Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

I see that LifeLink is offering a new product, PrimAGE, which is their tradename for pyridoxamine. There’s a lot of promotional hype on the Internet these days about pyridoxamine as a treatment for diabetic symptoms. I find it a little hard to believe. After all, pyridoxamine is just a form of vitamin B6, and B6 has been around for a long time. If it really has a major impact on diabetes, then why didn’t we hear about this a long time ago? Besides, how can a mere vitamin have much impact on a serious disease like diabetes?

There is nothing ‘mere’ about vitamins. Vitamins have always had impacts on serious diseases. Vitamin C prevents scurvy, for example. Vitamin D prevents rickets. These are serious diseases,¹ but are rarely seen in the industrial world precisely because vitamins are available to prevent them.

However, diabetes is not a vitamin deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets. So your question perhaps should be rephrased as “How can a vitamin have much impact on a non-deficiency disease like diabetes?”

The short answer is that the amino-form of vitamin B6 happens to interfere with a process by which diabetes causes symptoms in the body. Consider it a fortuitous accident — one that has little or nothing to do with the main functions of vitamin B6 in the body.

As for why the anti-diabetic properties of pyridoxamine were not discovered until recently, this is simply because these anti-diabetic effects require a sustained concentration of pyridoxamine that is considerably higher than that normally achieved from dietary B6 sources. In the body, pyridoxamine is rapidly converted to pyridoxamine-5'-phosphate, another form of B6 — too rapidly to allow a build-up of pyridoxamine itself. Furthermore, traditional vitamin B6 supplements contained no pyridoxamine at all and could therefore not serve as a concentrated source of this form of B6. It was not until 1996 that the anti-diabetic potential of pyridoxamine was discovered, during a screening of substances for their potential for preventing glycation.²

How does pyridoxamine interfere with diabetic symptoms?

Pyridoxamine interferes with a process called ‘glycation’, which is responsible for much of the tissue damage seen in diabetes. Glycation occurs when sugar molecules react chemically with protein molecules in the body, causing these proteins to be linked to each other or even linked internally. These links impair the functions of these proteins. In the case of structural proteins, such links impede the ability of the proteins to move relative to each other, thereby stiffening the tissues of which they are structural parts. In the case of enzymatic proteins, the links mechanically impede the ability of the enzymes to manipulate the molecules they would normally be expected to convert into other substances.

Thus, glycation is a process that damages tissues and functionality. It is responsible, at least in part, for damage to almost any tissue in the body — nerves, eyes, blood vessels, kidneys, etc. Because diabetics often have excess blood sugar, glycation is a major problem in diabetes. However, it is also one of the major causes of tissue aging in everyone, diabetic or not.

Glycation is not a single-step process. It occurs as a series of chemical reactions, starting with the bonding of a sugar molecule to an amino acid in a protein molecule. It ends with the formation of a cross-link between this amino acid and another amino acid in a different protein molecule, or even in another amino acid in the same protein molecule. Pyridoxamine interferes with one of the steps in this process.³

For more information on this subject, I suggest you read the monograph about PrimAGE™ on the LifeLink website.⁴

Conclusion

I think that PrimAGE (pyridoxamine) is one of the more exciting products that has come our way from the supplement industry. I plan to make it a permanent part of my own anti-aging regimen — at least, until something even better comes along. Pyridoxamine is, however, one of those substances that have to be used for a long time before any benefit becomes apparent. In effect, we are looking for a halt to the aging process; such a halt takes as long to notice as does aging itself.

— Dr. Alexis Zarkov, Ph.D.

You can contact Dr. Zarkov at AskDrZarkov@yahoo.com.

Last modified 2006.Apr.18

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References

[1]  Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Vitamin B6 NIH website Office of Dietary Supplements • NIH Clinical Center • National Institutes of Health

[2]  Thiamine pyrophosphate and pyridoxamine inhibit the formation of antigenic advanced glycation end-products: comparison with aminoguanidine. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1996 Mar 7;220(1):113-9 Booth AA, Khalifah RG, Hudson BG

[3]  Pyridoxamine: an extremely potent scavenger of 1,4-dicarbonyls. Chem Res Toxicol. 2004 Mar;17(3):410-5 Amarnath V, Amarnath K, Amarnath K, Davies S, Roberts LJ 2nd

[4]  About PrimAGE™ LifeLink website Russell Mills

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Disclaimer: The information provided in this “Ask Dr. Zarkov” article contains no medical advice whatsoever — it contains ‘biological information’. Nothing in the article constitutes an effort to persuade readers to use, or not to use, this biological information as a basis for action.