin to age in our 30s. The question is “why?” And how can you stop it from happening? The answer to these questions lies in your cells. When you’re young, your cells produce a lot of energy. And they continue to produce more and more energy until they peak in your 30s. After that, your cells start to produce energy less efficiently. In fact, their efficiency declines in a steady, predictable, and nondebatable pattern for the rest of your life until you die.

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Over time, your cells will lose enough efficiency that the loss begins to affect the organs that these cells make up. At that point, the organs begin to decrease in function. The heart doesn’t work as well. The liver doesn’t work as well. The brain doesn’t work as well. And so on. When those organs start to lose function, you start to notice something. Your blood sugar isn’t quite what it used to be. Your cholesterol levels go up. Blood pressure goes up. And your sexual function and your ability to sleep decline. As the years go by and the cells continue to lose their efficiency, the organs start to deteriorate. Eventually, they get to the point where their function is so compromised, diseases begin to set in. Diseases like diabetes, or osteoporosis, or heart disease. After that, your body begins to grow frail and weak. The organs degenerate to the point that they’re basically falling apart. And if you don’t do something about it, you spend your final years in a nursing home. Most people think this cycle is natural and inevitable. They think that as they age, they are supposed to lose energy. In fact, at some point, people might go to their doctor, who says, “What do you expect, you’re X years old.” That’s because doctors believe this is how aging occurs. But this is NOT how it works! The truth is, you don’t lose energy because you age. You age because you lose energy. That’s the secret to anti-aging! The aging process stems from one thing, and one thing only — decreased cellular energy. This makes sense because every cell needs energy to function. It’s so important, in fact, that energy is the universal biomarker for aging. It’s the only marker that can accurately tell you how your body is working. And it can tell you this 100% of the time. Most doctors like to use your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, lung capacity, blood sugar and insulin levels, and equilibri-

um as markers for age and health. While all of these are important markers, not one of them can predict how old — and how healthy — you really are. The reason is that while these factors get worse in some people who age, they don’t get worse in everyone. For instance, blood pressure isn’t a good predictor of age because there are plenty of people over 60 with normal blood pressure who are sick and frail. So it’s not a good measurement for aging. But your cells don’t lie. If they aren’t producing energy as effectively as they should, you’re on the fast path to aging and disease. This is not just conjecture; it’s been proven in several studies. In one study, researchers took genetically similar mice and divided them into two groups. They then genetically altered the mitochondria (a cell’s furnace, which converts oxygen to energy) of one group so that their energy production was dramatically decreased. They left the other half of the group alone. So the only difference between these two groups of mice was energy production. The researchers then followed these mice over the course of their lifetime. They found that because the genetically altered mice produced a lower amount of energy, they didn’t live as long. Even more importantly, the altered mice developed more degenerative diseases at an earlier age. In fact, all of the genetically modified mice developed the age-related problems that are so typical of older people. They developed arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, loss of hair, osteoporosis (with spines bent over), and they were less active in their cages. That means the less energy you have, the more likely you are to develop disease. Any disease. Another study has even stronger scientific evidence of the importance of energy and long life. The researchers in the study used muscle biopsies to test the energy levels of a group of mice. Then they subjected

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The Easiest Way To Avoid Breast Cancer If you want to avoid breast cancer, your doctor might tell you that mammograms are your best bet. But mammograms can only tell you if a cancer has already formed. And by then, it may be too late. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to avoid the cancer. All you have to do is avoid high glycemic carbohydrates. Your conventional doctor would never tell you that. After all, he thinks these carbohydrates are good for you. That’s what the government’s food pyramid tells them. And that’s

the muscle tissue to nuclear magnetic resonant scanning. This is a very accurate way to determine their energy production. As expected, because of the genetic differences between each mouse, there was a considerable variation in energy production efficiency. Some of the mice produced energy really well, and some of them not nearly as well. Then, after they measured their energy production, the researchers simply followed the mice over the course of their life. They all ate the same food, lived in the same cages, etc. And the researchers recorded how long they all lived. Result: the mice with the highest level of cellular energy production efficiency (in the highest quartile) lived 36% longer than those in the lower quartile. Again, this is proof positive that energy is absolutely vital to your longevity and disease resistance. Obviously, most of us don’t want to have a muscle biopsy to determine our energy levels. It’s invasive, which always carries a risk of infection, and it’s very painful. So how can you find out your energy levels with a high degree of accuracy without all the problems? Let me show you….

where the medical community gets its nutritional advice. But this advice could be the cause of the dramatic surge in breast cancer we’ve seen the past decade or so. You, like most of my savvy readers, may know that high-glycemic carbohydrates create elevated levels of the hormone insulin. And elevated insulin levels (anything over 10 mIU/L) dramatically increase your risk of cancer. This is why diabetics have an increased risk of breast cancer. In a recent study, researchers found that women with the highest one-third of insulin levels had almost three times the incidence of breast cancer.

