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Brains, Free Radicals, and E

September 4, 2005 04:55 PM

I don't push vitamins on this site and don't take ads for supplements. I do, as many of you know, take an antioxidant mixture formulated by one of the premiere researchers in the field, Dr. Demopolous. His product can be found at HMPScience.com.

I put this information up again because of a New Scientist article sent to me by Darren, one of our readers, about Vitamin E. The link is New Scientist.

My dosage, relative to the experimental subjects, is near the low end of the human equivalent of the mouse dosage, but well above the RDA for Vitamin E for humans. In my HMP supplement, I get 800 miligrams to 1.2 grams per day of Vitamin E. My diet also contains quite a lot, but I don't know how much because I don't count things like that.

But, I wouldn't take just any E; I take the HMP E. I would avoid the oil-based E sources because they become rancid on the shelf. The E that is included in the HMP product is an acetate-based form, stable, non-rancid and protected in a nitrogen package.

One of the things I enjoyed about my career as a professor was that I became smarter each year I taught. Having a lot of energy and curiosity helped a lot. But, teaching many different classes and often developing courses in new subjects, sometimes far beyond the conventional economics or behavioral science topics, forced me to be a good learner. The diversity of subjects in the Institute of Mathematical Behavioral Sciences was a bonus that kept me fascinated with all the things I could learn that I knew little of.

Near the end of my career I could teach two different classes back to back for a total of three hours of lectures without a single note in front of me. Some poor teachers can do this too in their non-technical subjects, but these were technically demanding subjects (read Hollywood Economics for an example of what I taught). I knew the subjects so well and I could organize the class in real time far better by responding to the students instead of going over canned notes.

But, the main reason was...

that I had protected my brain and allowed it to become smarter and stronger over the years. Rather than deteriorating, I believe my brain became more healthy, stronger, and more able to store the information I piled into it.

My antioxidant cocktail surely was a big part of this. Free radicals attack the neuronal membrane, aging it and inhibiting memory and learning. The membrane contains fatty acids that are susceptible to free radical damage, unless protected by fat soluble antioxidants of which Vitamin E and Alpha Lipoic Acid are the prime sources.

In addition, my diet contains negligible amounts of trans fatty acids. These nasty, transformed fatty acids stiffen the membranes of all our tissues. This is particularly damaging to brain neurons because neurons with stiff membranes have a hard time forming new connections (the physiological level of new learning).

Exercise and low body fat, another potent source of free radicals, were the other parts of the formula for brain health and life-long learning.

· Evolutionary Fitness

Comments

Posted by: Flower Online [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 27, 2006 7:54 AM

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