So Many To Choose
It all began over a year ago as I listened to a series of lectures from Dr. Mimi Guarneri on natural healing; and of those 24 lectures what I took away from it was her saying that if there was one thing she would advise her patients to take on a daily basis that it would be to take a magnesium capsule (it's rather odd that we all seem to have this trait of absorbing so little, whether it's a book or a series of lectures or a mineral supplement, we tend to walk away with only a few bits and pieces that stick). Anyway back to that magnesium; I looked half-heartedly look up some information and decided to give it a try, taking that and a lutein* capsule almost daily. Not much to report other than with the lutein (see below) but for some reason I happened to see that the bigger bottle of magnesium was on sale, got it, then on opening it noticed that the capsules were of a different color. Ah-ha, these were magnesium citrate, one of the primary ingredients of Epsom salts and yes, primarily designed to serve as a laxative. So wait, what were my other magnesium pills? It turns out that they were magnesium oxide, the most common version sold, and it got me wondering about what other versions of magnesium were there and what were the differences? And why does each version absorbs differently in your body, with some not doing much good at all (the oxide)...who knew?
Jump over to WebMD and you'll discover this short list of magnesium names and types: Aspartate de Magnésium, Atomic Number 12, Carbonate de Magnésium, Chelated Magnesium, Chlorure de Magnésium, Citrate de Magnésium, Dimagnesium Malate, Epsom Salts, Gluconate de Magnésium, Glycérophosphate de Magnésium, Glycinate de Magnésium, Hydroxyde de Magnésium, Lactate de Magnésium, Lait de Magnésium, Magnesia, Magnesia Carbonica, Magnesia Muriatica, Magnesia Phosphorica, Magnesia Sulfate, Magnesia Sulfurica, Magnesio, Magnésium, Magnesium Ascorbate, Magnesium Aspartate, Magnesium Carbonate, Magnésium Chelaté, Magnesium Chloride, Magnesium Citrate, Magnesium Disuccinate Hydrate, Magnesium Gluconate, Magnesium Glycerophosphate, Magnesium Glycinate, Magnesium Hydroxide, Magnesium Lactate, Magnesium Malate, Magnesium Murakab, Magnesium Orotate, Magnesium Oxide, Magnesium Phosphate, Magnesium Phosphoricum, Magnesium Sulfate, Magnesium Taurate, Magnesium Taurinate, Magnesium Trisilicate, Malate de Magnésium, Milk of Magnesia, Mg, Numéro Atomique 12, Orotate de Magnésium, Oxyde de Magnésium, Phosphate de Magnésium, Sels d'Epsom, Sulfate de Magnésium, Trisilicate de Magnesium. What? And bear in mind that since supplements and vitamins are NOT regulated here in the U.S., just trying to find out about a mineral or supplement will lead you to hundreds if not thousands of sites, none of which are under any regulations (some independent testing has found supplements with little or none of the advertised item in the capsules or pills). But magnesium is complicated, as noted with this from the National Institutes of Health in posting just some of the interactions with magnesium: Prescription proton pump inhibitor (PPI) drugs, such as esomeprazole magnesium (Nexium®) and lansoprazole (Prevacid®), when taken for prolonged periods (typically more than a year) can cause hypomagnesemia In cases that FDA reviewed, magnesium supplements often raised the low serum magnesium levels caused by PPIs. However, in 25% of the cases, supplements did not raise magnesium levels and the patients had to discontinue the PPI. FDA advises healthcare professionals to consider measuring patients’ serum magnesium levels prior to initiating long-term PPI treatment and to check magnesium levels in these patients periodically. Wait, Rolaids® has magnesium but TUMS® doesn't? How does one keep track? So do you take magnesium as an oxide, a sulfate, a citrate, a chelate, a hydrate, a glycinate or any of a dozen other versions? As it turns out, some reports said that the oxide version only delivers 40% of the dosage while the glycinate delivers over 70%...but then who's writing the reports?
