Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Grassy's Wild Ride
Today I travelled to the doctor's office in the next county. Grassy wanted to go. I said, "No, Grassy. It's not safe to ride the windshield wiper down the interstate at 70. You probably will have an accident, and not come home to all your friends. You'll have to make new friends. Stay home." Grassy wouldn't listen.
By the time we got to the next county, Grassy was concerned, but he held on all the way to the doctor's office. I shooed him away, hoping he would find a new life for himself rather than risk the return trip. When I came back and started home, there was Grassy on the windshield again. He made it all the way home, and now he's out telling all his friends about his adventure.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Stun gun for pain relief
I bought a stun gun several years ago for protection when I walked alone on a local nature trail. Besides giving a measure of protection against evil people, it was good to scare off animals, especially dogs, that sometimes menaced me. On top of that, I have read it will neutralize snakebites.
I intentionally bought the lowest voltage stun gun I could find, 45,000 volts, so that if I used it on myself to treat a snakebite it would be less of an ordeal.
And did it ever come to that? No, I was never bitten by a snake, however, I was bitten by a poisonous spider, and yes, I used the stun gun on the bite. I waited for several days, hoping I would get better, but instead, the bite got worse and worse. So I stunned it with the stun gun once. Immediately I felt relief from the pain level, and so just to be sure I stunned the area five times. Voila. Just like I had heard, the poison stopped and I completely recovered.
Was it painful? Yes, some. As a child I lived near a pasture with an electric fence to keep cows in, and all the children thought it was entertaining to hold onto the wire and shock themselves. Once. It wasn't that painful. It wasn't as painful as the spider bite. That was my experience.
I still have a low level stun gun, and considering how much it helped the pain from the spider bite, I decided to try it on my knee pain. I stunned the top of my knee five times, and then the back of my knee. Yes, it reduced the pain a lot. Why? Who knows. It would be nice to think it reduced inflammation, or whatever was going on. It probably just interrupted the pathway of the pain along the nerves to the brain. But either way, it did a good job relieving pain. Why not just take aspirin? This is beyond aspirin. Aspirin helps some, so do prescription pain pills, but I don't want to use them.
Wasn't I afraid? Yes, the first time I tried it I was afraid. I had heard all sorts of danger stories about stun guns. These stories are over inflated. In some bizarre, rare instances stun guns can be dangerous, but I have no heart condition or pacemaker or epilepsy. The pain wasn't that much, and certainly not as much as the pain I was already enduring.
And how long did the relief last? Well, this is the first time I used it on my knee so I don't know yet. I imagine it will probably last a day.
Time to celebrate.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Looking into efficacy of astragalus root in increasing telomere length
I did decide to buy TA-65, which is a nutritional supplement that contains an active ingredient called cycloastragenol, which is an extract of the astragalus root. It originally sold for $25,000 for a one year supply, depending on the dose, which varies with age. The price is down now to around $600 a month.
That's still pretty steep. So is it worth it? I took two 250 "unit" capsules a day for a few days. I was very pleased with my results. I fell asleep at a reasonable time, 10:00pm, which surprised me because I am a night owl. I slept well, which is not something I always do. The next morning, about two hours after taking my second dose, I noticed my vision was super sharp. Nice. I also felt less of the ups and downs of blood sugar during the day. So, I am sure I'd like to continue taking it, but I'm not sure this is the only way to go. Is there a cheaper substitute?
Why the big prices anyway? Cycloastragenol could probably be taken by just taking astragalus root, which is an inexpensive Chinese herb. However, isolating the cycloastragenol extract in the amount one would need for the telomere lengthening effect would take 1000 lb. of astragalus a year, over 2 lb. a day.
How much cycloastragenol should one take? The original dose was 100 mg a day. Now it's 5 mg. It's called units, so I'm not sure how much a unit is. I understand that the recommended dose has gone down.
There are other extracts in astragalus that cause the lengthening of telomeres, such as astragaloside, but this extract is about a tenth as effective as cycloastragenol.
I'll go ahead and tell you my astragalus root story. I also bought a bottle of astragalus root, not extract, just the powdered root. I took five of them, and broke out in hives. Well. Hmmm....
So, having determined that cycloastragenol is the active ingredient in TA-65, and that this is what I'm interested in going with, I started to find other similar supplements for a lot less money. One of them is $150, but I didn't see that it had any astragalus at all. It had something called ashwagandha extract, which also seems to be a fine ingredient, except I'm not at all sure it lengthens telomeres. TA-65 at least has been studied and shown to have numerous benefits, among them increasing telomerase levels, which is the enzyme that stimulates telomere lengthening.
