How and When To Be Your Own Doctor

I hope that my book will be around for several generations. The businesses whose vitamin products I recommend will not likely exist in twenty years. Even sooner than that the product names and details of the formulations will almost certainly be altered. So, for future readers discovering this book in a library or dusty shelve of a used book store, if I, at my current level of understanding, were manufacturing a childrens and young adults vitamin formula myself, this is what it would contain. Any commercial formulation within 25 percent of these figures plus or minus would probably be fine as long as the vitamins in the pills were of high quality.

Vitamins For An Older Healthy Person
Someone who is beyond 35 to 40 years of age should still feel good almost all of the time. That is how life should be. But enjoying well-being does not mean that no dietary supplementation is called for. The onset of middle age is the appropriate time to begin working on continuing to feel well for as long as possible. Just like a car, if you take very good care of it from the beginning, it is likely to run smoothly for many years into the future. If on the other hand you drive it hard and fast with a lot of deferred maintenance you will probably have to trade it in on a new one after a very few years. Most people in their 70s and older who are struggling with many uncomfortable symptoms and low energy lament, 'if I'd only known I was going to live so long I would have taken better care of myself.' But at that point it is too late for the old donkey; time for a trade in.
Gerontologists refer to combating the aging process as "squaring the curve." We arrive at the peak of our physical function at about age eighteen. How high that peak level is depends on a person's genetic endowment, the quality of the start they received through their mother's nutritional reserves, and the quality of their childhood nutrition and life experience. From that peak our function begins to drop. The rate of drop is not uniform, but is a cascade where each bit of deterioration creates more deterioration, accelerating the rate of deterioration. If various aging experiences were graphed, they would make curves like those on the chart on this page.