So dig a bit deeper and with that glycinate version we enter the broader arena of amino acids such as glycines and serines (L-serine was featured in an earlier post and as an interesting aside, China is now marketing a seaweed-based treatment for Alzheimer's which has been approved in their labs but not by the FDA which continues to do testing of its effectiveness...in one instance mentioned in my post, one type of seaweed was high in you guessed it, L-serine). It's a mess, sorting through it all so the majority of us tend to just default and let the vendors sort through it all; if it's on their shelves then it must be okay. Then came the story in Fortune about Humira: Humira isn’t a “drug,” technically speaking—it’s a biological entity known as a monoclonal antibody, or mAb. Put simply, mAbs are proteins created by inducing a specific immune response; these lab-created antibodies then bind to specific antigens on the surface of biological adversaries and work to neutralize the offenders. Don't understand it? No worries, your doc prescribed it and your insurance covered it and well, it seemed to help so who's complaining? Or were you just lulled in by the advertising? Continued the article: Last year alone, AbbVie spent just shy of $490 million to hawk its superstar product, topping the list of 2018 pharmaceutical ad spending, according to Kantar Media. By comparison, Pfizer’s $272 million on advertising for the pain drug Lyrica came in second. AbbVie also spent significantly on social media advertising, not included in the figure above. And television ads for Humira have aired more than 46,000 times since Jan. 1 of this year. But it didn't stop there: Along with the über-aggressive marketing, naturally, came price hikes. In the U.S., pharma companies can charge whatever they want for their products. And the makers of Humira did just that. The U.S. list price of the standard 40 mg Humira injectable pen, used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, more than tripled from 2006 to 2017, with the price for a one-year supply soaring from $16,636 to $58,612, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute and the University of Minnesota’s PRIME Institute. That’s a compound annual growth rate of over 12%. Wait, $58,000? Who can afford that? And even more important, what does the drug do? Did I mention that L-serine from Germany (with tight purity controls) currently runs about $16 for a month's supply.
Okay, amino acids and monoclonal antibodies are far too complicated for me to understand, much less try to explain in a brief summary. But all of this pales when set next to our lives, especially as we grow older and begin to be aware that we're lucky enough to be on the downhill slide. Here's how that earlier piece by author Arthur C. Brooks mentioned it in The Atlantic: I told him my conundrum: Many people of achievement suffer as they age, because they lose their abilities, gained over many years of hard work. Is this suffering inescapable, like a cosmic joke on the proud? Or is there a loophole somewhere—a way around the suffering? Acharya (guru Sri Nochur Venkataraman) answered elliptically, explaining an ancient Hindu teaching about the stages of life, or ashramas. The first is Brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning. The second is Grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and creates a family. In this second stage, the philosophers find one of life’s most common traps: People become attached to earthly rewards --money, power, sex, prestige-- and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime. The antidote to these worldly temptations is Vanaprastha, the third ashrama, whose name comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the stage, usually starting around age 50, in which we purposefully focus less on professional ambition, and become more and more devoted to spirituality, service, and wisdom. This doesn’t mean that you need to stop working when you turn 50 --something few people can afford to do-- only that your life goals should adjust. Vanaprastha is a time for study and training for the last stage of life, Sannyasa, which should be totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment. In times past, some Hindu men would leave their family in old age, take holy vows, and spend the rest of their life at the feet of masters, praying and studying. Even if sitting in a cave at age 75 isn’t your ambition, the point should still be clear: As we age, we should resist the conventional lures of success in order to focus on more transcendentally important things...When the New York Times columnist David Brooks talks about the difference between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues,” he’s effectively putting the ashramas in a practical context. Résumé virtues are professional and oriented toward earthly success. They require comparison with others. Eulogy virtues are ethical and spiritual, and require no comparison. Your eulogy virtues are what you would want people to talk about at your funeral. As in He was kind and deeply spiritual, not He made senior vice president at an astonishingly young age and had a lot of frequent-flier miles.
Lutein & zeaxantin are now being considered eye "food" primarily for seniors but also for others and was recommended to me by my optometrist who annually takes a retinal scan of my eyes (this scans the back of your eyeball to check the optic nerve and see if early deposits or drusens may be appearing which could lead to macular degeneration; this was happening in my case). On my most recent exam the drusen had not only not progressed but appeared to be diminishing, in her opinion (once the scans are taken they can be compared side by side to see the year-to-year results). Admittedly I was a bit skeptical of the supplements but then it's difficult for me to argue with the scans (I take the TruNature brand from Costco due to it having nearly 5x the amount of lutein --25 mg.-- of other brands); some "eye" capsules are primarily fish oil so check out and research any such supplement with your eye doctor before deciding to add this to your regimen, especially since you may already be having more than enough lutein coming into your body just through your natural diet.
