What foods contain these?
Terry Pinnell
the radio today. It seems there's a growing belief by scientists that
a couple of naturally occurring substances have anti-ageing
properties: Acetyl-L-Carnitine and Alpha Lipoic Acid.
After a couple of hours' research I do indeed hope that they *are*
naturally occurring, as they seem darned expensive as supplements. For
example, typical prices here are £29 (say 44USD) for 50 'vegicaps'
(capsules?) of 200mg each.
So could someone please tell me in what foods they occur significantly
enough to be of likely value please? (If it's spinach, guess I'll just
have to let age take its toll. <g>)
Terry, West Sussex, UK
diana thorley
I have just checked on the web and found that the best source of
L-carnitine is lamb (mutton to be exact) and the best for lipoic acid
is spinach, but you need to eat three cupfuls. Whatever the price a
lot of people will be buying it tomorrow. Di
>
Martin Banschbach PhD
Terry,
Whenever you eat animal food you will get some acetyl-carnitine. Plant food
will have none.
When you eat animal of plant food you are going to get some lipoic acid but
not much.
Nobody wants to age but it's going to happen no matter what you do. These
two supplements are expensive. If I had not gotten them for free in the
past I would probably not use acetyl-carnitine and cut my dose of lipoic
acid back to 50 mg when I do decide to take it.
You can read all kinds of material about how good and safe the anti-ageing
nutrients are. They appear to be safe but they also appear to be completely
ineffective for this purpose (adding an extra 30 or 50 years to your
expected lifespan).
Spend your money on something else that will enrich your life, these will
not.
If you want to try something else, try MSM. Sulfur is an essential mineral
for humans and we probably don't get enough. If you know anything at all
about how animals protect themselves from oxidative damage you should know
that most of this inborn protection comes from sulfur containing compounds.
Yes lipoic acid is one of these sulfur containing compounds but unless you
are dealing with diabetes, I think that you are just as well off letting
your body do the sulfur thing naturally rather than pouring lots of money
into lipoic acid supplements.
--
Marty B. "You are what you eat."
http://centernet.okstate.edu/nutrition/index.html
The above website is for educational purposes
only. Material in this website and posted material
represents the opinion of Martin Banschbach,
Ph.D. and does not reflect Oklahoma State
University policy or position on nutrition.
Issues regarding the diagnosis and treatment
of human disease can not be addressed
by material in the above website or by
Martin Banschbach, Ph.D.
Any comments made by Martin
Banschbach, Ph.D. are invalid unless
confirmed by your personal physician.
Justin Bond
Actually, the best source of alpha-lipoic acid is red meat,
particularly the organ meats like heart and liver.
Jusitn
Steve Harris
news:a4u66n$8q...@news.cis.okstate.edu...
> If you want to try something else, try MSM. Sulfur is an essential
mineral
> for humans and we probably don't get enough.
We need methionine, but why generically "sulfur"? And what's "natural"
about MSM as a source of sulfur? How about an egg a day instead? In theory
eggs are bad for you (the fat, the cholesterol), but epidemiologically this
doesn't bear out. They raise HDL, they're cheap, and they taste good. More
than you can say for MSM. Or lipoic acid, for that matter.
BTW, for those who are fans of the idea of nanotechnology, lipoic acid (also
"thioctic acid") is a key part of a very interesting nanomachine called the
"pyruvate dehydrogenase complex" (and also a similar alpha-ketoglutarate
dehydrogenase complex, further down the Krebs cycle). It possibly acts as an
arm which swings the template molecule from one active site to another in a
little assembly line of enzymes, all clustered together.
SBH
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Martin Banschbach
> We need methionine, but why generically "sulfur"? And what's "natural"
> about MSM as a source of sulfur? How about an egg a day instead? In theory
> eggs are bad for you (the fat, the cholesterol), but epidemiologically this
> doesn't bear out. They raise HDL, they're cheap, and they taste good. More
> than you can say for MSM. Or lipoic acid, for that matter.
Actually elemental sulfur is listed as an essential major mineral for
animals. The feeling has been that all the sulfur needed is going
to come from methionine and cysteine.
The liver is going to release sulfate for use in cartiledge and bone
matrix formation. The liver also uses sulfate for detoxification.
The sulfate that the liver needs can come from methionine or cysteine
if there is enough of these amino acids around.
Sulfur is a lot like choline, there may be situations where some is
going to have to come in from the diet. Eggs can give it just as
well as MSM does.
