here's an older article :
https://www.warddean.../dmae-and-paba/
"An Alternative to Gerovital (GH3), the Romanian Youth Drug
By Ward Dean, MD
In Romania, Gerovital, or GH3, has been used for over 50 years to help people look and feel younger. It has attracted thousands of people each year to the spas of Romania and Western Europe where this therapy has been widely used. GH3 is a modification of the local anesthetic, procaine. It was developed for anti-aging uses by Professor Ana Aslan in Romania in the 1940s (Fig. 1). The discovery of procaines potential anti-aging properties was a serendipitous finding. Prof. Aslan was experimenting with the pain-relieving effects of procaine on patients with severe arthritis by injecting it into the arteries (!) which supplied blood to the area of the affected joints. She logically theorized that procaine, being an anesthetic, would relieve the joint pain. She was surprised to find that in addition to dramatic relief of joint pains, many patients also noted (1) improved memory, (2) less depression, (3) more energy, (4) restoration of normal hair color, (5) improved skin tone, and (6) a generalized feeling of well-being. (1)
These provocative results encouraged Prof. Aslan to carry out additional studies to test the effects of procaine on thousands of people. She did this at the Romanian National Institute of Gerontology and Geriatrics which she founded in 1950 — the first government-sponsored aging research institute in the world. Aslan found that by adding benzoic acid as a preservative, and potassium metabisulfite as an antioxidant, the procaine molecule was stabilized, and the effects were even more dramatic than with procaine alone. She called her improved form of procaine Gerovital, or GH3. She later added pyridoxine (vitamin B6), mesoinositol, and glutamic acid to this formula, to form yet another version called Aslavital. Aslavital was reported to have even more powerful and beneficial effects on memory, atherosclerosis, and other degenerative conditions than the original Gerovital H3. (2)
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