Lycopene Saves Arteries:
Your blood levels of the antioxidant lycopene may reflect artery health. Among 109 Dutch subjects those with the highest blood lycopene were only half as apt to have severe artery damage as those with the least lycopene. Smokers with high lycopene had only one-third as much atherosclerosis. Lycopene is found in tomatoes, and is included in Jean Carper’s Stop Aging Now! Formula.

Blood Pressure Med:
If you have untreated high blood pressure, fish oil capsules may help reduce it, says new Johns Hopkins University research. Typical effective dose: 3,000 milligrams a day or about ten conventional 300-milligram capsules. Omega-3 fish oil dilates arteries and may reduce blood viscosity. You can’t get the same dose from eating fish, add researchers.

Folate Vs. Breast Cancer:
Among women who drink alcohol, taking folic acid may help block breast cancer, suggests a new Canadian study. Alcohol raises breast cancer risk, but folic acid may blunt it, cutting the added risk as much as 70 percent in postmenopausal women who consume one drink a day, researchers found.

Apple-Eaters Breathe Easier:
Eating an apple or a day or more than five apples a week is good for lung function. So finds a five-year British study of 2500 middle-aged men. Something in the apples—perhaps the antioxidant quercetin—helps protect lungs from atmospheric pollutants and irritants, including cigarette smoke, so you can breathe better, concluded researchers.

Eat Well, Live Longer:
Japan is number one in life expectancy and years of good health, says a new WHO report. The life expectancy for Japanese babies born in 1999 is 74.5 years compared with 70 years for Americans. Japan’s healthy life expectancy is credited to a low fat diet and low rates of heart disease and lung cancer. The U.S. was 24th among 191 nations because of high heart disease and obesity.

How Many Vitamins?
The Food and Nutrition Board advises taking no more than 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C and 1,000 IU of vitamin E daily. This is reasonable, although to fight cold symptoms high doses of vitamin C (up to 10,000 at one time) may be needed. There’s no reason to exceed 1,000 IU of vitamin E daily except on a doctor’s advice.

Even as experts debate vitamin E’s impact on heart disease, studies are emerging revealing exciting new reasons to take vitamin E supplements. Here are some of them:

• Saves Brains: A long-term study of 3385 elderly Japanese- American men in Hawaii shows that those who regularly took vitamin E and C supplements were 88 percent less likely to develop "vascular dementia," a form of age-related mental decline related to blood vessel damage in the brain. This supports a previous study finding that vitamin E and C takers were less apt to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
  
  
• Fights Cataracts: One month prior to surgery for cataracts, 50 patients took a daily dose of 100 milligrams of vitamin E or a placebo. Remarkably, in vitamin E takers, lens opacity (cloudiness) decreased almost 40 percent in those with cortical cataracts and 14 percent in those with nuclear cataracts, reported Indian investigators. In short, a modest amount of vitamin E partially reversed cataracts within a month! Something no other pill has accomplished.
  
  
• Combats Kidney Stones: If you are prone to kidney stones, vitamin E may help block their formation. In a double blind Indian study of 40 kidney stone patients, a daily 200-IU-dose of vitamin E normalized excretion of metabolites (oxalate, phosphorus, uric acid and calcium) involved in stone formation, within three months. Citrate excretion also improved in vitamin E users. By favorably altering urinary metabolites, vitamin E can reduce the recurrence of kidney stones, concluded researchers.
  
  
• Boosts Immunity: A daily supplement of 200 IU of vitamin E increases immunity in older individuals, improving resistance to disease, not only to infections but possibly inflammation related to heart disease, according to a new review by Tufts University researcher Mohsen Meydani. It is impossible to get that dose from food, he says, suggesting that all older Americans should take vitamin E supplements.
  
  
• Protects Exercisers: When you exercise strenuously, your body revs up production of free radical chemicals that can damage cells and lead to more oxidation of LDL cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease. Taking antioxidant vitamin E supplements—100 to 200 units daily—when you exercise can counter the hazard.

A "landmark" British study found that 120 milligrams of ginkgo plus 200 milligrams of ginseng daily produced an average 7.5 percent boost in memory performance in 256 healthy normal middle aged adults. This is the first study to show memory enhancement in normal brains from regular ginkgo use—over 14 weeks. Memory improved most about six hours after taking the supplement. Previous research suggested ginkgo only helped memory loss in older people.

Although the study used a unique commercial product, sold as Ginkoba M/E, Jerry Cott, Ph.D., former research scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health, and an authority on ginkgo, says other equally potent standardized ginkgo products should have similar benefits. It is unclear how much, if any, ginseng contributed to the mental boost.

In other research, German investigators reported that both a 60-milligram and 120-milligram-dose of ginkgo extract (EGb 761) taken twice daily relieved a leg circulatory problem called intermittent claudication that makes walking painful.

After six months, subjects getting either a total of 120 mg or 240 mg of ginkgo daily could walk more than 50 percent farther without pain. However, the study noted that some people benefited more from the higher 240 mg daily dose. Ginkgo is an approved treatment for intermittent claudication in Germany.

Jean Carper’s Stop Aging Now! PLUS Formula contains 120 milligrams of standardized ginkgo biloba extract.)