I went over the "Arthritis Cure" with a fine tooth comb. Turns out
that condroitin-sulfate is only 5% bioavialable in the human gut
compared to
70% bioavailablity in the rat gut. For the rat studies most of the
benefit
was coming from the extra sulfur (at least that was the interpretion
for some of the studies).
I'm hoping that since MSM is now being used, more clinical studies
will
be published to see if it really can improve cartiledge formation in
humans. Even if it is a complete dud, it's cheap and safe.
As for it being natural, you have a point, it comes from DMSO. You
probably
know the whole DMSO story (race horses getting it but humans can't).
DMSO
has an LD50, MSM does not. As a cheap and safe source of sulfur I
don't see
any problem with popping a few pills now and then. I continue to
search to see
if the liver can really convert it to active sulfur. DMSO was
metabolized in the human liver but some of these metabolites were not
very good (not to friendly).
There is more than enough data on MSM to show that it can not form the
same
toxic metabolites that DMSO formed but it may not be handled by human
liver at all. As I reported, human brain (pet scans?) was studied and
MSM was decalred to be safe but with an unknown efficacy. There is a
lot so stuff we get from food that goes through our body unused. If
MSM turns out to be one of these things, I'll stop using it.
Steve Harris
news:cba7fed1.02021...@posting.google.com...
> "Steve Harris" <sbha...@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> wrote in message
>
> > We need methionine, but why generically "sulfur"? And what's "natural"
> > about MSM as a source of sulfur? How about an egg a day instead? In
theory
> > eggs are bad for you (the fat, the cholesterol), but epidemiologically
this
> > doesn't bear out. They raise HDL, they're cheap, and they taste good.
More
> > than you can say for MSM. Or lipoic acid, for that matter.
>
> Actually elemental sulfur is listed as an essential major mineral for
> animals.
For ruminant animals. You're not one. If elemental sulfur is changed to any
sulfur compounds in YOUR gut, it will be in a place so far down that the
consequences are going to be more social than nutritional.
Martin Banschbach
> > Actually elemental sulfur is listed as an essential major mineral for
> > animals.
>
>
> For ruminant animals. You're not one. If elemental sulfur is changed to any
> sulfur compounds in YOUR gut, it will be in a place so far down that the
> consequences are going to be more social than nutritional.
MSM gets into humans real well Steve.
Toxicol Lett 2001 Sep15;123(2-3):169-177
Magn Reson Imaging 2000 Jan;18(1):95-98
These are both human brain studies. If you read the "popular press"
MSM is a magic supplement that does everything including protecting
against Alzheimer's (of course this statement is not FDA approved,
this is America where the pill pushers can say anything they want as
long as it is not on the product label). I suspect that it was time
to check out what
was happening in MSM pill poppers since brain scans can pick it up
(why the papers were published).
The first paper gives brain levels at 0.42 to 3.40 mmole/kg brain with
equal distribution in gray and white matter. If you are not using
MSM,
it can not be detected in the human brain. None of the workups for
possible Alzheimer's had any MSM in their brain (I guess if a
supplement company was desperate to pull in customers they could say
that in human studies no patient ever diagnosed with Alzheimer's had
MSM in their brain to protect them from getting this horrible
disease).
The second paper gives a concentration of 2.4 mmol for a 62 year old
male. They actually determined the wash out time (I guess he agreed
to stop taking it) and it was a half life of 7.5 days. Both studies
looked at clinical, metabolic and neurochemical parameters and they
were all normal for the MSM users. There is very good transport of
MSM into the human brain and the comment is why would the brain take
up something with no known medical benefit? Both the tight junctions
in the gut and the brain are supposed to keep out anything not needed
but we both know that the door is not "fool" proof.
I suspect that if it is doing any good in humans, it's our gut
bacteria that would make the sulfur available for us to use. We do
not have to be ruminants for this to happen.
"Incorporation of methylsulfonylmethane sulfur into guinea pig serum
proteins"
Life Sci 1986 Jul21;39(3):263-268.
35S-MSM (radioactive sulfur) was used to see what would happen to it
in guinea
pigs. Believe me I looked to see if primates or pigs were used but no
dice.
The radioactive sulfur showed up both in methionine and cysteine with
30% more in the methionine than in the cysteine.
None of the radioactive sulfur came out in the feces and almost all of
it
came out in the urine. About 1% ended up in serum proteins.
