Acetyl L-Carntine vs. L-Carnitine
The Essential Difference Between the Carnitines
Do you lack energy, or feel tired and physically or mentally unprepared to take on the tasks of the day? This is not unusual, especially as we age, and today’s topic may help explain some of the reasons for this energy deficit.
Two natural compounds produced by our tissues, L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine (ALC), are similar in that both have identical chemical core structures. However, one (ALC) contains an extra component, an acetic acid bound to the core molecule (in what is known as an ester linkage). It turns out that this extra chemical piece makes a significant difference in how this molecule behaves in our body relative to its non-acetylated cousin, L-carnitine. These differences are described below, but first a brief summary of how these molecules normally function in our body.
L-carnitine functions as a vehicle to ferry fat constituents (fatty acids) across a membrane barrier into the cell’s energy-producing machine, the mitochondria, where the fat is converted to energy. Equally important, L-carnitine works in the reverse direction, too. It ferries toxic products produced during fat metabolism out of the mitochondria. This latter step helps maintain the mitochondria as clean-burning, energy-efficient machines.
We are all aware of the fact that as we age, our energy level diminishes. This decrease in energy parallels a decrease in the plasma level of L-carnitine. L-carnitine also decreases under conditions of stress, both psychological and physical. Consequently, it is described as a conditionally essential nutrient. This simply means that when our bodies cannot produce enough of it to meet demand, we need to increase the intake of this nutrient.
Acetyl-L-carnitine is just as active as L-carnitine in transporting fatty acids into the mitochondria. However, as described below, that extra acetyl group confers additional properties to this form of L-carnitine, which make it superior to its non-acetylated cousin. Both compounds increase energy Acetyl L-Carnitine or ALC Physical Energy Fat Metabolism Brain Protection Neurotransmission
Experiments with rats show a dramatic decrease (between 50-70%) in the activity level of old rats as compared to the young animal. Old rats, too, get tired with age! This decrease, as mentioned above, parallels a decrease in the amount of L-carnitine present in the animal’s tissues and blood.
This observation led researchers to investigate whether the old energy-deficient animals could be transformed into more energetic, youthful animals by feeding them a diet enriched with L-carnitine. Supplying L-carnitine to the diet increased the ambulatory activity of the old rats almost two-fold. The experiment was repeated with ALC, and it too increased the animals’ activity level to about an equal degree. So both compounds worked equally well in improving the old rats’ energy levels. ALC protects the brain
One of the two cousins, ALC, stands out with respect to its effects on the brain and nervous system. First, ALC is more effectively transported into the central nervous system. It more readily traverses the blood-brain barrier
Probiotics for Health
Probiotics for Health By S.K. Dash, Ph.D.
Many health-conscious consumers today want to know when they should take probiotics. They ask whether they should wait until they are sick. If so, they ask, which illnesses respond best to probiotics? Or should they take a preventive approach and take probiotics before they get sick? What about use of probiotics with antibiotics? Today, there is no doubt that taking probiotics is as essential as a multivitamin to your health. So my reply to such questions is that a daily supplement should always be taken to maintain healthy immune and digestive function — but the supplement amount should be increased during times of stress and illness. But let’s start at the beginning.
Probiotics — What Are They?
The concept of ingesting live microorganisms for the purpose of improving one’s intestinal health and general well being can be traced back well before the beginning of the Twentieth Century to earlier eras when most foods were nonrefrigerated and instead preserved with fermentation. But the current practice of using beneficial organisms to improve and sustain health is now referred to as probiotic supplementation. Although numerous types of bacteria (and yeasts) are currently being marketed as probiotic cultures throughout the world, the two most commonly used ones are Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.
Probiotics — A Health Essential?
Consumers rarely consider how essential healthy bacterial populations are to their health. But the fact is that a healthy ratio of beneficial to pathogenic bacteria residing within the gastrointestinal tract is essential to good health and influences not only digestive health but also immune function, detoxification, and women’s vaginal health. Unfortunately, great numbers of people today no longer have optimally balanced ratios of beneficial to pathogenic bacteria in their body, thus allowing the “”bad guys”" to gain the upper hand. This is very dangerous and one of the reasons that digestive illnesses, as well as other types of illnesses, are becoming so prevalent. Medically prescribed antibiotic use is certainly one of the most important causes of this change in our natural flora, with travel to foreign lands a close second. But beyond these detrimental impacts on our gastrointestinal health, we face many other daunting challenges to our bacterial balance. Unless one consumes organic dairy products, for example, one is almost certainly consuming traces of antibiotics and sulfa drugs, which have a disruptive effect on bowel ecology. Our highly processed food supply has also denied our bodies the opportunity to ingest beneficial bacteria as we once did through food fermentation (widely used before refrigeration). Our water also tends to be highly chlorinated which, although important from a public health perspective, has drawbacks for individual health when it comes to adversely impacting our body’s bacterial populations. When the body’s bacterial populations are upset, many kinds of illness can result. So for daily maintenance and in times of illness it just makes sense to use a quality probiotic formula.
