If you’ve already read Parts One and Two in this anti aging secrets and nutritional supplements series you’ll understand how the processes that lead to premature aging and the onset of debilitating degenerative disease are all INTERRELATED!
You’ve seen that to be successful, to any real degree, with an anti-aging program you must treat all five of the fundamental components of aging:
Free Radicals
Glycation
Methylation
Inflammation
DNA Degeneration
The bottom line for nutritional supplements marketing themselves as having anti aging benefits and the ability to slow down your aging process, is that they MUST contain the specialized ingredients which can address and tackle not only the free radical problem (which most supplement do reasonably well) but also these other four crippling aging components.
The anti aging secrets presented in parts one and two revealed that when it comes to addressing the first two aging components, free radicals and glycation, virtually all nutritional health supplements and multi ingredient vitamin supplements FAIL to give you either the best of these specialized ingredients (in cases where there are some choices) or NONE AT ALL.
Because almost all supplements are made to a price the manufacturers simply cannot afford to include these expensive rare ingredients!
Anti Aging Secrets – Methylation
So, now I’m going to move on to the third aging factor:-
Methylation
Anti Aging Secrets No 2:
Maintaining and Enhancing Methylation Is A Critical Step In Treating Aging And Disease Including Cancer And Heart Disease!
Have you heard of Methylation before?
Most vitamin supplement consumers won’t have come across it because supplement manufacturers won’t discuss it. Why?
Well that’s an easy answer and I bet you’ve already guessed it. It’s because their products do little to nothing to address Methylation! To mention it would highlight a major weakness in their supplements putting paid to their anti aging and ‘optimal‘ health claims.
Methylation is a biochemical reaction resulting in the attachment of a chemical fragment, called a methyl group, on various substances/molecules in your body, like DNA. DNA methylation is one of the most essential uses of a methylation process however there are many others – in fact there are hundreds of methylation reactions in your body!
So, simply put, methylation is a reaction that provokes changes in your body!
When a a methyl group attaches to some compounds in your body this acts as a catalyst for a reaction to take place such as the ‘turning on of a gene or the activation of an enzyme. (When the methyl group is lost/removed the reaction stops- ie the gene is turned off and the enzyme is deactivated).
Let’s use an example to put this into perspective so that you can understand why we should bother to care or even think about about methylation.
Consider the well known neurotransmitter serotonin.
Receiving a methyl group ‘turns on’ serotonin production leading to appropriate levels of this ‘happy/feel good’ brain chemical. But if your serotonin is not methylated it is turned off and this results in depression. See how methylation can have serious consequences for your health!
Now, people can be an over methylator or they can be an under methylator. In the case of our depression example above let’s say you are an under methylator. If your methylation is increased you may not need to take SSRI’s (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors).
This is very important for a person with depression! Further down I’ll explain how supplements can help to increase your methylation.
Please don’t start worrying about whether you’re an over or under methylator. Not everyone is one or the other, there are other groups and you may be in the group that is neither under or over so you’re fine. Statistical analysis by Professor Karl-Peter Pfeiffer from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, suggests 45% are under methylators and 15% are over methylators. That leaves roughly half of the population as neither!
The simplified bottom line for methylation is this:
If your methylation processes are altered, limited or in any way working less than optimally, you are heading for nasty health problems. The effects of under methylation can be seen as premature aging, cancer, heart disease, liver disease and other chronic illness, depression and birth defects. Not to mention the acceleration of your aging process!
So, methylation is incredibly important. It’s a bit like a spark plug in a car- making things turn on and happen. Without methylation you would die in a matter of days!
Anti Aging Secrets – Homocysteine
Now, I’d like to mention homocysteine because the methylation of it is exceptionally crucial to your health.
You’ve probably heard of homocysteine before because of its connection to the most common cause of death in the United States – HEART DISEASE! The medical and health establishments have gone to great lengths over recent years to bring to the general publics’ attention the importance of keeping their homocysteine levels low.
Homocysteine is a by-product of an important amino acid methionine and is what remains when methionine is used to methylate your proteins and DNA. Homocysteine needs to be methylated and converted back to methionine – it can be toxic if not converted!
How toxic?
Besides heart disease, elevated homocysteine levels are associated with poor circulation, degenerative illnesses (eg Dementia and Alzheimer’s), liver disease, and other severely debilitating conditions!
It is critical to keep your homocysteine levels down!
Anti Aging Secrets – Methylation As Time Goes By
Your body can become methylation-depleted just as it can become depleted with antioxidants or any vitamin or mineral, and with age your methylation process becomes less efficient. This results in DNA damage and a dangerous buildup of homocysteine as well as heightened risk of contracting any of the flow-on degenerative conditions listed above.
So, if you are an under-methylator to begin with or you have become methylation depleted you absolutely need to take action! If you are still young or middle aged then you also need to take action now to balance and possibly enhance your methylation and guard against premature aging and degenerative disease.
The action you need to take is simple! Just supplement your dietary intake with the methylation agents your body needs to successfully complete this task.
Anti Aging Secrets – The Methylation Agents You Must Have In Your Supplement
These 3 groups of compounds are what you want:
- B Vitamins – B6, B12 and Folic Acid
- Tri-Methyl-Glycine (TMG) – also known as ‘Betaine’
- SAMe (S-Adenosyl-Methionine)
However they are FAR from all equal in their levels of effectiveness as methylating agents!
SAMe stands head and shoulders above the others!
That’s because science and bio-chemistry have long since identified it as the primary methylating substance in the body.
Now, if you think back to parts one and two in this anti aging secrets series you’ll remember how I keep stressing that your aging process results from constituent components which are ALL interrelated.
Free radical damage, (part one), is one of these aging components. So, here’s another example of this interrelationship: free radicals alter methylation patterns!
What’s the big deal with that you may be asking?
Well, it’s these alterations which ‘turn on’ genes.
And that includes CANCER genes!
Anti Aging Secrets No. 3:
SAMe, in it’s role as the primary methylating agent, has the power to reverse damage to methylation patterns caused by free radicals!
So, SAMe is an absolutely vital ingredient that must be in your health supplement if you expect to be successful in your anti aging program. The other methylating agents listed above must of course also be there.
Now, as with parts one and two, I’m going to ask you to go take a look at your supplement bottle label.
In my post about free radicals I asked you to check your label for the most powerful antioxidant L -Glutathione ‘reduced’. Then for glycation you went to check for Carnosine, the only nutrient which can inhibit the formation of those deadly ‘aging’ molecules AGE’s.
I said that because around 99% of nutritional vitamin supplements are made to a price, 99% of you won’t find those specialized and critical anti aging ingredients in your supplements because they are simply too expensive for most manufacturers to include.
Well, this time I’m going to ask you to check for SAMe and guess what?
Yes, it’s the same story for this essential ingredient. You won’t find it !
Firstly, because of its super expensive price and secondly, just like L-Glutathione, it is particularly susceptible to damage by stomach acid and so it MUST be used in a pharmaceutical grade enteric coated tablet.
Unless you’re using the supplement that I use, your supplement definitely isn’t enteric coated.
So, SAMe’s not on your supplement label, right?
OK, so I’ve now covered three of the fundamental components of aging (free radicals, glycation, methylation) and we’ve seen the importance of treating all of them in order to produce real anti aging benefits and achieve a life without degenerative disease.
Look out for my post next week where I’ll be discussing inflammation.
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Use this link if you would like to read about the multi ingredient nutritional vitamin supplement I use.
Good Health Always!