Since many studies suggest that vitamin E is a powerful protector of the heart and arteries, researchers were surprised by the outcome of a new Canadian study, called the HOPE trial. It found that people with heart disease or diabetes who took 400 IU of natural vitamin E daily for four and a half years did not have a lower rate of heart attacks, strokes, heart failure or angina (chest pain.) This is in sharp contrast to a recent British study (the CHAOS study) that found a dramatic 77 percent drop in heart attacks and other cardiovascular events in those who took 400 to 800 IU of natural vitamin E daily for a year and a half.

What gives? Some critics insist the recent HOPE study shows vitamin E worthless against heart disease. But most experts are not ready to abandon vitamin E’s potential against heart disease. They explain that the subjects in the HOPE study already had serious heart trouble, perhaps making it too late for vitamin E to rescue them.

Additionally, a new report in a journal published by the American Medical Association cites overwhelming evidence of key ways vitamin E can fight heart disease. For example, the vitamin blocks free radical activity leading to accumulation of fatty deposits on blood vessel walls. It also discourages formation of blood clots and proliferation of "smooth muscle cells" that otherwise grow and decrease blood flow in arteries.

On balance, the evidence says it’s still wise to take vitamin E in doses of 100 to 400 IU daily, say most experts, such as antioxidant chief Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., of Tufts University.

Why suffer the pain and disability of osteoarthritis when two safe substances can bring dramatic relief and help curb or even reverse worsening of the crippling disease?

A few years ago, while writing my book Miracle Cures, I started taking glucosamine and chondroitin for osteoarthritis in my hands and fingers. The stabbing pains disappeared and joint enlargements did not progress. To me it was a miracle—as it has been for many others. Twenty one million Americans suffer from osteoarthritis, a gradual age-related breakdown of cartilage in joints.

Recent evidence that these two natural substances combat joint destruction is compelling. Fully 38 studies now show that glucosamine and/or chondroitin relieve pain and improve joint structure, slowing cartilage loss or even stimulating cartilage growth. Further, recent research affirms that the two substances combined are more beneficial than either alone.

Glucosamine and chondroitin have even won the approval of establishment medicine. The Arthritis Foundation recommends them as "worth a try" —proclaiming them as effective as widely prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB). Other experts hail glucosamine-chondroitin as superior, because it treats the underlying disease, unlike NSAIDS, that merely mask the pain. Moreover, glucosamine-chondroitin is free of the hazardous side effects of NSAIDS that cause 16,500 deaths a year, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

Noted authority Jason Theodosakis, M.D., University of Arizona and co-author of best selling The Arthritis Cure, believes it soon will be considered "malpractice" to prescribe NSAIDS as "first line" therapy instead of glucosamine-chondroitin. (See his excellent website www.DrTheo.com).

So persuasive is the evidence that the National Institutes of Health has launched a $6.6 million four-year study of glucosamine and chondroitin in 1600 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee; the multi-center trial is headed by Daniel O. Clegg, chief of rheumatology at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

As the credibility and popularity of glucosamine and chondroitin have grown, so have serious complaints: scandalously shoddy products and high cost.

Problem One: Junky Supplements
Unfortunately, many brands of glucosamine-chondroitin are inferior or virtually worthless—"pure junk," says Dr. Theodosakis. He finds it shocking that companies knowingly market such ineffective supplements. Recent tests by an independent website, ConsumerLab.com, found that nearly HALF of 13 common brands of glucosamine-chondroitin failed because they did not contain adequate chondroitin, which is the more expensive ingredient and the one manufacturers are apt to cheat on. Some tested products have contained only 5 to 10 percent as much chondroitin as needed to be effective or as the label states. Bottom Line: If your glucosamine-chondroitin doesn’t work, you may have unknowingly used a substandard, ineffective brand.

Dr. Theodosakis recommends only four glucosamine-chondroitin products, shown to conclusively contain 100 percent or more of the claimed active ingredients. They are Sundown Osteo Bi-Flex; Thompson Gluco-Pro 900 Glucosamine Chondroitin; Nutramax Cosamin DS; Twinlab Maxlife Glucosamine & Chondroitin Sulfate.

Problem Two: High Cost
The highest quality, most efficacious brands of glucosamine-chondroitin, usually, but not always, cost the most. The brand I have used, Cosamin DS, generally retails for at least $50 and sometimes $60 a month. Twinlab’s combination was selling at GNC for $50 a month. There is nothing unusual or sinister about these prices for good products. Such supplements are customarily marked up at least six to ten times over actual ingredient and production expenses to allow for ordinary retail selling costs. Ironically, some high-profile, but inferior brands are priced higher—at more than $60 for a month’s supply.

How Safe is Glucosamine-Chondroitin?
Recently, it’s been reported that chondroitin may thin the blood and could lead to excessive bleeding if taken with blood- thinners such as heparin, warfarin (Coumadin), even aspirin. This may be of concern to those on such medications, but the risk of bleeding is substantial also from commonly recommended NSAIDS.

Here’s what Consumer Reports said about glucosamine- chondroitin in its May, 2000 issue: "These natural body substances contribute to joint strength and are usually taken together in supplements for treating osteoarthritis. Supplements may need to be taken for more than a month for full therapeutic effect.

"The short-term safety profile appears good; analysis of possible long-term adverse effects is under way. There are concerns about drug interactions for people on blood-thinning medications and about harmful effects on insulin resistance, a major cause of type 2 diabetes."

Note: Glucosamine is not known to have blood-thinning properties.