Jump over to WebMD and you'll discover this short list of magnesium names and types: Aspartate de Magnésium, Atomic Number 12, Carbonate de Magnésium, Chelated Magnesium, Chlorure de Magnésium, Citrate de Magnésium, Dimagnesium Malate, Epsom Salts, Gluconate de Magnésium, Glycérophosphate de Magnésium, Glycinate de Magnésium, Hydroxyde de Magnésium, Lactate de Magnésium, Lait de Magnésium, Magnesia, Magnesia Carbonica, Magnesia Muriatica, Magnesia Phosphorica, Magnesia Sulfate, Magnesia Sulfurica, Magnesio, Magnésium, Magnesium Ascorbate, Magnesium Aspartate, Magnesium Carbonate, Magnésium Chelaté, Magnesium Chloride, Magnesium Citrate, Magnesium Disuccinate Hydrate, Magnesium Gluconate, Magnesium Glycerophosphate, Magnesium Glycinate, Magnesium Hydroxide, Magnesium Lactate, Magnesium Malate, Magnesium Murakab, Magnesium Orotate, Magnesium Oxide, Magnesium Phosphate, Magnesium Phosphoricum, Magnesium Sulfate, Magnesium Taurate, Magnesium Taurinate, Magnesium Trisilicate, Malate de Magnésium, Milk of Magnesia, Mg, Numéro Atomique 12, Orotate de Magnésium, Oxyde de Magnésium, Phosphate de Magnésium, Sels d'Epsom, Sulfate de Magnésium, Trisilicate de Magnesium. What? And bear in mind that since supplements and vitamins are NOT regulated here in the U.S., just trying to find out about a mineral or supplement will lead you to hundreds if not thousands of sites, none of which are under any regulations (some independent testing has found supplements with little or none of the advertised item in the capsules or pills). But magnesium is complicated, as noted with this from the National Institutes of Health in posting just some of the interactions with magnesium: Prescription proton pump inhibitor (PPI) drugs, such as esomeprazole magnesium (Nexium®) and lansoprazole (Prevacid®), when taken for prolonged periods (typically more than a year) can cause hypomagnesemia In cases that FDA reviewed, magnesium supplements often raised the low serum magnesium levels caused by PPIs. However, in 25% of the cases, supplements did not raise magnesium levels and the patients had to discontinue the PPI. FDA advises healthcare professionals to consider measuring patients’ serum magnesium levels prior to initiating long-term PPI treatment and to check magnesium levels in these patients periodically. Wait, Rolaids® has magnesium but TUMS® doesn't? How does one keep track? So do you take magnesium as an oxide, a sulfate, a citrate, a chelate, a hydrate, a glycinate or any of a dozen other versions? As it turns out, some reports said that the oxide version only delivers 40% of the dosage while the glycinate delivers over 70%...but then who's writing the reports?
So dig a bit deeper and with that glycinate version we enter the broader arena of amino acids such as glycines and serines (L-serine was featured in an earlier post and as an interesting aside, China is now marketing a seaweed-based treatment for Alzheimer's which has been approved in their labs but not by the FDA which continues to do testing of its effectiveness...in one instance mentioned in my post, one type of seaweed was high in you guessed it, L-serine). It's a mess, sorting through it all so the majority of us tend to just default and let the vendors sort through it all; if it's on their shelves then it must be okay. Then came the story in Fortune about Humira: Humira isn’t a “drug,” technically speaking—it’s a biological entity known as a monoclonal antibody, or mAb. Put simply, mAbs are proteins created by inducing a specific immune response; these lab-created antibodies then bind to specific antigens on the surface of biological adversaries and work to neutralize the offenders. Don't understand it? No worries, your doc prescribed it and your insurance covered it and well, it seemed to help so who's complaining? Or were you just lulled in by the advertising? Continued the article: Last year alone, AbbVie spent just shy of $490 million to hawk its superstar product, topping the list of 2018 pharmaceutical ad spending, according to Kantar Media. By comparison, Pfizer’s $272 million on advertising for the pain drug Lyrica came in second. AbbVie also spent significantly on social media advertising, not included in the figure above. And television ads for Humira have aired more than 46,000 times since Jan. 1 of this year. But it didn't stop there: Along with the über-aggressive marketing, naturally, came price hikes. In the U.S., pharma companies can charge whatever they want for their products. And the makers of Humira did just that. The U.S. list price of the standard 40 mg Humira injectable pen, used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, more than tripled from 2006 to 2017, with the price for a one-year supply soaring from $16,636 to $58,612, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute and the University of Minnesota’s PRIME Institute. That’s a compound annual growth rate of over 12%. Wait, $58,000? Who can afford that? And even more important, what does the drug do? Did I mention that L-serine from Germany (with tight purity controls) currently runs about $16 for a month's supply.