    Because deterioration starts out so slowly, people usually do not begin to notice there has been any decline until they reach their late 30s. A few fortunate ones don't notice it until their 40s. A few (usually) dishonest ones claim no losses into their 50s but they are almost inevitably lying, either to you or to themselves, or both. Though it might be wisest to begin combating the aging process at age 19, practically speaking, no one is going to start spending substantial money on food supplements until they actually notice significant lost function. For non-athletes this point usually comes when function has dropped to about 90 percent of what it was in our youth. If they're lucky what people usually notice with the beginnings of middle age is an increasing inability for their bodies to tolerate insults such as a night on the town or a big meal. Or they may begin to get colds that just won't seem to go away. Or they may begin coming home after work so tired that they can hardly stay awake and begin falling asleep in their Lazy Boy recliner in front of the TV even before prime time. If they're not so lucky they'll begin suffering the initial twinges of a non-life-threatening chronic condition like arthritis.
    The thinnest line demonstrates the worst possible life from a purely physical point of view, where a person started out life with significantly lowered function, lost quite a bit more and then hung on to life for many years without the mercy of death.
    If one can postpone the deterioration of aging, they extend and hopefully square the curve (retard loss of function until later and then have the loss occur more rapidly). Someone whose lifetime function resembled a "square curve"(the thickest, topmost line) would experience little or no deterioration until the very end and then would lose function precipitously. At this point we do not know how to eliminate the deterioration but we do know how to slow it down, living longer and feeling better, at least to a point close to the very end.
    Vitamin supplements can actually slow or even to a degree, reverse, the aging process. However, to accomplish that task, they have to be taken in amounts far greater than so-called minimum daily requirements, using vitamins as though they were drugs, a therapeutic approach to changing body chemistry profiles and making them resemble a younger body. For example, research gerontologists like Walford reason that if pantothenic acid (vitamin B 5, in fairly substantial (but quite safe) doses can extend the life and improve the function of old rats, there is every indication that it will do a similar job on humans. Medical researchers and research gerontologists have noticed that many other vitamin and vitamin-like substances have similar effects on laboratory animals.
    Some will object that what helps rats and mice is in no way proven to cause the same result on humans. I agree. Proven with full scientific rigor, no. In fact, at present, the contention is unprovable. Demonstrable as having a high likelihood's of being so, yes! So likely so as to be almost incontrovertible, yes! But provable to the most open-minded, scientific sort--probably not for a long time. However, the Life Extension Foundation is working hard to find some quantifiable method of gauging the aging process in humans without waiting for the inarguable indicator, death. Once this is accomplished and solidly recognized, probably no rational person will be able to doubt that human life span can be increased.
    Experiments work far better with short-lived laboratory animals for another reason; we can not control the food and supplement intakes of humans as we can with caged mice. In fact, there are special types of laboratory mice that have been bred to have uniformly short life spans, especially to accelerate this kind of research. With mice we can state accurately that compared to a control group, feeding such and such a dose of such and such a supplement extended the life-span or functional performance by such and such a percent.
    A lot of these very same medical gerontologists nourish their own bodies as thoroughly as the laboratory animals they are studying, taking broad mixes of food supplements at doses proportional to those that extend the life spans of their research animals. This approach to using supplementation is at the other end of the scale compared to using supplements to prevent gross deficiencies. In the life extension approach, vitamins and vitamin-like substances are used as a therapy against the aging process itself.
    Will it work? Well, some of these human guinea pigs have been on heavy vitamin supplementation for over thirty years (as of 1995) and none seem to be suffering any damage. Will they live longer? It is impossible to say with full scientific rigor? To know if life extension works, we would have to first determine "live longer than what?" After all, we don't know how long any person might have lived without life extending vitamin supplements. Though it can't be "proven," it makes perfect sense to me to spend far less money on an intensive life extension vitamin program than I would certainly lose as a result of age-related sickness.
    Besides, I've already observed from personal use and from results in my clinical practice that life extension vitamin programs do work. Whether I and my clients will ultimately live longer or not, the people who I have put on these programs, including myself and my husband, usually report that for several years after starting they find themselves feeling progressively younger, gradually returning to an overall state of greater well-being they knew five or ten or fifteen years ago. They have more energy, feel clearer mentally, have fewer unwanted somatic symptoms.
    Sometimes the improvements seem rather miraculous. After a few months on the program one ninety year old man, an independent-minded Oregonian farmer, reported that he began awakening with an erection every morning; unfortunately, his 89 year old cranky and somewhat estranged wife, who would not take vitamins, did not appreciate this youthfulness. A few months later (he had a small farm) he planted a holly orchard. Most of you won't appreciate what this means without a bit of explanation, but in Oregon, holly is grown as a high-priced and highly profitable ornamental for the clusters of leaves and berries. But a slow-growing holly orchard takes 25 years to began making a profit!
    A few older clients of mine reported that they noticed nothing from the life extension program, but these are unique people who have developed the ability to dominate their bodies with their minds and routinely pay their bodies absolutely no attention, driving them relentlessly to do their will. Usually they use their energies to accomplish good, Christian works. Eventually, these dedicated and high-toned people break down and die like everyone else. Will they do so later on life extending vitamins than they would have otherwise? I couldn't know because I can't know how long they might have lived without supplementation and since they refuse to admit the vitamins do them any good, they won't pay for them.
    Many on life extension programs experience a reverse aging process for awhile. However, after the full benefit of the supplementation has worked itself through their body chemistry, they again begin to experience the aging process. I believe the process will then be slowed by their vitamins compared to what it would have been without supplements. But I can't prove it. Maybe we will have some idea if the program worked 20 to 40 years from now.
    At this time I know of only two companies that make top quality life extension vitamin supplement formulas. One is Prolongevity (Life Extension Foundation), the other, Vitamin Research Products. I prefer to support what I view as the altruistic motives behind Prolongevity and buy my products from them. Unfortunately, these vitamin compounders can not put every possibly beneficial substance in a single bottle of tablets. The main reason they do not is fear of the power-grabbing Food and Drug Administration. This agency is threatening constantly to remove certain of the most useful life-extending substances from the vitamin trade and make them the exclusive property of prescription-writing medical doctors. So far, public pressure has been mobilized against the FDA every time action was threatened and has not permitted this. If some product were included in a mix and that product were prohibited, the entire mixed, bottled and labeled batch that remained unsold at that time would be wasted, at enormous cost.
    Were I manufacturing my own life extension supplement I would include the following. By the way, to get this all in one day, it is necessary to take 6 to 12 large tablets daily, usually spread throughout the day, taken a few at a time with each meal. If you compare my suggested formulation to another one, keep in mind that variations of 25 percent one way or another won't make a significant difference, and adding other beneficial substances to my recommendations probably is only helpful. However, I would not want to eliminate anything in the list below, it is the minimum:

