aging-management.com - Optimising Health for Longevity

Don't see your favourite? They're all here:

Supplements and Nutraceuticals

Updated on 29th October 2008 by Dr Charles Tweed and Alistair Tweed.

Twenty years ago hardly anyone took a multivitamin or supplements. They were considered unnecessary and only really used in cases where a vitamin deficiency was confirmed and was causing a disease state.

How things have changed!

Nowadays, almost everyone is taking some form of supplementation and the American Medical Association recommends that all adults should take a daily multivitamin.

How much of what?

This a very interesting question and the subject of massive research worldwide. It is a field that is hard to keep up with as so much data is released every month. It is also difficult to interpret, as interpreting a scientific paper is a technical challenge. Most doctors do not know how to critically appraise a paper particularly well, which means that most members of the general public have little chance! The press tend to like headlines like “breakthrough” and “scare” and tend not concern themselves with the accuracy of the details too much. The Aging Management Team regularly review the evidence for disease prevention and anti-aging strategies.

General advice

As a basic rule, most people should take a multi-vitamin, several grams of fish oil and a comprehensive supplement programme designed to combat the aging process. For those with a higher level of proficiency and understanding of anti-aging and age management regimes, a more bespoke and tailored approach may be applied catering for their particular conditions and requirements.

If you are pregnant or planning on becoming pregnant then you should be taking at least 300mg of folic acid. General multi-vitamins are not intended for pregnant women and can be harmful. Even slightly raised levels of vitamin A and many herbal supplements are known to be harmful to the baby’s development. Accurate information is not available for many other supplements. If you are pregnant or suspect you might be, switch from our products to a supplement solution designed for you and your developing baby.

If you are at particular risk of developing, or already have a particular clinical problem, email us and one of our consultants or physicians can advise you about what is right for you, particularly if you are taking prescribed medicine.

The aging-management.com Product Portfolio

We have stringent requirements regarding standards of safety, quality and evidence base. We will neither source nor recommend products or supplements that do not meet our requirements. There is clearly a desire on the part of the consumer for legitimate anti-aging products. Unfortunately, the "anti-aging" marketplace is largely populated by cosmetics, fraudulent goods, adventurous marketing and products that do not address age-related degeneration in any meaningful way. It is the goal of aging-management.com to differentiate itself from the established anti-aging market place by providing a genuine, meaningful contribution to our site's visitors and customers good health and longevity. To facilitate this, we provide comprehensive assessments of anti-aging supplements, to inform and educate our visitors and customers. Then we offer high quality, effective, safe, evidence based anti-aging supplements at competitive prices to our customers.

Safety
There is a bewildering array of products on sale out there. Many are from highly reputable companies that source their ingredients from safe suppliers and have the standard of their products regularly checked. Unfortunately, an awful lot do not. Increasingly in this world of globalisation and outsourcing, the manufacture and compounding is often un-regulated, unscrupulous and unchecked. Sometimes, this means the quantities of the ingredients in the pills are quite different from those stated on the label. Even worse, not infrequently, there is contamination with heavy metals and other toxins.

AOR
Advanced Orthomolecular Research (AOR) has an established reputation as one of the most advanced supplement formulators in the world. The company is consistenty innovative in their approach to product formulation. AOR implemented a self-imposed process of quality control modeled on the pharmaceutical industry's for purity and rigor. All AOR products and raw materials are subject to a regular and ongoing process of third-party analysis by independent analytical laboratories to ensure purity and potency. AOR provides high-quality literature to support it's formulations that are readily understood by both practitioners and educated laypeople.

The AOR products we stock can be found on the aging-management.com AOR Product page.

Igennus
Igennus is a UK-based company specialising in premium quality Omega 3 supplements. Their innovative approach to product design is guided by a policy of strong adherence to supporting scientific literature and evidence based protocol. Their supplements are produced under pharmaceutical control in MHRA approved facilities that are licenced to produce medicines.

Although they are a highly economic source of fish oil, longer lived fish and marine mammals are higher up the food chain and tend to accumulate concentrations of mercury, dioxins and PCBs. Igennus` fish oil contains ultra-pure eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) derived from small, short-lived marine anchovies from the clean waters of the South Pacific Ocean. This minimises pollutant bioaccumulation and their fish oil is free from mercury, dioxins and PCBs.

Less pure preparations (ordinary fish oil) do not undergo purification. Some are obtained from the pressing of fish livers, others from the flesh of the fish and some contain high amounts of Vitamin A. The liver, being an excretory organ, contains higher amounts of impurities – this, clearly, is not the ideal source from which to derive omega-3. Extracting oil from the flesh of the fish means that fewer impurities are likely to end up in the resulting oil. Sourcing EPA from the flesh of anchovies ensures that the omega-3 oil is as pure as possible, even before it undergoes purification. The molecular distillation process then removes any remaining impurities. Highly concentrated fish oil preparations contain higher amounts of the active ingredient EPA, making it more boiavailable and meaning that less unnecessary fat needs to be ingested to achieve optimal levels of EPA.

Additionally, they have formulated an innovative, plant derived product offering the extremely well documented benefits of EPA to vegans, vegetarians and those with an intolerance to fish products.

The Igennus products we stock can be found on the aging-management.com Igennus Product page.