The Ultimate Energy Test Anytime someone tells me that they want to slow down aging and prevent disease, I immediately give them a test I developed in the late 1990s. I call it Bio-Energy Testing. This test is easy to perform. It’s completely safe and non-invasive. And I believe it’s the ultimate tool to determine the actual status of your health. I discovered Bio-Energy Testing after seeing some interesting technology out of NASA. Do you remember the movie “The Right Stuff?” It was the story of the Mercury astronauts and their flight into space. In that movie, there’s a scene where NASA doctors have the astronauts breathe into a tube. The tube leads to a machine that helps measure lung function. That machine isn’t just the stuff of movies. NASA actually uses that machine to test lung function. And it’s the basic technology behind Bio-Energy Testing. Before NASA came up with this technology, the testing was very cumbersome. People would have to breathe into something like 40 different plastic bags. But NASA created a Gas Exchange Analysis device that was about the size of a small TV set.

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factors that increase insulin levels include a lack of physical activity, obesity, and a diet high in omega-6 oils. You’ll find these in corn oil, safflower oil, whole grains, and so many fast and processed foods.

Another recent study explains why. It showed that elevated insulin levels cause the liver to decrease the production of sex-hormone binding proteins. These proteins are regulatory proteins. They protect breast tissue from excessive levels of estrogen, which stimulates breast cancer cells. By decreasing the levels of these binding proteins, insulin causes breast tissue to be exposed to abnormally elevated levels of estrogen. But that’s not all. Insulin also stimulates cancer cells directly. And eating high-glycemic carbs is the most influential factor on insulin secretion. However, it’s not the only factor. Other

High glycemic carbohydrates are not healthy foods, no matter who tells you they are. Make it a point to eat these foods only once in a while. In fact, I tell my patients to treat them like chocolate cake. A little chocolate cake every now and then is OK. But you wouldn’t delude yourself into thinking that eating chocolate cake as a regular part of your diet is a healthy choice.

For years, doctors used this machine to test lung function in emphysema patients. They also used it to test the lung function of high-performance athletes and astronauts. But until I came along, no one had put two and two together and figured out that it could be used on regular folks to test their energy production. When I figured this out and told people in the field, they said, “Of course!” It was so obvious — but only after the fact.

Here’s How Bio-Energy Testing Works You probably learned in school that people breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. When you breathe in oxygen, it floods your cells with oxygen. The oxygen then enters the mitochondria, energy is produced, and the resulting waste product is carbon dioxide.

Then we feed the information into a computer program that calculates your energy production efficiency, metabolic rate (how well you produce energy at rest), whether you’re producing energy from fat or glucose, how well your body turns energy into muscle strength, and ultimately, your biological age. Once we take these measurements, we compare them to what the energy scores are for the average 30 year old, 40 year old, 50 year old, and so on. When I compared those scores to the traditional bio-markers people use, I found a strong correlation. Except that instead of having to measure 10 different bio-markers, I have to measure only one! That one marker is how efficiently your cells produce energy.

How Energy Efficiency Declines With Age

Bio-Energy Testing simply measures how efficiently your mitochondria are able to convert oxygen to energy, and how much carbon dioxide is created as a result. Using a mouthpiece, we measure how well your body makes this conversion at rest and while exercising.

Young children make the oxygento-energy conversion the most efficiently. And we all know how much energy they have. But as time goes on, various factors can interfere with this conversion. These include infections, injuries, lack of sleep,