Prevention and Treatment of Diarrhea and Constipation: Antibiotic-associated diarrhea can be attributed in part to imbalances in intestinal microflora. Bifidobacteria have been used to successfully treat intestinal disorders and in the prevention of rotaviral diarrhea in children and adults. In fact, taking a probiotic formula with antibiotics is now considered to be standard medicine in many countries. But antibiotics and probiotics must be taken a few hours apart. Constipation is a significant problem for many people, especially the elderly. Researchers have shown that enhancing Bifidobacteria in the large intestine of constipated elderly individuals provides a significant laxative effect.
Ulcer Therapy: If you’re taking antibiotics to treat your ulcer, you should be using probiotics along with your doctor’s prescribed antibiotics. That’s the message from researchers reporting in the February 2001 issue of Digestion. Frequently, nausea, bloating, diarrhea, taste disturbances and loss of appetite are side effects from use of antibiotics to eradicate Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium thought to be the causative agent in gastric ulcers. This latest study involving 120 ulcer patients shows that persons given both antibiotics and probiotics experienced markedly reduced incidence of bloating, diarrhea and taste disturbances compared to persons given only antibiotics, and most persons given the natural remedy experienced no side effects.
Enhanced Immune Function: Most of our immune cells are produced within the gastrointestinal tract and much of our protection against orally ingested pathogens (such as salmonella) is the result of a healthy gastrointestinal environment. There is perhaps no greater protection against such food-borne pathogens than the use of probiotics to sustain this healthy environment. Recent studies show that Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria can stimulate both general immunity and also specific antibodies to certain pathogens.
Lactose Intolerance: Dairy foods are a very important part of a healthy diet, but many of us suffer from some symptoms of lactose intolerance. Studies have shown that strains of Lactobaccilli and Bifidobacteria reduce symptoms of lactose malabsorption.
Establishment of Healthy Flora: in Babies and Infants Premature infants generally take longer to establish a characteristic intestinal flora, which can render them more susceptible to certain intestinal infections. Various strains of Bifidobacterium administered to premature infants results in populations of beneficial bacteria becoming established more quickly in their intestines compared to a control group. You will also likely find that children susceptible to middle ear infections enjoy better health when they are given probiotics (DDS®-Junior Probiotic for Children).
Editor’s Note: Dr. S. K. Dash is among the world’s leading experts today in the field of probiotics. Dr. Dash is founder of America’s leading probiotic company UAS Labs.
See the full unabridged version of this article at www.freedompressonline.com.
References Armuzzi, A., et al. “”Effect of Lactobacillus GG supplementation on antibiotic-associated gastrointestinal side effects during Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy: a pilot study.”" Digestion, 2001;63:1
Brain Cell Growth Boosted By DHEA Supplements
‘Anti-aging’ hormone DHEA Found to Boost Brain Cell Growth August 24, 2004
Human neural stem cells, exposed in a lab dish to the steroid DHEA, exhibit a remarkable uptick in growth rates, suggesting that the hormone may play a role in helping the brain produce new cells, according to a new study published this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The new work, conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides some of the first direct evidence of the biological effects of DHEA on the human nervous system, according to Clive Svendsen, the study’s senior author and an authority on brain stem cells at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center.
“What we saw was that DHEA significantly increased the division of the cells,” said Svendsen, a UW-Madison professor of anatomy and neurology. “It also increased the number of neurons produced by the stem cells, prompting increased neurogenesis of cells in culture.”
DHEA or dehydroepiandrosterone is among the most abundant naturally occurring steroids in the blood of young humans, but levels decline with age and its physiological effects are poorly understood.
A synthetic form of the hormone is sold over-the-counter as a dietary supplement in the US, thought to have anti-aging properties and to offer prevention against cancer and heart disease, Alzheimer’s and other diseases. But scientists know relatively little about the drug and its basic biological effects on humans.
