I have an elderly father (78 years old) who has chronic renal failure. Taking high dose Co Q10 and resveratrol togther with probiotics has stabilised his renal function at 25% for 3 years now - we saw major declines in creatinine levels when the CoQ10 was introduced, a little more with resveratrol and a little more again with the probiotics.. Basically, all things considered, he is in good shape. We are considering introducing a cycling programme of a telomerase activator (TA-65). Does anyone have any thoughts about how this might work, given the CRF background?
Renal failure in the elderly is often coupled with a decline in heart output. That's basically what congestive heart failure is all about- the "congestive" part is edema caused by reduced kidney function. I'm dealing with this situation in my 93 year old father in law. The two things that helped your dad both improve mitochondrial function, and will tend to help the heart muscles, which are probably not getting as much blood as they need due to coronary artery occlusion. In this regard, I'm not sure how well TA-65 will work. If there are heart or kidney cells that could be rescued from senescence by telomerase activation, then that would be good, but I don't know if there's a significant population of such cells. Here is what I'd recommend:
Taurine, 2g/day. There is some impressive data on this in CHF. It is harmless and doesn't interact negatively with pharmaceuticals.
L-Carnitine, 2g/d Improves mitochondrial function
Vitamin
D2 Yikes, typo! I meant D3, 2000 iu/d. Beneficially affects the renin-aldosterone axis, and is generally good.
Vitamin K2-MK7 90mcg and K2-MK4 1mg. Keep the calcium where it belongs, not in coronary arteries.
Kidney problems are usually precipitated by glycation damage, which is why there is a condition called diabetic nephropathy. Has your dad had a hemoglobin A1C test recently? Does he know what his fasting and postprandial blood sugar level is? He should avoid sugar and high GI carbs. A low-AGE diet would be beneficial; that means avoiding foods that are cooked at high temperatures. The extreme version of this is the 'raw food diet', which would probably make a big difference if you pursued it aggressively, but that's something that takes real dedication on the part of the patient, and the elderly tend to be set in their ways. There is a drug called alagebrium, also known as ALT-711, that breaks a certain type of glycation crosslink. It has been looked at extensively in diabetic nephropathy, and is quite promising. It's available on the internet, though it is not FDA approved.
What about banaba?
What's banaba?
Edit: fixed vitamin D typo.
Edited by niner, 06 March 2012 - 10:21 PM.
