Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

Efforts being made to establish safety levels for popular supplements

Critics of the supplement industry often claim that because supplements are relatively unregulated by government agencies, there are no safety levels defined for them. Such claims are somewhat misleading, however — the truth is that a great deal of data has been collected about the safety or toxicity of many substances used as supplements. Some of this information is available in the ChemIDplus Lite database maintained by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. To use their website, type the name of a substance (such as “quercetin”) into the search-box, click on “Search”, and when the results page comes up, click on the “Full Record” link. Scroll down until you reach the Toxicity chart (if there is one).

The critics are wrong in thinking that a lot more toxicity data would materialize if only government regulators would lay their clumsy hands on the supplement industry’s operations. They are correct about one thing, though: there are major weaknesses in the existing database. Many compounds have no listed toxicity data at all, even though some data may exist somewhere in the scientific literature. And for those that do have toxicity data listed in the database, most of the information applies to lab animals, not to humans. There are sometimes large differences in how the bodies of different mammalian species process ingested compounds, and so something that is highly toxic for a rat may not be so toxic for a human — or vice versa.

A project is now underway to correct these deficiencies. Researchers at the Council for Responsible Nutrition in Washington, DC, are trying to establish ‘safe upper levels’ for as many nutrients as possible.¹ They collect human toxicity data from the medical literature, do a rational assessment of its quality, and from this determine the highest dose of each compound that can be confidently be said to be safe to consume, based on current knowledge.

In many, if not most, cases, the ‘safe upper levels’ so established are subject to possible revision upward in the future, if new data is collected at higher dosage levels.

So far, the supplements covered in this project, and the safe levels established, are:

• Coenzyme Q10: 1,200 mg/day²
• Creatine monohydrate: 5 g/day³
• Lutein: 20 mg/day⁴
• Lycopene: 75 mg/day⁴
• Carnitine (results not yet published)
• Glucosamine (results not yet published)
• Chondroitin sulfate (results not yet published)

References

[1]  CRN Scientists Offer ULs for CoQ10, Creatine, Lutein, Lycopene Natural Products Insider website

[2]  Risk assessment for coenzyme Q10 (Ubiquinone). Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2006 Jun 28

[3]  Risk assessment for creatine monohydrate. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2006 Jun 27

[4]  Risk assessment for the carotenoids lutein and lycopene. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2006 Jun 28

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LifeLink carries CoQ10 in 500 mg softgels; Creatine Monohydrate in 500 g bottles; Lutein in 6 mg capsules; and Lycopene in 10 mg softgels.