LONGECITY

I noticed that Paul Wakfer uses BHT in his regimen. It is a synthetic antioxidant often used as a food and petroleum products preservative. BAC sells it cheap (300 grams for 8.00). Abstracts on medline appear to show mixed results.

Anybody take this stuff?

Thanks!

Peace be with you all,
AMDG

Zen Catholic

I used to, figuring it's a very cheap bet. I plan to start taking it again, but you do have to work your way in and accumulate a tolerance, starting with small doses. If you dive in, you suffer.

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
reason@longevitymeme.org
http://www.longevitymeme.org

On BHT read :

http://www.lef.org/m...e_harman_01.htm

A major criticism of the early dietary antioxidant studies was that the antioxidants administered produced only modest increases in the life span of mice, generating increases in median life span that failed to exceed the maximum life span postulated for the species. In effect, the critics were saying that the large doses of antioxidants tested merely lowered the animals’ cancer rates without having any effect on their true life span. Harman was among the first to recognize the validity of this criticism. As a result, he returned to his laboratory and in 1968 published a dietary antioxidant study showing that the food preservative BHT fed over a lifetime to mice produced a 45% increase in life span. This exceeded both the median and maximum life span for that species, offering the first proof that dietary antioxidants can increase life span in mice almost equal to the effects of caloric restriction.

See also :
http://www.delano.co...ll-Working.html

With interesting ideas on BHT and lipid-coated viruses. My idea is that you shouldn't go over 250mg if you take BHT for years. So better take it in caps to avoid overdosing (from http://www.lifelinknet.com for ex.).

Also Harman worked on it I think that BHT action is more related to membrane theory of aging than antioxydant theory of aging :
http://www.vrp.com/l...=/searchresults
http://www.antiaging...ct/membrane.htm

Thanks for the information, Jacques!

Based upon my reading of the links you provided, I will add 250mg of BHT to my daily regimen, and thumb my nose at the influenza virus.

Peace be with you,
AMDG

Zen Catholic
Edited by zencatholic, 29 July 2004 - 05:06 PM.

The BHT study by Harman that has so long been used to sell it (and by extension, other "antioxidants") is "the usual nonsense."

 

Harman (who has, sadly, recently had life ripped from him by the aging process) took a small groups (10 mice each -- you need ≈50 mice in each group to get a statistically-significant readout of mean and max LS in mice) of abnormally short-lived, sickly LAF mice (mean lifespan: 14.5± 4.6 months), and threw a bunch of different single and/or combination antioxidants and vitamins at them. This is typical of the vast majority of claims of "extended lifespan" from supplement use.A normal, healthy, well-husbanded, non-genetically-fucked-up mouse given no special treatment will on av'g live twice as long as these mice: ~900 days (≈30 months), with a maximum (tenth-decile survivorship) LS of 1100 d, as is routine in the standard control groups in studies run by people who know what they're doing (Spindler, Weindruch, Miller, etc). But in report after report of 'life extension' in mice, NONE of the animals even live THIS long (or at best, the INTERVENTION group does).

 

Some of the antioxidants and supplements nothing; two synthetic antioxidants (2-MEA and huge doses of BHT) allowed mice to live longer than their miserably short-lived cousins. BHT partially normalized this miserably-short life mean LS (at 0.25% of diet, 17.0± 5.0 mo; at 0.50% of diet, 20.9± 4.7 mo).(1) Note the huge variability, and the short lives in all the animals in the study, whether treated with BHT or not. This is where you get the ridiculous claim of a 45% increase in lifespan from BHT. There was no ostensible effect on maximum LS: it did look on the survival curve as if the max LS might have been increased, but it's impossible to say when you have so few mice -- but (again) even if it ostensibly did, it's not real maximum lifespan, but a partial normalization of a miserably-short life.

 

 

 

Reference

1: Harman D. Free radical theory of aging: effect of free radical reaction inhibitors on the mortality rate of male LAF mice. J Gerontol. 1968 Oct;23(4):476-82. PubMed PMID: 5723482.