“We don’t know much about DHEA, but this new work adds a piece to the puzzle,” said Svendsen, who conducted the study with colleagues Masatoshi Suzuki, Lynda S. Wright, Padma Marwah and Henry A. Lardy, all of UW-Madison. “This is the first real evidence of DHEA’s effects on human neural cells.”
Svendsen and Suzuki carried out the experiments by growing human fetal neural stem cells in culture. The cells form aggregates known as ‘neurospheres,’ which were exposed to a cocktail of DHEA and growth and inhibitory factors, and observed a 29 per cent increase in new brain cells compared to cells grown in a medium with the same factors, but without DHEA.
“We saw such a pure effect of DHEA,” Svendsen said.
“It’s the only steroid we tested that had such a direct effect on stem cell growth and new neuron formation,” according to Suzuki.
The new work is important because it provides a direct window to the controversial hormone’s effects on critical human cells. Similar studies have been conducted in mice and rats, but those models have shortcomings that are difficult to address, Svendsen notes.
“There are previous studies in rats that suggest DHEA is neuroprotective, but the problem with DHEA in rats is that it is not a major metabolite in that animal so its effects may not be the same as those seen in humans,” he said. According to Lardy, metabolic products of DHEA hormone have also been shown to aid memory retention in old mice.
Despite hints from the studies in rodents that DHEA may play a role in enhancing the brain and memory, the new findings reported in the PNAS article were a surprise, he said.
“We assumed the compounds we were testing would be more active than DHEA in brain stem cells,” Lardy explains. In previous studies, Lardy, with Wisconsin biochemistry colleagues James Ntambi and Brian Fox, showed that DHEA blocked a step in fat synthesis.
“The effects of DHEA on brain stem cells is a completely new finding,” said Lardy. “The problem of whether DHEA itself is having this effect, or if there’s another metabolite of the hormone involved, still exists.”
One of the intriguing aspects of the new work, according to Svendsen, is the possibility that DHEA could have some positive effects on the adult human brain.
It is known that DHEA amounts fall progressively during aging, and reduced levels of DHEA have been reported in both adolescents and adults with major depressive disorders. And given the fact that adult humans have neural stem cells that continue to make new neurons in some parts of the brain, there is a possibility that DHEA could play a role in moderating the genesis of new brain cells.
Fish Oil Supplements Can Be Purer Than Fish
Fish Oil Supplements Can Be Purer Than Fish
University of Southern California School of Pharmacy Detects No PCBs in Fish Oil Supplements in Health Products for Americas Top Retailers.
CARSON, Calif., Jan. 9 — As more Americans eat fish to protect themselves against heart disease and other illnesses, the scientific community debates whether toxins found in fish can do more harm than good. A recent study to be published in the journal Science found that farm raised salmon contained high levels of pollutants like PCBs and pose a health risk to humans. While the debate will continue on acceptable levels of PCB consumption in fish, consumers should understand that fish oil supplements can be purer than fish and are still safe to take.
Recognizing the serious health risks associated with PCBs found in food, Leiner Health Products asked the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy (USC) to test fish oil supplements it sells to the nation’s top retailers. Using analytical procedures approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), USC randomly analyzed fish oil supplements from 18 different lots. No PCBs, dioxins or heavy metals such as lead, cadium, mercury or arsenic were detected in any of the samples.
“We used EPA’s best method (Gas Chromatography-Electron Capture Detector (GC-ECD) to test Leiner’s fish oil capsules for PCBs. This is a complex, confirmed method of analysis that has been used for over 30 years. Our analysis supports the American Heart Association’s findings of the health benefits from consuming fish oil in the form of dietary supplements. Our research proves that people can take fish oil supplements without risking their health due to possible environmental contaminant intake,” remarked Dr. Roger Clemens, Director of Analytical Research & Services, USC School of Pharmacy.
Additional samples of Leiner’s fish oil capsules were also independently evaluated by Covance Laboratories in Madison, Wisconsin. Those findings were consistent with the USC results.
Some people believe fish oil supplements contain higher concentrations of PCBs than fish but this is not true. In order to produce the purest possible fish oil, Leiner uses a process called molecular distillation to remove pollutants. This process is similar to a water purification process that traps virtually all contaminants, resulting in a “”clean”" oil.
Molecular distillation is an excellent way to rid fish oil of PCBs, other toxins and heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadium and arsenic to below detectable levels. While it is impossible to remove 100% of all impurities, Leiner fish oil processed using molecular distillation exceeds purity standards set by California’s Proposition 65 requirements and the EPA requirements, which are much more rigorous than FDA.