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stress, poor dietary habits, smoking, drugs, lack of exercise, too much exercise (which is a form of self-inflicted injury), and exposure to toxins (such as heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals). Doctors have taught for years that free radical molecules cause aging. It’s true that they do cause tissue destruction. As a result, they do play a major part in aging. But what causes all the free radicals? I told you earlier that low energy production is what causes you to age. And now I’m going to tell you how. It has to do with free radical production. Lower energy levels cause your free radical levels to go up at an alarming rate. Here’s why: Free radicals are a by-product of inefficient energy production by your mitochondria. When your mitochondria work efficiently, they don’t produce very many free radicals. But as they work less efficiently, they start producing more and more. It’s very similar to a car engine. As the car engine works less efficiently, you get more pollution coming from the exhaust. As the mitochondria become less efficient, you get more free radicals. Your cells also become more susceptible to free radical damage. And you age faster. If free radicals were the cause of aging and energy loss, then lowering your free radical levels would stop the aging process. That’s why doctors have told you to take so many antioxidants. We call antioxidants “free radical scavengers” because they attack free radicals and remove them from your body. The only problem is that antioxidants don’t stop the aging process. Now that may sound like heresy to you. But let me explain. There have been dozens of animal studies testing this theory. But not one has ever found that you can stop (or even slow) aging by taking antioxidants. That’s because antioxidants don’t directly attack free radicals. Antioxidant enzymes do. Antioxidant enzymes include

SOD (superoxide dismutase), catylase, and glutathione peroxidase. These enzymes stop or quench free radicals. But when they do, the enzymes become inactivated. That means they can’t quench another free radical until something reactivates them. That something is the antioxidant nutrients. These include vitamins C, and E, beta-carotene, lipoic acid, selenium, etc. However, this still doesn’t solve the problem. Since antioxidants reactivate antioxidant enzymes, then the studies should show that taking antioxidants reduces free radicals and the damage they cause. But, again, that’s not what they show. We now understand why. Like free radicals, the mitochondria produce antioxidant enzymes. But unlike free radicals, which increase as mitochondrial efficiency drops, antioxidant-enzyme production decreases as the mitochondria become less efficient. Thus, decreased energy production leads to a deadly combination — increased free radical formation with decreased antioxidant enzymes. As the mitochondria become less efficient, there are less and less enzymes produced for the antioxidants to reactivate. This combination lets free radicals destroy tissue, which leads to aging and disease. What’s more, taking antioxidants won’t help the mitochondria produce more enzymes. In fact, there’s only one thing that will — improving energy production. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that the biggest difference between a 25-year-old and a 75-year-old is in how efficiently their bodies use oxygen to produce energy. And in next month’s issue, I’m going to show you the absolute best ways to get your mitochondria to produce energy more efficiently, revitalize your cells, resist disease, and feel and function years younger than you do today. What’s more, you can do these treatments in the comfort of your own home. Don’t miss it! Q

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Three Reasons You Don’t Get Enough Vitamin K Most people don’t think about vitamin K when it comes to protecting their health. But vitamin K is a vital nutrient. If you don’t have enough vitamin K in your body, you substantially increase your risk of getting some serious diseases. These include cancer (such as breast, colon, liver, and stomach), atherosclerosis and heart disease (vitamin K prevents arteries from calcifying), and osteoporosis (it reduces calcium loss in your bones). The problem is that it’s becoming easier for people to develop a deficiency. That’s because there are three common chemicals that keep you from getting adequate amounts of vitamin K. (1) The most common chemical is fatblocking drugs. Since vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin, these medications interfere with its absorption. And they cause a deficiency. Common fat-blocking drugs include many of those used to lower cholesterol. It also includes the new prescription weight-loss drug Orlistat (xenical). And recently the FDA cleared Alli — another nasty little diet drug that has the same effect. (2) The second chemical is the fat substitute Olestra. Olestra also goes by the name Olean. No matter what you call it, Olestra is a wonderful example of how crazy the world is getting. Olestra is an “artificial fat.” In other words, it is a non-food molecule that contains no nutritive value at all. Although it’s fat soluble, your body cannot absorb it. The intestines don’t have an enzyme capable of digesting it. And, since it tastes like fat, you can enjoy your “fat” without gaining weight. The FDA approved it as a fat substitute in 1996 and is popular on Oreos, chips, and other junk “foods” that are supposed to make you thin. The problem with Olestra is that it’s able to absorb fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin K. Because your body can’t absorb