Please also keep in mind that there are many other useful substances not listed above. For example, every day I have a "green drink," an herbal preparation containing numerous tonic substances like ginseng and also various forms of algae and chlorophyll extracts. My green drink makes my body feel very peppy all day, so it certainly enhances my life and may extend it. It costs about $25,00 a month to enjoy that. I also use various pure amino acids at times. Phenylalyanine will make me get more aggressive whenever I am feeling a little lackluster; this nutrient has also been used as an effective therapy against depression. Melatonin taken at bedtime really does help me get to sleep and may have remarkable life-extending properties. Other amino acids help my body manufacture growth hormones and I use them from the time I begin training seriously in spring through the end of the summer triathlon competition season. Pearson and Shaw's book (see Bibliography) is a good starting point to begin learning about this remarkably useful subject.

The Future Of Life Extension

I beg the readers indulgence for a bit of futurology about what things may look like if the life extension movement continues to develop.

Right now, a full vitamin and vitamin-like substance life extension program costs between $50 and $100 dollars per month. However, pharmaceutical researchers occasionally notice that drugs meant to treat and cure diseases, when tested on lab animals for safety, make these animals live quite a bit longer and function better. Though the FDA doesn't allow any word of this to be printed in official prescribing data, the word does get around to other researchers, to gerontologists and eventually to that part of the public that is eagerly looking for longer life. Today there are numerous people who routinely take prescription medicines meant to cure a disease they do not have and plan to take those medicines for the rest of their long, long life.

These drugs being patented, the tariff gets a lot steeper compared to taking vitamins. (Since they are naturally-occurring substances, vitamins can't be patented and therefore, aren't big-profit items. Perhaps that's one reason the FDA is so covertly opposed to vitamins.) Right now it would be quite possible to spend many hundred dollars per month on a life extension program that included most of these potentially beneficent prescription drugs.

As more of life-extending substances are discovered, the cost of participating in a maximally effective life extension program will escalate. However, those who can afford chemically enhanced functioning will enjoy certain side-benefits. Their productive, enjoyable life spans may measure well over a century, perhaps approaching two centuries or more. Some of these substances greatly improve intelligence so they will become brighter and have faster reaction times. With more time to accumulate more wisdom and experience than "short livers" these folks will become wiser, too. They will have more time to compound their investment assets and thus will become far more wealthy. They will become an obvious and recognizable aristocracy. This new upper class will immediately recognize each other on the street because they will look entirely different than the short-lived poorer folk and will probably run the political economic system.

And this new aristocratic society I see coming may be far more pleasant than the one dominated by the oligarchy we now have covertly running things. For with greater age and experience does really come greater wisdom. I have long felt that the biggest problem with Earth is that we did not live long enough. As George Bernard Shaw quipped when he was 90 (he lived to 96), "here I am, 90 years old, just getting out of my adolescence and getting some sense, and my body is falling apart as fast as it can."

Vitamin Program For The Sick

No matter which way you look at it or how well insured you may be against it, being sick is expensive (not to mention what it does to one's quality of life), and by far the best thing to do is to prevent it from happening in the first place. However, most people do not do anything about their health until forced to by some painful condition. If you are already sick there are a number of supplements you can take which have the potential to shorten the duration and severity of the illness, and hopefully prevent a recurrence.

The sicker you are, the more supplements you will require; as health is regained, the dosage and variety of substances can be reduced. In chronic illness, megadoses of many nutrients are usually beneficial. Any sick adult should begin a life extension vitamin program unless they are highly allergic to so many things already that they can not tolerate many kinds of vitamins as well. In addition to the life extension program, vitamin C should be taken by the chronically ill at a dose from 10 to 25 grams daily, depending on the severity of the condition.

Many people want to know whether or not they should take their regular food supplements during a fast. On a water fast most supplements in a hard tablet form will not be broken down at all, and often can be seen floating by in the colonic viewing tube looking exactly like it did when you swallowed it. This waste can be avoided by crushing or chewing (yuck) the tablets, before swallowing. Encapsulated vitamins usually are absorbed, but if you want to make sure, open the capsule and dump it in the back of your mouth before swallowing with water. Powdered vitamins are well absorbed.

