Most people, physicians included, believe that high blood pressure is a disease but I am not alone in believing that it is really just an inevitable consequence of aging.

If you only remember one thing from this posting, understand that high blood pressure occurs because, like our aging skin, the arteries become less supple as we age.

The arteries are like garden hoses that can also pump.  That’s why you can feel your pulse in your wrist and neck.  Interestingly, healthy young arteries can pump harder as they get farther away from the heart, thereby helping out with some of the forward pumping workload of the heart. That is depicted on the left by the ‘fanning out’ of the pressure measurements from “Aorta” to “Large Artery” in this purple diagram. By the time you reach the capillaries, flow is pretty constant.

But with aging,  gunk accumulates as atherosclerosis, arterial walls thicken, and the contractions of your tired arteries weaken, so the body has to somehow compensate for a LOW blood pressure being delivered to vital organs by both increasing the output of the heart (like opening the faucet) and narrowing the flow (like kinking the hose or restricting flow with your thumb).

The medicines we successfully employ to control blood pressure most often dampen the body’s narrowing mechanisms such as the adrenaline system, the salt excretion system, and the active control of the arterial diameters (the renin-angiotensin system), mechanisms which are all commonly misconstrued to be causes of hypertension, rather than its mediators.

The new paradigm considers hypertension to be body’s cure for a critical but faltering task:

the need to deliver blood away from the heart

Same arm BP's, different central work needed

This diagram shows three men of different ages who have normal blood pressure measured by blood pressure cuffs found in your doctor’s office (that were incidentally invented over 115 years ago.)

So their circulatory systems are all the same, right?    No.  Dead wrong!   Because “110/80″ in the arm, whilst resting and seated, doesn’t tell us much about the accumulated aging of the arteries that the heart and central arterial system must contend with.

In order to maintain similar blood flow delivery depicted on the bottom chart, notice that the 28, 52, and 68 year-old heart/arteries produce very different Pulse Waves more centrally, as depicted on the top chart.  The remainder of this post explores modern Pulse Wave Analysis (PWA) that is not, but probably should be, used in your doctor’s office to understand your actual circulatory function.

——————– 21st century technology:  The Pulse Wave Analysis (PWA)

Even if you’re not a fluid engineer for NASA, you can intuitively grasp PWA by imagining you have a turkey baster that is tightly connected to a water balloon. If the water balloon is long and soft like the ones they make balloon animals with, you don’t get much bounce back on the bulb when you squeeze.

But imagine you have it connected to one of those little round ones that you can hurl at your friends; you would feel a regurgitation into your turkey baster bulb after squeezing, right?

The first, green wave of the PWA corresponds to the heart’s pumping outward (the baster’s bulb), and the second, red wave is the backwards pressure wave reflected back from arterial resistance (the water balloon’s reaction to your squeezing). The blue, third wave the sum of the first two and represents the all-important, central measurement that was shown in the three men above.

If the circulation is soft and the arteries are helping to pumping blood away, there is not a lot of reflection.

But when the arteries are hard and no longer help pump the blood away from the heart, this reflection, which was once hidden in the turkey baster wave, shows up as a distinctly separate bump now. That is called the Augmentation Pressure and is bad because it is reflective of, literally and figuratively, the hardening of the arteries and the increased blood pressure.  Higher pressure creates more turbulent flow and vessel damage, and causes the viscious cycle of atherosclerosis and the other so-called ’causes’ of hypertension (adrenaline, salt, and the renin-angiotensin system) which I am trying to convince you are just the maladaptive, but required, adjustments needed to keep adequate blood flow in an aging circulatory system.

—————–  Is this still a 65 year old man?   Not so much…

A previous post documented our real-life Benjamin Button’s improvement in his reading glasses and far vision, which we speculated was caused by softening of his lens.  Well, his arteries also softened because his Augmentation Pressure dropped from 21 mmHg to 11 mmHg and his Augmentation Index dropped from 21% to 8% after a year of the Patton Protocol!!

His softer and better-pumping arteries were confirmed by a drop in his blood pressure from 140/90 to 110/60.   And no, our client was never on, nor did he start, any medications during this year and his weight and exercise regiment reamined exactly the same.   But he was taking TA-65 for that entire year.