That's actually less sulfur use than what you get from
chondroitin-sulfate in humans but it's a heck of a lot cheaper.
MSM and DMSO are both apparently part of the sulfur cycle on the good
old
planet earth but it's probably the micro-organisms in the sea and in
the soil that do the best job of getting at the sulfur.
I think vegans can get a better benefit from it than I probably am
because their small intestine is loaded with bacteria and mine are
pretty much down in the colon.
I know that you are probably sitting at your computer monitor reading
this and saying to yourself "what are these pill poppers going to
think of next?"
If something new comes out and if I think it's going to work with
little or no risk and if it's not going to cost me an arm and a leg,
it's going into my mouth. Synthetic beta-carotene and commercial CLA
were not very good choices but I don't take them anymore. If I was a
fine tuned racing machine, the garbage that went into me in the past
would have shut down my engine by now.
Even when tryptophan was available I was not popping pills like the
body builders were and I was not using it every night. I got
melatonin and I don't use it every night either (but I probably will
tonight because you got me all worked up :).
I don't use aspirin every day either although I probably should.
About 50% of us (Americans) use supplements but few use them the way I
do or have the assortment that I do. Tom Matthews probably comes
close but I bet I got him beat in the number of different bottles that
I have. Some of the stuff like oat bran and guar gum tablets I have
not used for many months. It's a heck of a lot easier this way, I
take my statin and two antihypertensives every day and I pop
supplements when I think I need to put some in. Just because I do it
does not mean that everybody should do it. I don't let supplements
interfere with my life. If I get into something and don't take
anything for a week or two, no big deal. I don't obsess with a regime
like some people do.
But for a non-user, it has to be pretty comical.
Terry Pinnell
>I have just checked on the web and found that the best source of
>L-carnitine is lamb (mutton to be exact) and the best for lipoic acid
>is spinach, but you need to eat three cupfuls. Whatever the price a
>lot of people will be buying it tomorrow. Di
>>
Thanks Diana. Bad news for me then, as I eat little meat and
positively dislike spinach!
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Terry Pinnell
>Actually, the best source of alpha-lipoic acid is red meat,
>particularly the organ meats like heart and liver.
Thanks Justin. That's good - I like liver. Although ironically it's
one of the very few things my wife doesn't eat, so introducing it into
our menu will be hard. If I succeed, what sort of quantity? One meal
of liver, bacon and mashed potatoes per week might be feasible, but I
suspect that might be insignificant?
Does 'red meat', just mean beef and lamb (as opposed to chicken or
pork)? Is the degree of cooking irrelevant? (I eat little meat, but
when I do I like it very well cooked.)
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Justin Bond
> justi...@hotmail.com (Justin Bond) wrote:
>
> >Actually, the best source of alpha-lipoic acid is red meat,
> >particularly the organ meats like heart and liver.
>
> Thanks Justin. That's good - I like liver. Although ironically it's
> one of the very few things my wife doesn't eat, so introducing it into
> our menu will be hard. If I succeed, what sort of quantity? One meal
> of liver, bacon and mashed potatoes per week might be feasible, but I
> suspect that might be insignificant?
If you are looking for a theurapeutic dose, probably. I think eating
liver once a week is otherwise a very healthful thing to do,
particularly for people that don't eat much meat. Liver is like a
warehouse of nutrients and has a lot more than just alpha-lipoic acid,
so you get the most bang for your buck that way. Liver once a week,
just like fish once a week, is a good idea, IMO.
I would recommend getting organic, or better yet, grass-fed liver
however. The liver is also one of the bodies main detoxifying organs,
and animals given large doses of hormones and anti-biotics have a lot
to detox! A good place to start looking would be:
http://www.eatwild.com/ (has a good list of suppliers)
http://www.biodynamics.org/ (look for a local CSA)
> Does 'red meat', just mean beef and lamb (as opposed to chicken or
> pork)?
Basically. Red meat is red in part because of the presence of
carnitine, which transports fatty acids to the mitochondria. Its the
mitochondria that contain the alpha-lipoic acid. The general rule is
the redder the meat, the more carnitine, the more mitochondria and
therefore more alpha-lipoic acid.
> Is the degree of cooking irrelevant? (I eat little meat, but
> when I do I like it very well cooked.)
My understanding is that it is pretty sensitive to high temperatures,
but perhaps someone else could comment more fully on that?
