A company claims that their product, TA-65, a concentrated extract of astragalus, is able to lengthen the telomeres (it is, apparently), thus healing the effect of aging. This could be particularly efficient against neuro degeneration (this is highly questionable).
Dr. Fossel is still seeking funding. I agree with you that he appears to be the "real deal" with extremely impressive credentials. I also believe the TA-65 product is likely a scam. I will attach a link to the homepage for Dr. Fossel's company. I look at it often and have even corresponded with Dr. Fossel via email. It may all be too good to be true, but his work gives me hope and I think he is completely sincere and confident.
The TA65 is for people with a higher income or a lot of money. One bottle with 30 capsules in it is $100 or $3.33 per capsule. They recommend up to 4 capsules per day so that would be $3.33 x 4 = $13.32 per day x 30 days = $399.60 per month x 12 months = $4,795 per year.The Amazon reviews are nothing short of disappointing.
From my point of view, I would save a ton of money over this product and get more from melatonin in terms of preserving all around health and telomere length while protecting almost every organ in the body and getting anticarcinogenic effects and of course getting protective effects against neurodegeneration and a good nights sleep to boot! By comparison, melatonin costs pennies a day!
As you may have guessed, melatonin is and has been one of my favorite supplements!
Actually, considering all that melatonin does in the human body, sleep should be low on the list. I take a minimum of 33 mg/day, but have gone as high as 65/70 mg per day for an experiment to try and replicate a human study.
Plain and simple, I do not believe there is another supplement that can do all that melatonin can do for humans. The closest I can think of would be vitamin D, but I think melatonin is ahead and why I consider it one of my favorite supplements!
I had hoped to one day do a post on melatonin, but there is a ton of studies on it that show all of the things I have mentioned above and much more!
The antioxidant effects of melatonin is impressive all by itself and could be its own story because melatonin is a potent antioxidant on its own, but can recycle other antioxidants like vitamin C and E while increasing the bodies own potent antioxidants like catalase and glutathione. Because of this potent antioxidant response from melatonin it can be useful in neutralizing reactive oxygen species, nitrogen species as well as hydroxyl radicals. Here is an article that goes into some detail on the antioxidant potential of melatonin :
Last year there were over 1,200 melatonin studies on PubMed alone and this year there are already 1,079 on PubMed!
THIS IS JUST THE TIP OF THE MELATONIN ICEBERG !!!
It is almost easier to search for any disease or organ plus melatonin. When you start to see how much information there is, it is almost overwhelming. As is typical, there are good studies and not so good studies, but you certainly won't have a lack of reading material once you start to really delve into all that melatonin can do for us humans! Who said that melatonin is only useful for sleep!?!?!?
I believe that the two together increase the potential for gastro issues so I would try one at a time. I mentioned that I once tested a dose of around 65/70 mg per day total that was used in a study involving children with a form of muscular dystrophy for which there is little to no medications available for long term use and as far as I know nothing really substantial has ever come down the pipeline for any of the many forms of MD. Thanks Jerry Lewis and group for nothing!
Here are two links to the human study which is quite old now and lasted 9 months with positive results:
Even though they got good results, there were no follow on studies and melatonin seemed to be safe and effective in the study of these children. Had a drug been able to achieve those same results, it would definitely had follow up studies done. They could have sure used some of that Jerry Lewis Telethon money to further this study along considering the results that they got!
Thanks for posting all this info Art......more reading, but from what you say, we should be taking Melatonin more often. It seems as though it's at least as good as Carnosine!
I think the reason that low doses are considered the norm is because melatonin is generally looked at as a sleep aid and low doses are sufficient for that purpose, but once you start looking at melatonin studies, it becomes clear that it is much more than a sleep aid and with that variety of potential health effects comes a variety of dosing also.
I find the acceptable limit of one star Amazon reviews to be about 7%. The all-time high that I recall seeing when there was a significant number of reviews was around 37%. The TA6 product has about 18% one star reviews which is quite high. Too many unhappy customers, not to mention the terribly high price.
Content on HealthUnlocked does not replace the relationship between you and doctors or other healthcare professionals nor the advice you receive from them.
Never delay seeking advice or dialling emergency services because of something that you have read on HealthUnlocked.