If some of you still need more convincing, we’ve saved the best for last with for our next ‘Benjamin Button-esque’  update about his skin and lungs.

But if you are now curious about your own circulatory age, even on current medications, please call and schedule a free consultation.  Those who manage to schedule an appointment during September will receive their choice of either:

• complimentary Pulse Wave Analysis described here   or
• 50% off of the complete suite of Aging Biomarkers (vision, cognition, skin, pulse wave, and lungs. Special sales price is $250 but is Regularly $500.  Blood tests and TA-65 supplements are not included but there are no obligations and the consultation is free.)

Appointments are limited so call now and take advantage of our revolutionary technology, based on Nobel Prize-winning science, to reactivate your body’s own natural rejuvenation.  What have you got to lose?  Other than a few decades worth of aging, that is…

Readers of this blog know that I believe Telomerase Activation with TA-65 has made me younger, is safe, and works for others.

When people whom I haven’t seen for a while remark, “You look great! And got skinny! What are you taking?” I cringe a little because I know that semi-rhetorical question will elicit the following eerie deja-vu.

I reply: “Actually, I’ve been taking this new anti-aging pill.”

Them: (A chortle erupts as they literally laugh in my face.)
After reading my response was in ernest, they reply:
“No, seriously. Have you been working out and dieting?”

Me: “No, there’s this nutraceutical that extends the telomeres…(blah, blah, blah)”

Their eyes glaze over as they suppress a strong urge to laugh out loud again and wonder whether they should find a way to quickly escape from someone who has clearly lost his grip on reality.

But as I string words, sentences, and ideas together, my voice morphs back from the grown ups’ garbling of some Charlie Brown holiday cartoon (wah,wahh, wo, wah, wah…) back into English.

Me: “(Wah-wah-wah) protect the chromosomes (wah,wahh, wo, wah, wah) shorten as you age (wah,wahh, wo, wah, wah.) By lengthening your telomeres, you grow younger.”

By now, they have usually concluded that A) I’m serious and believe in what I’m saying, B) I appear to have a logical and coherent story, & C) it’s worth asking a few questions.

Them: “Wow. How come I haven’t heard about it?”

Me: One of several responses:
1) We’re trying to get the word out but only about 500 people, many of whom are borderline reclusive MD’s, PhD’s or CEO’s, have taken it.
2) There has been some limited press in Discover magazine and the Globe and Mail
3) It’s costly and is only offered through a small number of physicians.

Them: “How much is it?” or “Where do I get it?”

Me: “It’s $4,500 for six months. And I’m one of the doctors who can sell it.”

Them: “What? Why so expensive?”

Me: “It is very difficult to extract because it is insoluble in water or lipids. It takes three tons of root to make one batch.”

Them: “I’ll wait for the price to come down. Anyway, is it safe and FDA approved?”

Me: “Its a nutraceutical, like Vitamin C extracted from Rose hips, so it’s not regulated by the FDA. And so far, of the hundreds that have taken it, there have been no new cancers or adverse effects. Of course, before I took it, I scoured all the safety testing regarding carcinogenesis, toxicity, and human trials.

Them: “I don’t want to live longer. What’s the point?”

Now, I explain our goal is to have a better quality of life by becoming younger and then resuming your normal biological aging after stopping, like running a bit farther up a relentlessly descending escalator that you’re riding from the cradle above to the grave below.

Them: “Sounds too good to be true. Anyway, I just want go when it’s my time.”

And that is how it unfolds. Every single time, without fail, like Bill Murray forced to relive the same experiences over and over in Groundhog Day.

I used to wonder why 9 our of 10 rational people will so glibly profess a death wish as the final punctuation to this conversation. I thought it was because the fantasy was too threatening and anyway, they know the cosmos won’t hold them to thier proclamation any time soon. But I just stumbled upon the writings of a life extension advocate and cryonics guru named Ben Best, that might help explain the “logic of emotion” behind my dozens of identical, deja-vu encounters.

—————-

“Suicide counseling is primarily for people who are undecided about the value of life. The suicide counselor can attempt to remind or inform the despairing person of the potential pleasures of life — or attempt to suggest ways to end pain and depression. But a person lacking the will to live usually has no motivation to find a reason to live. The suicide counselor is helpless to change a person who innately experiences life as being something negative — helpless to find goals & values that would be meaningful. Many (if not most) people will eagerly choose death as a means to stop physical or emotional pain if the pain is intense enough and if the prospect of the pain ending seems bleak.