So then, which other purveyors of the cycloastragalus are there? What are their prices? 1) LUXIVI 98% cycloastragalus $40 to $130 depending on the dose and quantity, between 5 mg and 8 mg. 2) CrackAging "Super Absorbtion" cycloastragalus, $40 to $115 also depending on dose and quantity. Both of these were found by searching Amazon.
And there were others. There is one that some swear by called Astragalus IV. This is astragaloside extract, which I have mentally put on a back burner. This is also sold by CrackAging, among others, for $80, as an additional supplement to take with their cycloastragalus. So, about $115 plus $80 would be $195. OK, less than $600, but I'd say one would still have to be motivated to spend that much.
But some are. Some have said that they have lung problems and their oxygen goes up to 96-98% when they take the supplements and goes down to 88% without it. If that's really true and it were me, yes, I'd pay. And some were convinced that their creatinine levels and kidney function improved phenomenally. Definitely put that in my cart.
So that's all I know about this subject so far. I'll use up my TA-65 and then I suppose I'll try another brand and maybe buy a made in America astragalus root and see if I can take that without getting hives.
Monday, July 18, 2016
Thursday, July 14, 2016
"The List"
Here is the list of the 37 cities military told to avoid. Due to credible threat? I don't know. Some of these places are high crime to start with.
http://texags.com/forums/16/topics/2762943
http://texags.com/forums/16/topics/2762943
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Life Extension
One might suppose that scientists everywhere are working on a cure for aging and death. Apparently not.
A couple of days ago I somehow happened upon a video on Youtube about longevity. I had heard a little about recent breakthroughs along this line. Breakthroughs? One study with surprising results: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/nov/28/scientists-reverse-ageing-mice-humans
Mice given the enzyme telomerase not only lived longer but became younger. Aging was not only slowed, but reversed. Older mice with a variety of conditions recovered and grew nice lush coats in addition to being able to reproduce. Yes, very interesting.
What's telomerase? Telomerase is the enzyme involved in lengthening telomeres, which keep chromosomes working properly.
Is the internet buzzing with the news? Not so much. Is that the whole story? Does this mean that the tragic disease progeria can be cured? No, this was the first thinking. As it happens, progeria is caused by a genetic defect causing a certain protein to accumulate in the body and become toxic. In fact, this happens with all of us, but much more so in those with progeria.
I tried to watch and read more about the longevity subject and found what amounted to ads for TA-65, which is a nutritional supplement to enhance the lengthening of telomeres, and a couple of other similar products with even less clinical evidence of enhancing telomeres than TA-65 has. Oh, and a weight loss brand, Isagenix, with shakes that have supplements. Both of these products are pricey, about $400 to $600 a month.
I saw a documentary on telomeres. It made the point, in a labored way, of the fact that chromosomes are capped with telomeres, and that as the chromosomes replicate the telomeres shorten and eventually wear out altogether, causing cell death.
And? And nothing. A factoid. The example of the telomere being similar to the plastic cap on a shoelace was used endlessly, as if anyone watching this had no brain at all to absorb scientific information.
So, I went on an endless boggle of documentaries explaining the need for plastic caps on shoelaces, and what becomes of shoelaces that don't have them anymore, and all sorts of videos of shoes being laced with defective shoelaces. One researcher even explained that telomeres are plastic caps on chromosomes.
After a while I understood that it's not that they think I'm stupid. It's that that's all they know.
Over and over when I've gotten wind of some "breakthrough," the researcher will explain that they're not looking for something that is missing in the diet, or an herb we can take, they're looking for a way to make whatever it is into a drug that a pharmaceutical company can sell.
My, there is a dearth of researchers in this field. There seemed to be around five researchers in the world, showing up over and over in every documentary, that was either about the mouse experiment or the shoelaces. Plus, any news was several years old. Each time the news includes the caveat that cancer cells need telomerase to reproduce and that surely we would all die of cancer if we had more telomerase, even though none of the mice studied developed cancer.
What is the supplement that encourages the production of telomeres? Astragalus root. Why not just take that? Oh no, no, no! Because they isolate the compound it contains in a lab in a special way. Hmmph.
Friday, July 8, 2016
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