On a water fast the body is much more sensitive to any substance introduced, so as a general rule it is not a good idea to take more than one half your regular dose of food supplements. Most fasters do fine without any supplements. Many people get an upset stomach from supplements on an empty stomach, and these people should not take any during a water fast unless they develop symptoms of mineral deficiencies (usually a pre-existing condition) such as leg cramps and tremors, these symptoms necessitate powdered or well-chewed-up mineral supplement. Minerals don't taste too bad to chew, just chalky.

The same suggestions regarding dosage of supplements for a water fast are also true for a juice fast or vegetable broth fast. On a raw food cleansing diet the full dose of supplements should be taken with meals.

There exists an enormous body of data about vitamins; books and magazine articles are always touting some new product or explaining the uses of an old one. If you want to know more about using ordinary vitamins you'll find leads in the bibliography to guide your reading. However, there is one "old" vitamin and a few newer and relatively unknown life extending substances that are so useful and important to handling illness that I would like to tell you more about them.

is not a newly discovered vitamin, but was one of the first ever identified. If you are one of those people that just hate taking vitamins, and you were for some reason willing to take only one, vitamin C would be your best choice. Vitamin C would be the clear winner because it helps enormously with any infection and in invaluable in tissue healing and rebuilding collagen. If I was going on a long trip and didn't want to pack a lot of weight, my first choice would be to insure three to six grams of vitamin C for daily use when I was healthy (I'd take the optimum dose--ten grams a day--if weight were no limitation). I'd also carry enough extra C to really beef up my intake when dealing with an unexpected acute illness or accident.

When traveling to far away places, exposed to a whole new batch of organisms, frequently having difficulty finding healthy foods, going through time zones, losing nights of sleep, it is easy to become enervated enough to catch a local cold or flu. If I have brought lots of extra vitamin C with me I know that my immune system will be able to conquer just about anything--as long as I also stop eating and can take an enema. I also like to have vitamin C as a part of my first aid kit because if I experience a laceration, a sprain, broken bone, or a burn, I can increase my internal intake as well as apply it liberally directly on the damaged skin surface. Vitamin C can be put directly in the eye in a dilute solution with distilled water for infections and injuries, in the ear for ear infections, and in the nose for sinus infections. If you are using the acid form of C (ascorbic acid) and it smarts too much, make a more dilute solution, or switch to the alkaline form of C (calcium ascorbate) which can be used as a much more concentrated solution without a stinging sensation. Applied directly on the skin C in solution makes a very effective substitute for sun screen. It doesn't filter out ultraviolet, it beefs up the skin to better deal with the insult.

I believe vitamin C can deal with a raging infection such as pneumonia as well or better than antibiotics. But to do that, C is going to have to be administered at the maximum dose the body can process. This is easily discoverable by a 'bowel tolerance test' which basically means you keep taking two or three grams of C each hour, (preferably in the powdered, most rapidly assimilable form) until you get a runny stool (the trots). The loose stool happens when there is so much C entering the small intestine that it is not all absorbed, but is instead, passed through to the large intestine. At that point cut back just enough that the stool is only a little loose, not runny. At this dose, your blood stream will be as saturated by vitamin C as you can achieve by oral ingestion.

It can make an important difference which type of vitamin C is taken because many people are unable to tolerate the acid form of C beyond 8 or 10 grams a day, but they can achieve a therapeutic dose without discomfort with the alkaline (buffered) vitamin C products such as calcium ascorbate, sodium ascorbate, or magnesium-potassium ascorbates.

Vitamin C also speeds up the healing of internal tissues and damaged connective tissue. Damaged internal tissues might include stomach ulcers (use the alkaline form of vitamin C only), bladder and kidney infections (acid form usually best), arthritic disorders with damage to joints and connective tissue (alkaline form usually best). Sports injuries heal up a lot faster with a therapeutic dose of vitamin C. As medicine, vitamin C should be taken at the rate of one or two grams every two hours (depending on the severity of the condition), spaced out to avoid unnecessary losses in the urine which happens if it were taken ten grams at a time. If you regularly use the acid form of vitamin C powder, which is the cheapest, be sure to use a straw and dissolve it in water or juice so that the acid does not dissolve the enamel on your teeth over time.

