Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (15 page)

SS:
What motivated you to form the Life Extension Foundation?

BF:
Our group knew there was an abundance of information that was being ignored by the medical establishment. We didn’t believe that mainstream doctors had all the answers. For instance, when we would go into a hospital and look at the charts of members in our network, we would often see that the patients were not getting optimal care. In some cases, they were ill because of anemia and obvious malnourishment. Simple problems like this, if corrected, could result in the patients getting
out
of the hospital, as opposed to continuing a downward spiral until they died. It was our ability to
reverse
disease states related to aging that motivated us to form the Life Extension Foundation as a nonprofit organization.

SS:
So … how has medical practice changed today?

BF:
There’s a lot more we can do today because consumer rebellions have stripped the FDA of some of its oppressive powers. Over the past thirty-two years, there has been an astounding increase in knowledge about what can be done to prevent and treat disease. The problem remains that much of this knowledge is not being utilized in the clinical setting. It’s shocking that we’ve got all this good science and so little of it is being translated into medical practice.
Our mission is to bridge that gap so that Life Extension members gain access to the fruits of research findings that are published in the scientific literature.

SS:
Okay, let’s get to the meat of this interview. I believe we all worry about the unknown. What are the things lurking in the body that could take us by surprise and bring us down? I ask because there are many people who take good health seriously yet succumb to a catastrophic event. It doesn’t feel fair. So what are they missing?

BF:
The greatest impediment is that many people who think they are living healthy are missing just a few critical components. The result is they die needlessly. There are eighteen known mechanisms of aging. They are chronic inflammation, glycation, methylation deficit, mitochondrial dysfunction, hormone imbalance, excess calcification, digestive enzyme deficit, fatty acid imbalance, DNA mutation, immune dysfunction, enzyme imbalance, loss of mitochondria, excitotoxicity, circulatory deficit, loss of youthful gene expression, loss of insulin sensitivity, loss of bone density, and oxidative stress.

The reason health-conscious people die prematurely is they leave themselves vulnerable to just a few of these age
-accelerating
factors that are easily containable with today’s technologies. [See
chapter 18
, “Advanced Age Reversal,” for a list of supplements that address each factor.]

SS:
Yes, these age factors are very important to understand. That’s why I put them at the front of the book in
chapter 2
, so people would realize they need to know what the terms mean to be able to get a handle on reversing damage already done to their bodies. But let’s talk about those who do follow a comprehensive program and still die early. What are these people missing?

BF:
Sometimes they overlook just one important factor. Think of all those who seem to be aging well but succumb to pneumonia. What some people accept as “normal aging” in reality involves a hideous decline in healthy immune function. Scientists refer to it as “immune senescence,” and aging people have to be particularly vigilant in maintaining youthful immune surveillance. They also need to immediately and aggressively treat any kind of infectious agent that could cascade into pneumonia.

SS:
What should we do to maintain immune function?

BF:
You need to restore your natural hormones to youthful ranges. A deficiency in the hormone DHEA, for instance, can result in a horrific disruption of immune responses. Conventional medicine has
frightened a lot of people away from the proper use of natural hormones. The fatal result is that elderly people succumb to infectious diseases they may never have contracted had they maintained a youthful hormone profile. But there is a lot more that aging people need than any single hormone to guard against pneumonia.

SS:
Makes me happy that your organization feels so strongly about natural hormone replacement, but Jack LaLanne seemed to be doing everything right. He restricted his calorie intake, exercised vigorously, and took a ton of supplements (never heard if he replaced hormones), yet he died in 2011 at the age of ninety-six. Now that’s a long time and a long life, but could he have lived even longer with the current science?

BF:
We aggressively sought out reasons why Jack LaLanne died at ninety-six considering his objectives of living well beyond one hundred years. From what we can gather, his first major event occurred in 2009 when at the age of ninety-five he underwent aortic valve replacement surgery. A little over thirteen months later, he died at age ninety-six of respiratory failure due to pneumonia. Even in healthy elderly individuals, the impact of aortic valve surgery can be what we call the “catastrophic pathological event” that leads to a downward spiral culminating in death.

SS:
So give me the Bombshell! What should have Jack LaLanne done to prevent it?

BF:
Jack LaLanne was ahead of his time in so many ways, yet he appears to have missed out on one key nutrient—vitamin K
₂
—that may have prevented
calcification
of his aortic valve. When a valve or other tissue in the body calcifies, it hardens like a rock and becomes nonfunctional. In reading Jack LaLanne’s last book published in 2003, he mentioned the importance of vitamin K only in the context of normal blood clotting, and he recommended green leafy vegetables as the main source. We now know that almost everyone obtains enough vitamin K for their blood to clot, but not nearly enough vitamin K
₂
to protect against deadly soft tissue calcification.

SS:
So you are saying that he might be alive today had he taken vitamin K supplements?

BF:
It’s hard to say since we only started recommending vitamin K supplements in 1999, but a compelling volume of data published since then substantiates the role of vitamin K
₂
in protecting against tissue calcification throughout the body, so people who have not yet developed aortic stenosis can benefit enormously by taking it.

SS:
So with everything Jack LaLanne did, the simple omission
of vitamin K
₂
may have led to his dying whereas he could have lived even longer had he supplemented K
₂
?

