Aging

A Radical Solution

At age 38, Elizabeth lies on Litchfield Beach in South Carolina, sunscreen carefully smoothed over her wrinkle-free skin, her naturally dark hair tucked under a scarf and a pair of dense wraparound sunglasses shielding her lovely blue eyes from the morning sun.

Beside her is a cooler containing several bottles of springwater and a fresh fruit salad of watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew for lunch. Next to her on the sand is a pair of well-used sneakers for the two-mile walk she takes along the water's edge every day.

Elizabeth knows that she's gorgeous. There are no wrinkles or stretch marks marring her perfect body. And she's determined that there will never be. She'll do whatever it takes to defy aging until the day she dies.

What are the odds that she'll make it? Better than they were a decade ago. Back then scientists had already found the reasons that we deteriorate into wrinkles, bags, age spots, flab and life-threatening conditions. The reasons were, and still are, genetics, disease, environmental factors such as smoking and diet and the aging process itself. Today these scientists also know that every single one of these factors may be directly influenced and perhaps even altered by getting enough of the right kinds of vitamins and minerals.

A Chemical Blitzkrieg

Both the diseases that contribute to aging and the physical and mental "damage" that we associate with old age seem to be triggered by a lifelong blitzkrieg of damaging molecules that affect us on many levels.

These molecules, sometimes called free radicals by scientists, are sent zinging through our bodies by cigarette smoke and chronic infection as well as by the normal cell metabolism that converts the carbohydrates and fat we eat into the energy required to power our cells. Yes, just eating your daily breakfast normally produces untold numbers of these harmful molecules. There's no way to avoid them completely.

Unfortunately, free radicals have the nasty habit of stealing electrons from your body's healthy molecules to balance themselves, in the process damaging cells and their DNA, the genetic blueprint that tells a cell how to do its job. And without a perfect copy of that DNA blueprint, a cell doesn't know what it's supposed to do. Yet biochemists estimate that every cell in the body is hit 10,000 times every day by free radicals patrolling the body.

The result?

Depending on how badly they're hit and how quickly they're returned to service by cellular repair squads, the cells may mutate or die, explains researcher Denham Harman, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine in Omaha. And when either of these events happens, it may initiate the underlying biochemical processes that cause many of the diseases that accelerate aging: heart disease, high blood pressure, Parkinson's disease, cancer, cataracts, diabetes and even Alzheimer's disease.

Some scientists also believe that free radicals affect the aging process even more directly, says Dr. Harman, the man who first raised the possibility. In fact, he adds, "there's a growing consensus that aging itself is due to free radical reactions."

The idea is that there may be an accumulation of damage from the constant cellular bombardment by free radicals. A cell gets hit once, the cellular repair squads come to the rescue and cut out the damage to the cell's DNA blueprint, and the cell bounces back into action. But when the cell gets hit over and over again, there may come a point at which the repair squads can't patch everything back together the way it was. So the cell continues to do its job, but not as well as it had been.

If it's a skin cell, for example, you might end up with wrinkled skin rather than smooth, polished skin. If it's an eye cell, maybe you just can't see as clearly as you used to.

In any event, scientists have found that 40 to 50 percent of all of the proteins in an older person may be damaged by free radicals. Proteins are involved in a myriad of functions in the body, from guiding chemical reactions to supplying energy to maintaining the body's structures.

And that, plus the fact that laboratory studies indicate that damaged proteins shorten the life span of laboratory animals, has led some scientists to suspect that free radicals may directly cause aging.

Natural Antioxidants

Although millions of free radicals bombard your cells on a daily basis, the fact that it takes as long as it does for them to cause damage or disease is a tribute to the natural free radical-fighting systems with which you were born. "These systems are fighting free radicals every moment of every day," says Pamela Starke-Reed, Ph.D., director of the Office of Nutrition at the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland.

Each system is ingeniously designed to produce an antioxidant, a naturally occurring chemical that neutralizes the free radical (or the oxidant, as it is sometimes called) by offering its own electrons. In doing so, the antioxidant helps preserve your body's healthy molecules.

Each antioxidant is designed to work in a different way in a different part of the cell, says Dr. Starke-Reed. Its marching orders come from the genetic instructions on your chromosomes, and its power comes from a ready supply of specific nutrients in your diet. One natural antioxidant is dependent upon the availability of copper, zinc and manganese. Another is dependent on iron, and a third is dependent on selenium.

How much do you need? "You want to keep everything in balance," says Dr. Starke-Reed. But since scientists are just beginning to understand what it takes to keep that balance, "the best that we can do right now is to tell people that they should be taking in at least the Daily Values of all essential vitamins and minerals," she says.

Supplementing the Body's Natural Antioxidants

Although the body produces natural antioxidants to neutralize free radical damage, it doesn't produce enough to handle the free radical bombardment generated by the modern world. Your body's natural antioxidant systems were simply not designed to handle rooms full of cigarette smoke, a diet loaded with fat and constant exposure to new and more virulent viruses.

This may change once scientists learn how to genetically alter our genes so that we produce more natural antioxidants. But in the meantime, we do have another option: enhancing our natural antioxidants with man-made antioxidants--in a word, supplements.

Laboratory studies indicate that antioxidant supplements, predominantly vitamins C and E plus beta-carotene and selenium, seem to be able to neutralize free radicals that sneak past the natural antioxidants produced in your cells, says Dr. Harman.

"Nobody really knows what the optimum levels are," he adds. "But I recommend daily doses of 200 to 400 international units of vitamin E and 1,500 to 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C, along with 25,000 international units of beta-carotene every other day. I also suggest that people take one 50-microgram tablet of selenium in the morning and one at night." Some people may experience diarrhea when taking high daily doses of vitamin C.

Will this actually slow the aging process? "Nobody knows," replies Dr. Harman. It does in laboratory animals. But it will be decades before the people who load up on antioxidants live long enough to answer that question for humans, he says.

Yet while we're waiting to find out, one thing seems absolutely clear: Those folks who take supplemental antioxidants or who enrich their diets with antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables certainly seem to be preventing development of the diseases that can accelerate the aging process.

More than 50 studies conducted during the past decade demonstrated that high intake of foods rich in beta-carotene reduces the risk of cancer. More than 40 studies indicated that vitamin C does the same. And a review of studies that measured the amounts of antioxidants people eat revealed that the one-fourth of the American population consuming the most fruits and vegetables, the primary dietary sources of beta-carotene, vitamin C and selenium, had half of the rate of cancers of the lung, mouth, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, cervix and bladder compared to those who didn't consume as much.

What's more, people who got less of the antioxidant vitamins C and E and carotenoids such as beta-carotene were more likely to develop cataracts and macular degeneration, a vision-destroying disease that affects mainly older people. People who got plentiful supplies of these antioxidants were 37 percent less likely to have heart attacks.

So not only do antioxidants seem to prevent the diseases that accelerate us into old age, they also seem to be helping us to maintain quality of life.

Getting people to eat more as they age is important, says Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., associate director and chief of the antioxidants research laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. But what you eat is also important, he adds.

"In essence, eating a super high quality diet is crucial if you want to do all that you can to stay young longer," says Dr. Blumberg. "It's especially important to key in on good food sources of vitamins C and E and beta-carotene." Good sources include orange and yellow vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

"In addition, I'd go so far as to advise people who want to take steps to slow down the aging process to take a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement," he says. "The idea behind this is that you can die 'young' as late as possible."