Back on NAC plus glycine and a very informative video
As discussed in the last post, after seven months on NAC plus glycine I stopped NAC for a week. For whatever reason, I felt fatigued and achy during that time and restarted the NAC. I wouldn't take this as a useful clinical trial! But to keep you informed of what I am doing with my approach to aging, I am back on NAC.
At the end of the blog there is a deep dive on the theory behind my position on what one should do about aging, prompted by my friend David.
Here's an updated review of what I am taking now. As always these are my opinions regarding health and aging and are not meant to be personal medical advice. This is a non-commercial site and I am not profiting in any way from these recommendations.
Updated Recipe (What I am Taking)
1) glycine and NAC 1/2 teaspoon each twice daily (I have returned to taking NAC)
2) copper 10-20 mg topically daily (a reasonable substitute would be 2 mg oral twice daily of copper glycinate or (bis)glycinate available on Amazon e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Encapsulations-Glycinate-Hypoallergenic-Supplement/dp/B000H7Y6J2/ref=sr_1_2?crid=OVK2PNBVQ60X&keywords=copper+glycinate&qid=1686410845&s=digital-text&sprefix=copper+glycinat%2Cdigital-text%2C188&sr=1-2) (I do not "balance" this with zinc)
3) magnesium carbonate powder 1 scoop in coffee in morning
4) Centrum Silver one daily
5) Vitamin K2 1 mg twice daily
6) Potassium bicarbonate https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Potassium-Bicarbonate-Gluten-Free-Supplement/dp/B08FTJTN5L/ref=sr_1_10?crid=3DH52N6ZPPWE8&keywords=potassium+carbonate+capsules+supplement&qid=1685463634&sprefix=potassium+carbonate+capsules+supplement%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-10 Potassium supplements are potentially dangerous in certain medical conditions and should only be taken under medical supervision. A place to read about potassium and the modern diet is here https://life-enhancement.com/pages/potassium-bicarbonate-supplementation.
7) Elliptical trainer to induce shortness of breath three to five times daily. (I let out my breath and go until I have to breathe, increased with training from about 15 seconds to 30 seconds). Total peak exercise time daily is under two minutes. This machine was recommended by my friend Grant and it's been terrific for this purpose. I like how precisely I can measure my exercise tolerance by leaving it on the lowest setting and just stepping into it and go- https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KAGX6XQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It's the training effect that matters, not the suffering that many people think are necessary when exercising. More on this method and relationship to enzyme induction and hypoxia inducible factor in a future blog. If you don't want to spend the money on an elliptical you can achieve the same effect by laying on your back, letting out all your breath, put your hands behind your head, and touching elbow to knee alternating until you have to breathe. I also lazily swim or walk for an hour on most days, when I feel like it would be enjoyable, or walk for 20 minutes after dinner which is a good time to walk the dogs.
8) Synchronizing pulse- nothing like a nap in the afternoon as long as it does not interrupt nighttime sleep. Interestingly, some people feel they sleep better at night if they take a short nap in the afternoon.
--
So my friend David wrote to me with the following point:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01910-4?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=e63a17c305-briefing-dy-20230609&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-e63a17c305-47267644
"Article on Taurine yet another amino acid to prevent aging more or less.
So there seem to be a lot of amino acids for which serum levels decrease with age and if given as supplements seem to do some good. But what is the theory? If diet doesn’t change with age and people are getting the same levels in their diet are they not absorbing amino acids as well? If so, why is the ability to absorb them decreasing? Or are they absorbed then excreted or simply not used for some reason and is blood plasma the right place to look? Seems an odd approach to test them one by one if the underlying problem is how well they are all absorbed."
I think the problem of aging is not deficiency. It is a problem of the body being able to "hang onto" required substances and regulate their associated proteins. This is partly due to conformation changes in the proteins (such as the copper bearing metalloproteins not binding exactly right due to transcription errors) but also up regulation or down regulation due to environmental and internally generated stresses.
Providing nutritional support only prevents episodic shortages, which if sufficiently prolonged lead to changes in regulatory pathways that are not beneficial, in a "burn the furniture to keep from freezing" way.
Suppose you sit down on a chair and it crashes underneath you. The next dozen times you sit on a chair you will inspect it carefully; the next 100 times you sit on a chair your heart rate will accelerate even if you don't realize you are thinking about it. And now every time you interact with a chair in your environment, your blood pressure will rise, your heart rate will go up, and you will excrete some extra cortisol in preparation for a disaster that doesn't happen. These adaptive changes are not in themselves problematic, but their chronic presence may be.
Since your body integrates the use of energy across all its functions, you will down regulate your response to chairs. That is, if you sit on 100 chairs in a row, you won't get so excited you pass out. Your response will be down regulated.
And in my view it is this global downregulation and upregulation due to excessive stress which is at the heart of maladaptive aging between 70 and 100.
The metabolism of copper illustrates this point. Copper is tightly regulated in the bloodstream; if you don't eat much copper your intestines will get very good at absorbing it and you will maintain some copper in the bloodstream. So copper "deficiency" defined this way is rare. Your body will work very hard to keep you from being "deficient" in the bloodstream. On the other hand, if you eat a large amount of copper in one meal you will simply excrete the excess into your bile. So copper is tightly regulated in the blood, and checking a copper level is very likely to be within normal limits. But there is concern that the levels of copper in the tissues are low for many people and that it may be causing disease e.g. https://openheart.bmj.com/content/5/2/e000784
What happens when you try to raise your copper levels by taking oral copper? You get a quick spike in copper in the bloodstream (about four hours) and then it goes out the bile. It's kind of like cooking a meal for a 90 year old and giving them two minutes to eat it. Possibly helpful if the 90 year old is starving.
As we get older, the area under the curve goes down- we no longer "hang on" to copper, the metalloproteins don't bind as well, the liver doesn't respond as quickly by making more copper binding protein, and we don't retain it. In the long run, it isn't what we swallow, it's what we can absorb and hold onto.
I am experimenting with topical copper, rather than oral copper, because the absorption of copper topically probably occurs over 12-48 hours, providing more time for metal and copper binding proteins to absorb it. I hope to have some further information on that in about three months. At this point I don't know if the topical approach will be helpful,
-- The following lecture was sent to me by a physician friend. It's by Denis Noble, a famous systems electrophysiologist. It's well worth watching for his emphasis on metabolism as opposed to the genome as the basis for biology.
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