Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

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Product Information

Synonyms: curcumin, turmeric yellow, curcuma, golden seal, Indian saffron

Keywords: aging, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, Burkitt’s, cancer, cardiovascular, cataracts, cholesterol, Crohn’s Disease, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, Epstein-Barr virus, fatigue, glycation, Hodgkin, IBS, insulin, liver damage, multiple sclerosis, pancreas, Parkinson’s, psoriasis, wounds

PriMeric™

The main active ingredient in PriMeric is curcumin — the yellow substance in the turmeric spice. Curcumin has a long history of medicinal use in India and China,¹ and in recent years has become a focus of medical research because of its remarkable effects on such processes as tissue damage by free radicals, inflammation, viral replication, and protein handling.

Curcumin normally is absorbed poorly from the human digestive tract. Less than 1% of the curcumin one consumes actually makes it into the bloodstream, and the liver rapidly destroys most of this. To eliminate this problem, LifeLink formulated PriMeric with two bioavailability enhancers — quercetin and piperine — which not only dramatically increase the absorption but also slow the metabolic conversion of curcumin to inactive substances, giving it a much longer opportunity to act.

What we can’t tell you

In the U.S. and some other industrialized countries, government agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have adopted censorship as a method for intensifying their control over the supplement industry and its customers. Thus, FDA regulations prohibit us from telling you that any of our products are effective as medical treatments, even if they are, in fact, effective.

Accordingly, we will limit our discussion of PriMeric to a brief summary of recent curcumin research, and let you draw your own conclusions about what medical conditions it may be effective in treating.

Since 1970, when curcumin first attracted the interest of scientific medical researchers, studies of curcumin have reported suppressive effects for the following medical conditions:

High serum cholesterol levels²
Free radical damage to tissues¹
Diabetic cataracts³
Diabetic damage to pancreatic insulin-producing cells⁴
Diabetic wounds⁵
Rheumatoid arthritis^6,¹
Inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s Disease⁷
Psoriasis⁸
Cancer^9,^8,¹⁰
Atherosclerosis^8,^11a,^11b
Inherited peripheral neuropathies¹²
Liver damage by chemicals and drugs¹
Microbial infections¹³

Anyone suffering from any of these ailments will probably find encouragement in the fact that medical research has identified curcumin as a possible aid. We want to single out four other medical conditions for which curcumin seems to hold especially exciting prospects:

Alzheimer’s Disease
Parkinson’s Disease
Cystic fibrosis
Ailments related to Epstein-Barr Virus

Curcumin and Alzheimer’s Disease

Curcumin has shown pronounced anti-Alzheimer’s effects in animal studies^16,¹⁷ and is being tested in human clinical trials.¹⁶ Its ability to disassemble the brain plaques (amyloid protein) that characterize Alzheimer’s Disease^15,¹⁷ has led researchers to say that it has the potential both to prevent the condition^14,^15,¹⁷ and to reverse it.^15,¹⁷

Parkinson’s Disease

Although the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease differ from those of Alzheimer’s Disease, the causes are thought to have much in common. Both diseases involve the formation of protein plaques in the brain,¹⁸ the trapping of metal atoms in the plaques,¹⁹ the production of destructive free radicals by the metal atoms,¹⁹ and the formation of protein pores in the membranes of nerve cells.¹⁸

In view of this similarity between the two diseases, and considering that curcumin has shown anti-Alzheimer’s effects, it is not surprising that it has also shown neuroprotective effects in biochemical models and in a rat model of Parkinson’s.^20,^21,^22,²³

Cystic fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis is a disease that is usually caused by a faulty protein in cells of respiratory and digestive tissues. The protein, called ‘CFTR’, is normally made inside cells and then transported and installed in the outer cell membranes, where it regulates the movement of salt molecules in and out of the cells. The defective CFTR proteins produced by most cystic fibrosis patients are quickly destroyed by scavenger mechanisms, leaving cells without the ability to regulate the movement of salt. The resulting disruption causes secretions in these tissues to become too viscous.

In 2004 it was announced by researchers at Yale University that mice with cystic fibrosis symptoms caused by faulty CFTR proteins could be successfully treated with curcumin, taken orally.²⁴ One might have expected this report to have been quickly followed by clinical trials to test the concept in humans, with results within a few months. But those who know how the medical world actually behaves nowadays will not be surprised to learn that nothing of the sort took place — instead, many research groups tried to test the concept in tissue culture. Some obtained positive results, some negative, turning a simple question into a contentious issue.²⁵ The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation did fund a clinical trial, but as of April 2006, two years after the Yale group’s published report, the trial has yet to progress beyond basic safety studies; the question of efficacy has not been addressed.²⁶

Some cystic fibrosis patients, however, were unwilling to wait years and years for the medical world to get its act together. They immediately began trying curcumin treatments on their own. The results varied from excellent to poor.²⁷ Since many of these self-experiments used curcumin without bioavailability enhancers, and none of them seem to have used both piperine and quercetin as enhancers, it is possible that curcumin’s low bioavailability index may account for the variable results.

Curcumin and Epstein-Barr Virus

Recent scientific studies provide evidence that turmeric can inhibit the activation of Epstein-Barr Virus — a herpes-family virus thought to be a cause or contributor to many diseases, such as Burkitt’s lymphoma, infectious mononucleosis, Hodgkin lymphoma, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and numerous cancers and lymphomas.²⁸

Conclusion

Are curcumin supplements effective for treating or preventing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s Diseases, Cystic Fibrosis, or the other ailments mentioned in this article? We aren’t allowed to tell you, so you should take a look at some of the references cited here, and then decide for yourself.

PriMeric — It’s hard to justify not using it.

The main active ingredient in PriMeric is curcumin — the yellow substance in the turmeric spice. Curcumin has a long history of medicinal use in India and China, and in recent years has become a focus of medical research because of its remarkable effects on inflammation, viruses, protein handling, and on free-radical damage to the body.

LifeLink’s PriMeric formula includes two bioavailability enhancers — quercetin and piperine — which not only dramatically increase curcumin’s otherwise poor absorption but also slow its metabolic conversion to inactive substances, giving it a much longer opportunity to act.

Four medical conditions for which curcumin seems to hold especially exciting prospects are:

Alzheimer’s Disease
Parkinson’s Disease
Cystic fibrosis
Epstein-Barr Virus infections, which lie behind such diseases as chronic fatigue syndrome, infectious mononucleosis, multiple sclerosis, Burkitt’s lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, and numerous other cancers and lymphomas.

Studies of curcumin have also reported beneficial effects on the following medical conditions:

High cholesterol levels
Free radical damage to tissues
Diabetic cataracts, wounds, pancreatic damage
Rheumatoid arthritis
Inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s Disease
Psoriasis
Cancer
Atherosclerosis
Inherited peripheral neuropathies
Liver damage by chemicals and drugs
Microbial infections.

The recommended dose for this supplement is 3 capsules per day (1000 mg/day of curcumin). Lower doses may be beneficial for general well-being, but higher doses are used in clinical trials for patients with specific ailments, such as cancer.

Considering the wide range of beneficial actions of this supplement and its well-established safety, it ranks as one of the supplement world’s smartest choices.

For more information on this supplement, click the “Description” tab above.