To me, discussing the value of life extension with people uninterested in extending their own lives is a great deal like suicide counseling. I see no easy way of translating my positive attitudes about life into other people having a positive attitude about life. I have come to believe that if a person does not value life, or believes that the value of life has an expiry date, the matter is beyond discussion. And I mean this not in the sense of difficulty of communication, but in the sense that what is of value to me may not be of value for someone else. I like strawberry and she likes vanilla. I want to live to be a thousand years old — and he doesn’t care whether he is alive in five years. Personal choices.

(he goes on to explain all the things he would do with a longer lifespan)

But telling people what I would do with my extended life will not satisfy those who don’t know what to do with themselves. Enthusiasm for living is the driving force behind the desire to live. To someone who equates extended life with extended boredom, a list of possible activities will only seem like a list of chores.

If people ask me why I want to live forever, I ask why they want to die. This is not a trick answer — my bafflement is as genuine as theirs. I can only speculate that most people live lives that are woefully boring, depressive or painful — and they are locked in despair that things will ever change. Many people complete the goals of social programming (education, marriage, family, career and retirement) — and then feel that there is nothing left to do but die. Why so little imagination and enthusiasm? I cannot understand why people are so content to age & die when science is making strides towards the prevention of these things and there is such a limitless supply of exciting things to explore & experience. Yet people ask me why — in a few decades — I cannot find fulfillment and satisfaction that I have lived. Why should I want a good thing to end? There is an incomprehensible gulf of different attitudes.

Too many people cannot believe in the potential for rejuvenation and perpetual youth. An elderly relative of mine who had been a dirt farmer all his life spent his final years on his porch playing a record “When you and I were young, Maggie” — bringing tears to his eyes. As a hard-working youth he and his young wife were described as the happiest of couples. Narrowing opportunities accompanying a deteriorating body & mind — with no hope for improvement — have a destructive effect on enthusiasm for life.

The energy of youth is often spent struggling to establish oneself in the world, with too little time to smell the flowers. Youth presents us with many opportunities which we fumble due to lack of wisdom — opportunities which seem lost forever when wisdom arrives. I have regrets for things I have done, but far greater regrets for things I have not done. All my mistakes were really terrific “learning experiences” Everything would be OK were it not for aging and death. I love my life and my life history — “warts and all”. Without aging and death all my mistakes would merely be the path to wisdom and fulfillment. Aging and death mean the futile loss of my life’s lessons, experiences and opportunity. I will do all in my power to prevent this tragedy. With rejuvenation we need not spend years mourning the loss of youth. A lifespan of even one hundred years is far too brief an experience of life. I want to live many thousands of years, at least — as long as possible.”

——–

(My Disclaimer: I do NOT advocate cryonics, for a lot of reasons that I ‘flesh out’ in my new sci-fi graphic novel, Maximum Lifespan, about a scientist who freezes his body and downloads his consciousness into a computer and then into his unsuspecting son.)

But Best’s insights truly shed new light on my Groundhog Day conversations. Historically, spirituality has always made good commerce in the transmigration of souls, whether it be the maudlin reawakening at the deathbed, or its ‘chicken-little’ proclamations that we’re ‘living in the end of days.’ Eschatology of individuals and their memes must emerge from their core values of the futility of earthly living and a sort of spiritual thermodynamics, not from a perspective of hope and abundance, which are relegated to the theism of an Afterlife and the magic beans of fairy tales.

Best’s words made me realize that biomedicine of our culture, the medicine that I’ve practiced for the last 21 years, is like a crack Roman legion engaged in frontier skirmishes even as Rome burns. I realized that Allopathic medicine and all our important cultural institutions have addressed immortality long ago and safely proclaimed all worlds of life extension to be flat and, ipso facto, frivolous to consider. I presume the logic goes something like this:

If G-d (or Gaia, or whatever trickster entity that controls us) had wanted us to eat from Eden’s other tree, the Tree of Eternal Life, he would have given us something like this supposed telomerase activator. But since this Ed Park guy isn’t famous and I’ve never heard about this, this couldn’t possibly be legit. Who cares if someone won a Nobel Prize for it? Unless Oprah, Oz, and Perez Hilton are talking, it can’t be that important.