And this is as good a point as any to mention that just like broccoli is not broccoli, a vitamin is not necessarily a vitamin. Vitamins are made by chemical and pharmaceutical companies. To make this confusion even more interesting, the business names that appear on vitamin bottles are not the real manufacturers. Bronson's Pharmaceuticals is a distributor and marketer, not a manufacturer. The same is true of every vitamin company I know of. These companies buy bulk product by the barrel or sack; then encapsulate, blend and roll pills, bottle and label, advertise and make profit. The point of all this is that some actual vitamin manufacturers produce very high quality products and others shortcut. Vitamin distributors must make ethical (or unethical) choices about their suppliers.

It is beyond the scope of this book to be a manual for going into the vitamin business. However, there are big differences in how effective vitamins with the same chemical name are and the differences hinge on who actually brewed them up.

For example, there are at least two quality levels of vitamin C on the market right now. The pharmaceutical grade is made by Roche or BASF. Another form, it could be called "the bargain barrel brew," is made in China. Top quality vitamin C is quite a bit more costly; as I write this, the price differential is about 40 percent between the cheap stuff and the best. This can make a big difference in bottle price and profit. Most of the discount retail vitamin companies use the Chinese product.

There's more than a price difference. The vitamin C from China contains measurable levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, iron and other toxic metals. The FDA allows this slightly contaminated product to be sold in the US because the Recommended Daily Allowance for vitamin C is a mere 60 milligrams per day. Taken at that level, the toxic metals would, as the FDA sees it, do no harm. However, many users of vitamin C take 100 -200 times the RDA. The cheap form of C would expose them to potentially toxic levels of heavy metal poisons. The highly refined top-quality product removes impurities to a virtually undetectable level.

I buy my C from Bronson who ethically gives me the quality stuff. I know for a fact that the vitamin C sold by Prolongevity is also top quality. I've had clients who bought cheaper C than Bronson's and discovered it was not quite like Bronson's in appearance or taste. More importantly, it did not seem to have the same therapeutic effect.

The distributors I've mentioned so far, Bronson, NOW, Cooper, Prolongevity and Vitamin Research Products are all knowledgeable about differences between actual manufacturers and are ethical, buying and reselling only high quality products. Other distributors I believe to be reputable include Twin Labs, Schiff and Plus. I know there are many other distributors with high ethic levels but I can not evaluate all their product lines. And as I've mentioned earlier, businesses come and go rather quickly, but I hope my book will be read for decades. I do know that I would be very reluctant to buy my vitamins at a discount department store or supermarket; when experimenting with new suppliers I have at times been severely disappointed.

This substance is normally manufactured in the human body and is also found in minuscule amounts in almost every cell on Earth. For that reason it is also called "ubiquinone." But this vitamin has been only recently discovered, so as I write this book Co-enzyme Q-10 is not widely known.

Q-10 is essential to the functioning of the mitochondria, that part of the cell that produces energy. With less Q-10 in heart cells, for example, the heart has less energy and pumps less. The same is true of the immune system cells, the liver cells, every cell. As we age the body is able to make less and less Q-10, contributing to the loss of energy frequently experienced with age, as well as the diminished effectiveness of the immune system, and a shortened life span.

Q-10 was first used for its ability to revitalize heart cells. It was a prescription medicine in Japan. But unlike other drugs used to stimulate the heart, at any reasonable dose Q-10 has no harmful side effects. It also tends to give people the extra pick up they are trying to get out of a cup of coffee. But Q-10 does so by improving the function of every cell in the body, not by whipping exhausted adrenals like caffeine does. Q-10 is becoming very popular with athletes who measure their overall cellular output against known standards.

Besides acting as a general tonic, when fed to lab animals, Co-Enzyme Q-10 makes them live 33 to 45 percent longer!

is another extremely valuable vitamin-like substance that is not widely known. It is a basic building material that the body uses to make acetylcholine, the most generalized neurotransmitter in the body. Small quantities of DMAE are found in fish, but the body usually makes it in a multi-stage synthesis that starts with the amino acid choline, arrives at DMAE at about step number three and ends up finally with acetylcholine.

