Nutritional Supplements May Help Rejuvenate Aging Humans
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UC Berkeley- Two dietary supplements straight off the health
food store shelf put the spark back into aging rats, and might
do the same for aging baby boomers, according to a study at the
University of California, Berkeley, and Children's Hospital
Oakland Research Institute.

A team of researchers led by Bruce N. Ames, professor of
molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley, fed older rats two
chemicals normally found in the body's cells and available as
dietary supplements: acetyl-L-carnitine and an antioxidant,
alpha-lipoic acid.

In three articles in the February 19 issue of Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, Ames and his colleagues report the
surprising results. Not only did the older rats do better on
memory tests, they had more pep, and the energy-producing
organelles in their cells worked better.

"With the two supplements together, these old rats got up and
did the Macarena," said Ames, also a researcher at Children's
Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). "The brain looks
better, they are full of energy - everything we looked at looks
more like a young animal."

"The animals seem to have much more vigor and are much more
active than animals not on this diet, signaling massive
improvement to these animals' health and well-being," said former
UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow Tory M. Hagen, now an assistant
professor at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State
University, Corvallis. "And we also see a reversal in loss of
memory. That is a dual-track improvement that is significant and
unique. This is really starting to explode and move out of the
realm of basic research into people."

Based on the group's earlier studies, the University of
California patented use of the combination of the two supplements
to rejuvenate cells. Ames, through the Bruce and Giovanna Ames
Foundation, and Hagen founded a company in 1999 called Juvenon to
license the patent from the university. Juvenon currently is
engaged in human clinical trials of the combination.
- Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/02/020219075823.htm