Olestra, it also won’t absorb these vitamins. The result is multiple fat-soluble deficiencies — and all of the health problems that go with them. (3) It’s not just drugs and man-made chemicals that cause vitamin K deficiencies. The natural fat blocker chitosan also blocks your body’s absorption of the vitamin. Chitosan comes from chitin, which comes from mushrooms and many sea creatures. It protects tissues and helps their resistance to invaders. Many people take chitosan to lose weight or to lower their cholesterol. It works by inhibiting fat absorption. So it may lead to vitamin K deficiency. If you’re taking any of these products, ask your doctor to check your vitamin K level. If it’s low, consider getting off the fat blocking products. Also make sure you’re eating vitamin K-rich foods, such as most vegetables, oils, eggs, and legumes. God made these foods. Be sure to eat them instead of the new miracle foods created by Madison Avenue. You might want to take a supplement as well. I suggest you take 15 mg a day of vitamin K2. Q References: Chlebowski, R.T., et al. “Vitamin K in the treatment of cancer.” Cancer Treatment Review. 12:49-63, 1985. Deuchi, K., et al. “Continuous and massive intake of chitosan affects mineral and fat soluble vitamin status in rats fed on a high-fat diet.” Biosci Biotechnol Biochem, 59(7):1211-1216, 1995. Gundberg, C.M., et al. “Vitamin K status and bone health: an analysis of methods for determination under carboxylated osteocalcin.” J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 83:3258-3266, 1998. Merkel, R.L. “The use of menadione bisulfite and ascorbic acid in the treatment of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy.” Am J Obstet Gynecol, 64:416-418, 1952. Prasad, K.N., et al. “Vitamin K3 (menadione) inhibits the growth of mammalian tumor cells in culture.” Life Sciences, 29:1387-1392, 1981. Yoshida, T., K. Miyazawa, I. Kasuga, et al. “Apoptosis induction of vitamin K2 in lung carcinoma cell lines: the possibility of vitamin K2 therapy for lung cancer.” Int J Oncol., 2003 Sep;23(3):627-32.

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LETTERS

TO THE

Q. My husband just tested positive for

hepatitis C. What do you know of that can help or stop this? — Lee M., via e-mail

A. This is a great question. I’ll have to

answer it in full in a future issue. But let me give you some hope. Just because your husband has a positive hepatitis C test does not mean he has the disease. It means only that at some point in his life, he was exposed to the virus. He may have the disease. But it’s more likely that he developed an immunity to it. It’s important to remember that 70% of those who have a positive hepatitis C test never actually develop hepatitis. For them, being infected with the hepatitis C virus is not a problem. The word “hepatitis” means that the liver is inflamed. The only way your husband has the disease is if his liver is inflamed. Inflammation causes pain, fatigue, joint pains, or certain kinds of rashes. But it takes a liver biopsy or a series of blood tests (liver function tests, transferrin saturation, C-reactive protein, sed rate, ferritin) to confirm the inflammation. If the liver is inflamed, the liver function tests will be elevated over 100 IU/L, the iron panel may show a transferrin saturation over 45%, and the C-reactive protein, sed rate, and ferritin will be elevated. Another excellent test for liver inflammation is a Fibrospect test. You can find information about this test at http://www.regence.com/trgmedpol/lab/lab47. html. If your husband has any of these indications of hepatitis, then he has hepatitis C. If not, then all he has is a positive hepatitis C test. The drug companies insist that anyone with a positive hepatitis C test will have problems with the virus and must take the drugs. But that’s not true. People that have a positive test, but who don’t have hepatitis are lucky. All they have to do is the following: (1) Avoid alcohol, except maybe one to two times per month. In people infected with the hepatitis C virus even moderate drinking may be enough to cause inflammation.

EDITOR

(2) Take a good, high-quality multivitamin/mineral every day, along with a good omega-3 mixed fatty acids supplement. (3) Check the tests I mentioned above once a year and, if possible, also check the Fibrospect test annually as well. If any of these tests indicate that the liver is starting to become inflamed, then you may actually have hepatitis C. If your husband has both a positive test for hepatitis C and symptoms (listed earlier), a grade 2 or greater biopsy or Fibrospect score, or an elevation of the tests mentioned above, then he actually has hepatitis C. In that case, he will need to take action that will halt any more liver inflammation from developing before it becomes a concern. The best way to do that is to follow the above advice as well as take the following: (1) Milk thistle extract, 400 mg two times a day. (2) Lipoic acid, 200 mg two times a day. (3) Selenium, 200 mcg two times a day. (4) Artichoke leaf extract, 400 mg three times a day. These can help keep inflammation under control. I’ll have a lot more on hepatitis C in future issues. But, again, the likelihood of your husband having the disease is pretty small. I hope that gives you great encouragement — and steps to take to keep any potential problems under control. Whatever you do, don’t take the drugs. These steps will be all you need.

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Got a Question? Do you have a question for Dr. Shallenberger? If so, please send it (typed only) to him c/o Soundview Publications, P.O. Box 467939, Atlanta, GA 31146-7939 or [email protected]. While he won’t be able to respond personally, he’ll try to answer as many questions as he can in these pages.