A Little Background On Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA)
In this day of environmental toxicity and the resultant increase in auto-immune diseases and disorders, any micronutrient that facilitates detoxification at the level of the body’s major detoxification organ, the liver, is immeasurably valuable.
The World Health Organization tells us that in the industrialized world for example; cancer is caused 20% by genetics and 80% by DIET and ENVIRONMENT. Additionally, this tends to reflect overall chronic disease causes in the industrialized portion of the world. Therefore, heart and vascular diseases, respiratory diseases, neuromuscular diseases, and diseases of the immune system are mostly modifiable if we are willing to adapt our internal environment by detoxification and diet, by eating organic and supplementing with vitamins and other antioxidant nutrients. Anything that improves detoxification at the liver level (the primary detoxification organ) is important. ALA plays that role.
An Example of Chemical Killers
We are immersed in a toxic environment. Because petrochemical toxins are fat soluble, they permeate all biological membranes including human skin and the skins of fruits and vegetables. Toxic chemicals saturate our food, the newspapers and books we read, the cars that we drive, and even the computer chips in our office equipment. Set up a new computer or television set and you can smell the toxic solvents evaporating off of the equipment for weeks after you open the box. Poisons are sprayed everywhere – school, work, and home. Carpeting and wallboard off-gas toxic chemicals to the point of producing recently recognized diseases, such as sick building syndrome and sick trailer syndrome.
In a Clean World, ALA Is A Nutrient We Shouldn’t Need To Supplement
Unlike vitamins and essential minerals, the body makes ALA. Unfortunately, as we get older our bodies make progressively less. Less ALA combined with life long accumulated levels of environmental toxins causes health problems. The key word here is accumulated.
When our storage capacity for toxic chemicals reaches saturation we begin to get sick, and any organ system can demonstrate the symptoms. Unfortunately, the brain is 40% fat by weight and is a prime repository for fat soluble toxins, resulting in the epidemic of dementia in our industrialized societies. Ironically, when we need ALA the most we make the least, and that’s the best possible argument for supplementation.
How Does ALA Work?
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ALA is a natural antioxidant, produced by plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria. Remember that anti-oxidants are the chemicals that protect us from the poisons and toxins in our environment and reduce our risk to chronic disease processes. In fact, ALA is so important to our well being that every cell in our body manufactures it.
We make a lot of it when we are children, but as with so many life processes, the rate of manufacture drops appreciably as we age. By the age of forty, our ability to manufacture ALA has been so severely reduced that we must rely on food sources for adequacy, which is insufficient in this age of chemical pollution. The current research continues to encourage supplementation with ever increasing doses to meet the needs of the ever increasing toxicity of our society, which is the reason for the increased levels in our new product.
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ALA facilitates energy production by getting fuel across the mitochondrial membrane. Mitochondria are the factories within our cells that actually produce our energy. This is a complicated chemical cascade; the details of which are best left to the chemists.
Nevertheless, it is important to understand that in the aging cellular environment of ever decreasing ALA, energy production must decline. This explains a good part of why our energy slips away while we age, and provides a solution to some of the fatigue related to aging. The loss of energy, fatigue, as we age and decline in health is the number two complaint of patients in doctors’ offices. Because of the size of the problem, every little piece of the solution is important.
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ALA is a free radical scavenger in a class by itself. Because of its molecular structure, ALA can act as both a water soluble and fat soluble antioxidant. That’s important because most antioxidants are either water soluble or fat soluble. Vitamin E, for example, is fat soluble. Therefore it functions as a powerful antioxidant protecting the fatty portions of the cell, more especially the cellular membrane which has a fatty middle layer, from free radical damage.
Vitamin C is a powerful water soluble antioxidant, which protects the inner workings of the cell from free radical damage. These antioxidants protect our cells from the chemical free radicals produced by our cells as well as from the toxic free radicals that have become so prevalent in our industrialized society.
In fact, we live in the most toxic period our planet has ever known. Our bodies have to detoxify chemicals that didn’t exist on the planet 50 years ago, plastic being an excellent example. This toxic chemical soup creates an overwhelming toxic chemical body burden that correlates well with the increase in chronic degenerative disease in our older and younger populations.
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ALA protects us from our environment. As a super free radical scavenger, ALA protects us from: the chemically adulterated foods that occupy the shelves of our super markets; tainted tap water; polluted air; and lawn chemicals. Additionally, it plays an important role in reactivating both vitamins E and C when they are used up in chemical reactions scavenging free radicals. ALA, when present in optimum amounts, allows the body to use these two important vitamins over and over. So not only does it act as a super antioxidant itself, it reactivates other critical antioxidants.
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ALA is readily absorbed. ALA is considered by some an ideal antioxidant because it is very easily absorbed by the digestive tract, and becomes readily available when supplemented. This is not always the case with nutritional supplements. Calcium and glutathione are good examples of supplements that are particularly difficult to digest and absorb. It’s a plus when your body uses the supplements you take easily and efficiently.
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ALA recycles glutathione. Glutathione is thought to be the most important antioxidant in the body. Unfortunately, it too declines as we age, and glutathione is absorbed poorly as a supplement. In fact, absorption of glutathione is so poor that many authorities think it is useless to consider supplementation. The good news is that ALA takes reduced or used up glutathione and reactivates it. Studies show that supplementing ALA significantly increases cellular levels of glutathione. Some studies suggest that those cellular levels are increased by as much as three fold.
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ALA acts as a chelator. Chele in Greek means claw. In chemistry, a chelating agent acts like a claw. It attaches to something, inactivates it, and carries it to a place where it is utilized or excreted. ALA chelates toxic heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and lead.