The body's nerves are wrapped in fatty tissue that should be saturated with acetylcholine. Every time a nerve impulse is transmitted from one nerve cell to the next, a molecule of acetylcholine is consumed. Thus acetylcholine has to be constantly replaced. As the body ages, levels of acetylcholine surrounding the nerves drop and in consequence, the nerves begin to deteriorate. DMAE is rapidly and easily converted into acetylcholine and helps maintain acetylcholine levels in older people at a youthful level.

When laboratory rats are fed DMAE they solve mazes more rapidly, remember better, live about 40 percent longer than rats not fed DMAE and most interestingly, when autopsied, their nervous systems resemble those of a young rat, without any evidence of the usual deterioration of aging. Human nervous systems also deteriorate with age, especially those of people suffering from senility. It is highly probable that DMAE will do the same thing to us. DMAE also smoothes out mood swings in humans and seems to help my husband, Steve, when he has a big writing project. He can keep working without getting 'writers block', fogged out, or rollercoastering.

DMAE is a little hard to find. Prolongevity and VRP sell it in powder form. Since the FDA doesn't know any MDR and since the product is not capped up, the bottle of powder sagely states that one-quarter teaspoonful contains 333 milligrams. Get the hint? DMAE tastes a little like sour salt and one-quarter teaspoonful dissolves readily in water every morning before breakfast, or anytime for that matter. DMAE is also very inexpensive considering what it does. A year's supply costs about $20.

is a highly tonic and inexpensive food supplement that is underutilized by many people even though it is easily obtainable in healthfood stores. It is an emulsifier, breaking fats down into small separate particles, keeping blood cholesterol emulsified to prevent arterial deposits. Taken persistently, lecithin partially and slowly eliminates existing cholesterol deposits from the circulatory system.

In our cholesterol-frightened society lecithin should be a far more popular supplement than it currently is. It is easy to take either as a food in the granular form or when encapsulated. Lecithin granules have very little flavor and can be added to a home-made vinegar and oil salad dressing, where they emulsify the oil and make it blend with the vinegar, thickening the mixture and causing it to stick to the salad better. Lecithin can also be put in a fruits smoothie. A scant tablespoon a day is sufficient. Try to buy the kind of lecithin that has the highest phosphatidyl choline content because this substance is the second benefit of taking lecithin. Phosphatidyl choline is another precursor used by the body to build acetylcholine and helps maintain the nervous system.

. Spirulina or sun dried chlorella are also great food supplements. Both make many people feel energized, pepped-up. It is possible to fast on either product and still maintain sufficient energy levels to take of minimal work responsibilities. Algae reduces appetite and as a dietary supplement can assist in weight loss. It contains large amounts of highly-assimilable protein due to it's high chlorophyll content, as well as a large amount of beta carotene. It also assists in detoxification of the lymphatic system. It can be purchased as tablets or powder. Take a heaping teaspoon daily, or at least six tablets.

Vitamin C	500 mg	B-1	30 mg
Vitamin E	50 iu	B-2	30 mg
Vitamin A	500 iu	B-3 niacinamide	100 mg
Vitamin D	25 iu	B-5	50 mg
Magnesium	100 mg	B-6	30 mg
Calcium	400 mg	B-12	30 mcg
Selenium	10 mcg	Chromium	20 mcg
Manganese	2 mcg	Biotin	30 mg
Zinc	5 mg	Iodine (as kelp)	5 mg
PABA	20 mg	Bioflavinoids	100 mg

Beta-Carotene	25,000 iu	Selenium	100 mcg
Vitamin A	5,000 iu	Taurine	500 mg
B-1	250 mg	Cyctine	200 mg
B-2	50 mg	Gluthaianone	15 mg
B-3 niacinamid	850 mg	Choline	650 mg
B-5	750 mg	Inositol	250 mg
B-6	200 mg	Flavanoids	500 mg
B-12	100 mcg	Zinc	35 mg
PABA	50 mg	Chromium	100 mcg
Folic Acid	500 mcg	Molybdenum	123 mg
Biotin	200 mcg	Manganese	5 mg
Vitamin C	3,000mg	Iodine (as kelp)	10 mg
Vitamin E	600 iu	Co-Enzyme Q-10	60 mg
Magnesium	1,000 mg	DMAE	100 mg
Potassium	100 mg	Ginko biloba	120 mg
Calcium	1,000 mg	Vitamin D-3	200 iu