Fast forward to the next time someone smugly proclaims, “Sounds too good to be true. Anyway, I just want go when it’s my time,” I’ll smile knowing full well that their ‘faith in futility’ is really talking but that most wouldn’t find it hard to choose between antidote and alter water if they’d just been poisoned.

Dear reader, we’ve all been poisoned with the knowledge of our own mortality and we are all afflicted with the only undeniable risk factor for causing death: being alive.

We close with the words of the Apollo and Dionysus of the aging Boomers:

At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.

Five to one, baby
One in five
No one here gets out alive.

Today is Memorial Day here in the United States, a day when we honor those who died during war.  For some historical perspective, here is a list of the seven most lethal wars that mankind has faced.

The Seven Deadliest Wars:

#7 Vietnam War (1968-75) - 2.5M killed

#6 Korean War (1950-52) - 2.5M killed

#5 Second Congo War (1998-2003) - 3.8M killed

#4 Russian Civil War (1917-1921) - 5M killed

#3 World War One (1914-1918) - 10M killed

#2 World War Two (1939-1945) - 40M killed

#1 War Against Aging (50,000 B.C. - present) 100 Billion killed

In this  “War Against Aging”, an individual’s weapons were limited to rest, exercise, nutrition, and herbs.

Cultures waged their battles against oblivion using prayers and sacrifices, having descendants, fighting wars, or creating art and ideas of lasting value.

But the winds of war are shifting against our ancient enemy of aging, which has slain 94% of its combatants (100B of the 106B Homo sapiens that have lived.)

Because just as we harnessed the power of the atomic nucleus to deter war, science has harnessed the power of the cellular nucleus to deter aging.

TA-65 is simply a scientifically-proven, MAGIC BULLET to defeat the Grim Reaper by refurbishing and recharging your DNA protection at the genetic level.

To enlist in our “War to End All Ends,”  visit:

http://www.rechargebiomedical.com/aging.html

Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 Nobel prizes:

• Economics: Elinor Ostrom (governance of the commons) &   Oliver Williamson (corporate governance)

• Peace:          Barack Obama (for international diplomacy)

• Literature:    Herta Muller (Poetry of the dispossessed)

• Chemistry:   Ramakrishnan, Steitz, Yonath (Ribosomes)

• Physics:       Charles Kao (Fiberoptic communication) &  Willard Boyle and George Smith (the CCD imaging sensor)

• Medicine:    Greider, Blackburn, Szostak (the discovery of telomerase)

I find it notable that from the six categories,  an average person with a college degree would have some idea of what the first five prizes were awarded for.

But the prize in Medicine was for the discovery of something unknown to 99% of its own expert practitioners.

Why? Is telomerase biology an obscure backwater of the field?  Hardly. A simple PubMed literature search brings up 16,385 citations for “telomere or telomerase”

A search of telomere + (other search words) yields these results:

• +Arthritis:                             56
• +Atherosclerosis:                  90
• +Neurological Disease:        644
• +Aging:                            1,375
• +Cancer:                          3,590

Someday, clinical physicians may have heard of a telomere, even though most all diseases they treat may be causally related to failures of protecting the tips of chromosomes.

With every day that passes, you will get older, but your doctor won’t get any wiser to telomere biology.  Even a Nobel Prize in their chosen profession isn’t enough for 99% of them to “Wikipedia it”  or take their eyes off of Health Care Reform or CNBC.

So maybe it’s time you did your own due diligence about what causes illness and aging?  It is a lot simpler than exercise, diet, and anti-oxidants.  It’s all about the telomeres.

To take the first step towards a longer and healthier life, go to www.rechargebiomedical.com/aging.html

Postscipt: Before you dismiss this newsletter, consider that telomerase is THE essential enzyme that protects the tips of DNA in all plants and animals.  That’s EVERY SINGLE CHROMOSOME in every single plant and animal!  That seems like a pretty significant discovery well worthy of a Nobel Prize.  After all,  Seven Billion other people were in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize just by virtue of not being George Bush