We have all read about lead poisoning in the inner cities from the leaded gasoline we used years ago. We’ve also heard about the dangers of lead in the old oil based paints. Even when the toxic body burden from these poisons is great, ALA will bind to them and clear them from the body. Perhaps most importantly, ALA chelates the mercury that ablates (sloughs off) from the silver/mercury fillings in teeth. Mercury is a serious health threat, and ALA neutralizes it and carries it away so it can be excreted safely. Unfortunately, sometimes silver/mercury fillings ablate so badly the only safe solution is removal.
ALA positively affects many different diseases and disorders
Because of its ability to reactivate glutathione, the most important antioxidant in cancer cases, it plays a key role in both cancer treatment and prevention.
The liver is the body’s major factory organ. It prepares the food we eat for use in the body. If we need a certain protein for repair, the liver breaks down existing proteins and rebuilds the one we need. It stores carbohydrate as long chains of sugar molecules until needed. It reduces fats to basic units for storage or immediate energy utilization. It cleanses the blood and detoxifies numerous toxic chemicals and millions of bacteria every day. It stores blood and releases it when necessary to maintain blood pressure. It synthesizes important chemicals like clotting factor, vitamin K. It is also the storage site for fat soluble vitamins, some for long periods of time. It helps break down old red blood cells, and activates new ones by incorporating hemoglobin.
Its secretion, bile, is necessary for our body to digest fats in the intestines. Of all these functions, probably the most important, in our toxic environment, is detoxification. The liver takes toxic chemicals and through enzymatic intervention turns them into less toxic chemicals that can be excreted without harming the body.
The damage done to the liver by toxic substances (poison mushrooms, acetaminophen, alcohol) occurs because of free radical damage. As a superb free radical scavenger, ALA is the best protector we have found for the liver to date. In many cases for example, of acute mushroom poisoning, patients who have been told they were terminal have survived and gone on to live healthy lives because of intervention with adequate amounts of supplemental ALA.
In adult onset diabetics, abnormal glucose metabolism results in a considerable increase in free radicals, which may cause neurological, vascular, kidney, and visual problems. The insulin resistance that is associated with type II diabetes is at the root of most of these conditions, as well as being a major contributor to most inflammatory diseases that plague modern society.
Remember that the early warning sign of insulin resistance (impending diabetes) is abdominal obesity in men (the potbelly), and belly and hip fat in women. When caught in time, ALA has been demonstrated to correct all of these side effects. Even after symptoms are well established, ALA supplementation has produced significant improvement.
Although most of us are preoccupied with worry about cancer, heart disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the western world. This disease is often tied to insulin resistance and the vascular changes that accompany it. Additionally, there are many theories explaining the cause of CVD, but they all involve various scenarios that increase free radical damage to the blood vessels. This free radical component of CVD is why so much research has confirmed the risk reduction value of antioxidant supplements in cases of CVD and in people who are at risk.
The Carnetine Connection
Carnetine is an interesting metabolite that facilitates healthy sugar utilization when insulin resistance (syndrome X, hypoglycemia, prediabetes, or diabetes) is present. Because most of the chronic degenerative diseases of our society have a component in improper sugar handling, i.e. insulin resistance, anything that helps insulin do its job more efficiently is invaluable. Carnetine plays as important a role in these reactions as Alpha Lipoic Acid, so combining them was an easy decision for the formulating biochemist, and because the product is being made in much greater quantities the price gets even better.
The Acetyl L-Carnetine form of Carnetine is favored because it easily crosses the blood brain barrier, and will carry the Alpha Lipoic Acid with it. The Acetyl L-Carnetine, then, gets the Alpha Lipoic Acid to the brain where it can act as a chelating agent for the heavy metals and fat soluble neurotoxins that are so much a part of the epidemic of dementia. With the risk of dementia as high as it is, this product is a must try for everyone over 50 years old.
Dosage and Price
The replacement product, Acetyl L-Carnetine & Alpha Lipoic Acid, is considerably more powerful. There’s 250 mg of Acetyl L-Carnetine and 250 mg of Alpha Lipoic Acid per capsule. This brings the minimum dosage (per capsule) in line with the latest research on optimum dosage for people over 50, and allows for fewer supplements to be taken by those with insulin resistance or diabetes.
Dosage
I recommend taking two (2) Preventics Acetyl L-Carnetine & Alpha Lipoic Acid supplements (500mg) a day for 2 or 3 months. If you notice fatigue, cut your dose back. It means you are detoxifying too quickly. It also means you have a significant toxic body burden and will be taking this supplement for a long time.
If you have this reaction, call me on the Health Help Hotline (800-888-4866) during our Ask Doctor David hours and I will help manage your detoxification.
Many patients experiencing the first symptoms of early memory loss/dementia will notice a rather immediate improvement and should not be surprised. Increases in energy and ability to get to sleep and remain asleep are also common first responses to supplementation. I take 2 Acetyl L-Carnetine & Alpha Lipoic Acid supplements a day as a source of protection against the mental decline of old age resulting from the toxic environment that we all live in.
If you have followed the above dosage protocol and feel fine after being on 2 capsules for 2 or 3 months, you can cut back to 1 a day. If you notice a little worsening of symptoms, go back to 2 a day.
Price
Preventics old Alpha Lipoic Acid sold for $13.00 for a bottle of 90. Retail on this product was over $25.00 a bottle. The new product, Acetyl L-Carnetine & Alpha Lipoic Acid contains 60 capsules. Each capsule contains 250mg of both Acetyl L-Carnetine and Alpha Lipoic Acid for only $18.00 at your price. That’s a savings of $18.00 over retail, but more importantly, 250mg of the old Alpha Lipoic Acid product would have cost $21.60, and that’s without the Acetyl L-Carnetine, which is not an inexpensive supplement.
I consider this new product to be so superior that I have eliminated the old Alpha Lipoic Acid product from the Preventics line of products as of this newsletter.