cryonics is ridiculous. he admits to drink tons of tea which is actually contradictory to benefits of tea, moderate or small amount is benefical, too much is bad. yet, he cries about tiny amounts of riserpine being present in coca leaves, which are as little as cocaine will be present in few leaves that you chew on and you probably might need 10,000 to get any good amount same as the high from cocaine. and if it does cause cancer, are you that insecure in your own body to fear one out of million things in this world that also cause cancer ? you might as well not breath if you fear cancer so much.
I'm one of a number of individuals who would like food to be more healthy than it already is. We generally believe that by improving the content of food to such a degree that nothing in it harms us, we may result in life extension benefits. We also don't like to add things to food which might be harmful, even in small amounts. Remember, LongeCity is about radical life extension and celebrating your 1000th or even 100,000th birthday. Too much tea is also bad for a reason, lets get rid of that reason.
Achieving an optimal metabolism would create a considerable benefit. Most aging is a result of metabolic garbage. So if we can prevent the garbage from accumulating, we can live longer. The garbage is also associated with cancer and such things. The potential harm from reserpine is REAL. As it is excreted by the liver, kidney, and colon, it can cause problems. For comparison, the half-life of methyl ester ecgonine is 60-71 minutes and benzylecgonine is 40-44 minutes according to the drug testing literature. the phase 1 half life of reserpine is 4.5 hours and the phase 2 is 271 hours. You could easily test positive for reserpine while not having a detectable amount of ecgonine in a day or two. If you're drinking every day for weeks, we're talking an accumulation that depending on dose could surpass the amount of beneficial stuff. All food has something ike this and if it didn't, we might not have to do science to extend our lives
The choice of subjects and choice of tests for this research were geared to exploring chronic brain damage, but there are two immediately obvious possibilities which could yield the same results. One is that the habit is favoured by people who already possess some degree of mental deficiency, perhaps because it permits them to forget that limitation. The other is that performance was affected by a temporary coca intoxication rather than by any long-term effect.
The above study has alot of good information. I don't think it demonstrates why cognitive performance was lower or that it was caused by coca chewing... It is also worth noting that users may mix the coca leaf with other leaves instead of using a powder alkali such as baking soda. So the choice of alkali may also be effecting the results. IIRC alkali substances can raise blood pressure too, though the reserpine would lower BP. More importantly reserpine functions as an anti-psychotic which is a tranquilizer and given it's ability to accumulate due to it's 271 hour half life and a new drink every 3-5 hours. It could very well be the reason that coca tea causes lower cognitive performance (I don't think they explored this in the study). I would think that removing it or breeding it out of the plant would be a good idea not only for the user, but also for an industry. I would hope they wouldn't touch the rest of the alkaloids though.
I'm thinking that given reserpine is an oxidant there must be an easy chemical way to remove it if we compare all the constituent molecules for a cheap uncommon reactant. Anyone got any ideas? Flashpoint? Vapor point? Spectrometery data anyone?
^ why wont the possitve compounds in coca not ameliorate the negative impact of what is so far purely speculative amount if any in existence of reserpine?
i remember a study done on fish with high mercury but high omega 3 content which happened to ameliorate the negative impact of mercury. and there are other studies showing positive compounds being anti-negative to the toxins present in comparison.
and i dont believe in your theory that making food as healthy as possible and removing all toxins or negative impact substances in it will prolong our life in significant percent. food is just energy, not lifesaving medicine, unless you are a homeopath and believe in this. its just there for energy! the more fresh and lacking toxins, the better that is true but its not going to do anything significant ever. besides, trying to completely turn food into some kind of a super life extending pill format is psychotic. im strong believer in ying-yang, in order something to be good it has to have bad too. i think if any toxins present in food, it might actually challenge our system more so than have detrimental impact long term.
and if you really wanna live 1000 years, which i think is insanity, look for something beyond what is considered normal right now. like import your brain into a supercomputer in the future if possible, or as of now, just concentrate your attention on stem cells as it seems the most hopeful variant so far beyond a delusion of food stripped of all toxins and turned into some super bad ass longevity material LOL
Cryonicsculture, read my above post. Reserpine is Speculated to be an alkaloid of coca, this has not been confirmed.
I'm going to have to agree with normalizing on this one, I also believe that in order for something to be good, it has to be bad too. I believe that, in nature, everything comes in a sort of "package". In the sense that harmful compounds are packaged along beneficial compounds.
One example of this is Sugar Cane. White Sugar is known for its ability to cause tooth decay, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. However modern reasearch has revealed that sugar cane, while containing large amounts of white sugar, has been shown to strenghen the teeth, stabilize blood sugar and lower cholesterol. Why does this happen? Because other chemicals in sugar cane(specifically vitamins and antioxidants as well as phytonutrients) mitigates and even overcomes the negative aspects of sugar.
This is of course not the case with all plants. Some plants are just flat out poisonous. However Coca does not seem to be one of those plants. Coca obviously works by some unknown mechanism that humans don't understand. Reserpine may very well be complementing other compounds in coca, which all work together to mitigate Cocaine's effect. By removing Reserpine you're screwing with this very delicate and perfect system. Which means that Reserpine-free coca extract could very well be just as addictive and have the same side effects as low doses of orally administered Cocaine Hydrochloride. Not to mention the fact that modern alkaloid extraction techniques will most likely remove alot of beneficial compounds from coca(antioxidants, vitamins etc) along with Reserpine.
Please don't try to mess around with the mechanisms present in this plant. Coca contains COCAINE for gods sake! The very limited research proves that coca is harmless in its NATURAL form.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for longevity. I want to live 1000 years too! But this idea can only lead to more harm than good. You say Reserpine causes oxidative stress? I'll supplement with more antioxidants. You say Reserpine builds up? I'll drink less coca tea every week. But I sure as hell am not going to try to screw with the unknown mechanism present in coca to possibly get some tiny marginal benefit that probably won't outweight the negatives.