BF:
I’m afraid so. At the same time, we pay tribute to Jack LaLanne’s foresight in promoting healthy lifestyle practices decades before others, but we must acknowledge the lethal consequence of omission. New information is published daily that provides
clues
as to what aging individuals can do to prevent the lethal catastrophic event that initiates a downward spiral of terminal degenerative disease. We fear Jack LaLanne’s
omission
of vitamin K
₂
, and perhaps certain hormones, may have created his catastrophic event, that is, the aortic stenosis that predisposed him to pneumonia.

SS:
It’s amazing that one simple supplement can be so important to living longer. Vitamin K
₂
will come up several times in this book. Clearly it is very important. How much vitamin K do most people need each day?

BF:
There are two forms of vitamin K
₂
and everyone needs both. So one should look at vitamin K supplements to ensure they contain MK-4 and MK-7.

SS:
What are other countries doing to treat aortic stenosis?

BF:
Since 2007 Europeans have had an option to avoid the horrific surgical trauma associated with aortic valve replacement. Instead of open-heart surgery, a balloon catheter carrying a highly compressed bovine tissue replacement valve is inserted into an artery in the leg and threaded to the heart. Once the catheter reaches the beating heart, the balloon inflates and secures the new valve in place to replace the calcified aortic valve. Patients are functional within days as opposed to sometimes months of recuperation required for conventional open-heart procedures. In addition to improved survival, patients experienced substantially better quality of life afterward.

SS:
Why aren’t we doing this procedure here?

BF:
This method is being used around the world, but the
FDA
may not approve it in the United States until after
2014
. This is unfortunate as many elderly Americans are so sick that they cannot
qualify for open-heart surgery, and if they do, they may die from surgical complications.

By way of real-world example, an eighty-eight-year-old aunt of our magazine editor was told by her cardiologist that she had only a short time to live if she did not have her aortic valve replaced. She was taken to four different surgeons in New York City who all wanted to do conventional open-heart surgery. There are many concerns with a person this age, including cognitive deficits that occur in many patients placed on heart-lung machines and heightened risk of pneumonia and other infections during the long recovery phase.

Now here’s another Bombshell, Suzanne …

Dr. Michael Ozner, a member of our scientific advisory board, informed us of a clinical trial in which surgeons were inserting the bovine tissue valve with cobalt-chromium frame via catheter
without
open-heart surgery. None of the top-rated surgeons in New York City who were initially visited were aware of this new procedure.

The eighty-eight-year-old patient enrolled in a trial location in New York at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital not knowing if she would be randomized for open-heart surgery or this new procedure. Fortunately, she was chosen to be a part of the experimental group and was spared open-heart surgery. The procedure was done on Thursday, she was up and walking on Friday, and she went home on Monday. Two years after the procedure and now approaching ninety, she continues to work out with her trainer and takes her supplements. Equally as impressive, she does not need to take the anticoagulation drugs that mechanical valve patients require that carry a host of side effects, including increased stroke risk.

SS:
I am an Irish woman, and my family dies of heart attack and stroke. I learned early on that the Irish tend to have high homocysteine, which is probably a genetic factor and why most of my family has had heart problems. Knowing this, I have kept my vitamin B levels at optimum. What are your feelings about this?

BF:
Some cases of elevated homocysteine are genetic and require aggressive supplementation with an activated form of folic acid called
L-methylfolate
along with vitamins B
₆
and B
₁₂
, and other nutrients. This genetic predisposition has been reported in some Irish population studies. As far as the Irish or anyone else is concerned, high homocysteine may reflect diets rich in methionine-containing foods, which include virtually all protein foods, meaning they are hard to avoid. Methionine is found in beef, pork, chicken, nuts, and even fish,
so taking B vitamins is very important for most people to suppress the formation of homocysteine from methionine in food. As we age, our natural detoxification mechanisms become impaired and homocysteine levels tend to creep up, thus making proper B vitamin supplementation even more critical.

SS:
Yes, I have been aggressively taking vitamin B
₆
and B
₁₂
for years. Early on I injected it because we found my homocysteine was so high. I believe as a result of aggressively taking vitamin B, I have skirted my genetic predisposition and may have avoided a heart attack or stroke.

Explain the role homocysteine plays in heart disease and stroke.

BF:
We know that very high homocysteine levels can cause premature atherosclerosis that manifests as coronary heart disease in very young people. A debate has been raging between Life Extension and mainstream medicine as to how low homocysteine needs to be to not be a heart disease or stroke risk factor. By way of example, a group of doctors at the Cleveland Clinic assessed the association between homocysteine levels and various degrees of aortic valve disease in seventy-six surgical patients.

While the small size of this study limited its predictive value, the doctors stated, “It is conceivable that the elevated homocysteine levels seen in patients with renal impairment and older age could contribute to more rapid progression of aortic stenosis seen in these patients.”

SS:
How come so many relatively healthy aging women and men who suffer just one bone fracture never recover? They don’t always die right away, but they seem to develop endless complications that wind up killing them.

BF:
Sadly, bone fracture is a classic catastrophic event. It creates a deadly downward spiral in the elderly. It first causes immobility that makes aging individuals vulnerable to pneumonia. But bone fractures also create systemic inflammation that can thrust an otherwise
healthy person into a degenerative state that can manifest as dementia, stroke, or other age-related pathology. Had these people been able to prevent the initial bone fracture, they would have lived much longer in good health.