Justin
Alf Christophersen
wrote:
>These are both human brain studies. If you read the "popular press"
>MSM is a magic supplement that does everything including protecting
>against Alzheimer's (of course this statement is not FDA approved,
Which food contain natural MSM or DMSO ?? If there are no food
containing it, both are pharmaceuticals.
On the other hand, taurine is a compound that is found in all meat,
fish and lately, also lentils (probably other pulses may contain it,
but nothing is published about it). There are several mechanisms
available in brain where deficiency of taurine might lead to several
diseases that kill nerves.
Ron Roth
>We need methionine, but why generically "sulfur"? And what's "natural"
>about MSM as a source of sulfur? How about an egg a day instead?
>In theory eggs are bad for you (the fat, the cholesterol), but
>epidemiologically this doesn't bear out. They raise HDL, they're cheap,
>and they taste good. More than you can say for MSM. Or lipoic acid,
>for that matter.
I have recommended eggs for over 20 years to patients for the
the exact reasons you mentioned above, where tests not only showed
an improvement in lipid profiles, but there were also the usual
physical or mental improvements associated with raised sulfur,
when it was previously low.
Problem is, some people just can't stomach eggs, or they have some
intolerance to them, so supplemental sulfur is the only way to help
their low sulfur-related problems. And you can eat only so much
garlic or onions (if you tolerate them) as another sulfur source.
It's also been my experience that if you recommend food sources
instead of pills to bring up low levels of any particular nutrient,
people on average tend to forget food sources sooner than pills.
>Marty Banschbach:
>There is more than enough data on MSM to show that it can not form
>the same toxic metabolites that DMSO formed but it may not be handled
>by human liver at all. As I reported, human brain (pet scans?) was
>studied and MSM was decalred to be safe but with an unknown efficacy.
>There is a lot so stuff we get from food that goes through our body
>unused. If MSM turns out to be one of these things, I'll stop using it.
MSM will raise sulfur very efficiently in humans. You can see that
in the level itself going up, and in the opposing minerals, such as
copper going down proportionately.
--Ron Roth
--
Martin Banschbach
> >Marty Banschbach:
> >There is more than enough data on MSM to show that it can not form
> >the same toxic metabolites that DMSO formed but it may not be handled
> >by human liver at all. As I reported, human brain (pet scans?) was
> >studied and MSM was decalred to be safe but with an unknown efficacy.
> >There is a lot so stuff we get from food that goes through our body
> >unused. If MSM turns out to be one of these things, I'll stop using it.
>
> MSM will raise sulfur very efficiently in humans. You can see that
> in the level itself going up, and in the opposing minerals, such as
> copper going down proportionately.
> --Ron Roth
Ron,
Those brain scan papers show quite clearly that sulfur from MSM is getting
into the human brain. One paper actually reported the two excitation
wavelengths that they used to identify MSM. However, I have been unable to
find any published data showing that the sulfur in MSM is active in humans.
One guinea pig paper did show movement of the sulfur from
MSM into methionine and cysteine so I know that there is some metabolism
of the MSM but this may be by gut bacteria. Only about 1%
of the sulfur from MSM ended up in serum proteins. The use of sulfur
in MSM appeared to be less than what humans can get from
chondroitin-sulfate. I know that you find that MSM acts as active sulfur
because if it did not, you would not see an effect on copper. I kind
of thought that you might pick up on what Steve said so I held off on
telling Steve that Ron Roth knows it's active sulfur in humans.
I can prove that it gets into human brain but I can't prove it's active sulfur.
I'll let you handle any arguement from Steve about this issue. I for one
believe you and I'm sure that some day a paper will be published proving
that what you say is correct.
Andy B
(Alf Christophersen) wrote:
>On 19 Feb 2002 23:11:09 -0800, mbans...@aol.com (Martin Banschbach)
>wrote:
>
>>These are both human brain studies. If you read the "popular press"
>>MSM is a magic supplement that does everything including protecting
>>against Alzheimer's (of course this statement is not FDA approved,
>
>Which food contain natural MSM or DMSO ?? If there are no food
>containing it, both are pharmaceuticals.
Eggs, I think. Wasn't that said here? Darn, I am no where near my
books.
Regards,
Andy
Terry Pinnell
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Alf Christophersen
wrote:
>Eggs, I think. Wasn't that said here? Darn, I am no where near my
>books.
I doubt that. MSM is a synthetic drug as I understand it made from
sulphur compounds. Egg yolk is rich in sulfur compounds, possibly like
methionin, but that do not prove that yolk contain MSM :-)