Okay, amino acids and monoclonal antibodies are far too complicated for me to understand, much less try to explain in a brief summary. But all of this pales when set next to our lives, especially as we grow older and begin to be aware that we're lucky enough to be on the downhill slide. Here's how that earlier piece by author Arthur C. Brooks mentioned it in The Atlantic: I told him my conundrum: Many people of achievement suffer as they age, because they lose their abilities, gained over many years of hard work. Is this suffering inescapable, like a cosmic joke on the proud? Or is there a loophole somewhere—a way around the suffering? Acharya (guru Sri Nochur Venkataraman) answered elliptically, explaining an ancient Hindu teaching about the stages of life, or ashramas. The first is Brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning. The second is Grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and creates a family. In this second stage, the philosophers find one of life’s most common traps: People become attached to earthly rewards --money, power, sex, prestige-- and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime. The antidote to these worldly temptations is Vanaprastha, the third ashrama, whose name comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the stage, usually starting around age 50, in which we purposefully focus less on professional ambition, and become more and more devoted to spirituality, service, and wisdom. This doesn’t mean that you need to stop working when you turn 50 --something few people can afford to do-- only that your life goals should adjust. Vanaprastha is a time for study and training for the last stage of life, Sannyasa, which should be totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment. In times past, some Hindu men would leave their family in old age, take holy vows, and spend the rest of their life at the feet of masters, praying and studying. Even if sitting in a cave at age 75 isn’t your ambition, the point should still be clear: As we age, we should resist the conventional lures of success in order to focus on more transcendentally important things...When the New York Times columnist David Brooks talks about the difference between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues,” he’s effectively putting the ashramas in a practical context. Résumé virtues are professional and oriented toward earthly success. They require comparison with others. Eulogy virtues are ethical and spiritual, and require no comparison. Your eulogy virtues are what you would want people to talk about at your funeral. As in He was kind and deeply spiritual, not He made senior vice president at an astonishingly young age and had a lot of frequent-flier miles.
At some point our bodies will simply call it quits, regardless of what we've accomplished or what we've ingested. This may come about naturally as in us reaching a ripe old age or it might come from simply not paying attention and stepping in front of a bus. But whenever that happens, and IF there is something that comes afterward (or just before) and we can look back, even if only for an instant, we may discover that hindsight is 20/20. It's never to late to begin anew, to shift priorities or to just smile more. It's a new year, and perhaps as a reminder, this new year is also 20/20. Happy New Year..
Lutein & zeaxantin are now being considered eye "food" primarily for seniors but also for others and was recommended to me by my optometrist who annually takes a retinal scan of my eyes (this scans the back of your eyeball to check the optic nerve and see if early deposits or drusens may be appearing which could lead to macular degeneration; this was happening in my case). On my most recent exam the drusen had not only not progressed but appeared to be diminishing, in her opinion (once the scans are taken they can be compared side by side to see the year-to-year results). Admittedly I was a bit skeptical of the supplements but then it's difficult for me to argue with the scans (I take the TruNature brand from Costco due to it having nearly 5x the amount of lutein --25 mg.-- of other brands); some "eye" capsules are primarily fish oil so check out and research any such supplement with your eye doctor before deciding to add this to your regimen, especially since you may already be having more than enough lutein coming into your body just through your natural diet.
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