Straight Dope on Medicine: Elysium Health

Eat right and be healthy.

Not so fast.

It varies.

The efficiencies of our digestive systems vary widely. Some is due to genetics. Environment plays a role, as well as aging. They circumambulate extensively.

As an analogy, we can look to the car. Some cars can get 55 mpg. More cars are in the 22-28 mpg range. The Lamborghini Aventador gets 8 mpg city and 14 mpg highway. [i]

It’s terrible, terrible, terrible!

But it looks pretty good while it’s doing it.

How do you like my juxtaposition of “not so fast” and the Lamborghini?

The necessities

Macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids are essential in providing sustenance. An appreciation of the importance of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals in disease prevention should be cultivated.

Moreover, the technological emergence of genomics, epigenetics, and the microbiome – topics that are enormous in scale and sophistication – further supports the need for complex systems science approaches. 

Partaking of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fish in prevents the development of many of the chronic diseases currently afflicting society.[ii]

In older adults, the loss of muscle mass, sarcopenia, and the loss of muscle strength predispose to disability. Da Boit et al[iii]  demonstrated that long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation augmented increases in muscle function in older women, but not in older men, after resistance exercise training.

Aging

It is detrimental in several ways.

• You could supplement with stomach acid (HCl), but Digestive Bitters are better.[iv] Take a dropper full before all of your main meals for a 4-week timeframe.

• You can take a swig of unpasteurized, raw apple cider vinegar before meals as that also stimulates the digestive juices.

• Lemon water before meals does the same as the apple cider vinegar, which is also why I start my day with this every morning.

• Remove some of the bad foods (gluten, cow’s dairy, sugar, and super processed foods – oh and alcohol and coffee).

There is also the decline in mucosal immunity. Generally speaking, nothing improves. Expression of ACE2, the cellular receptor for SARS-Cov-2 virus, was increased in the aged FAE (follicle-associated epithelia). This raises the possibility that the susceptibility of aged Peyer's patches to infection with the SARS-Cov-2 virus is increased.[v]

Aging effects on Paneth cells negatively impact on the regenerative ability of the gut epithelium and could indirectly impede M cell differentiation. Thus, restoring Paneth cell function may represent a novel means to improve M cell differentiation in the aging intestine and increase mucosal vaccination efficacy in the elderly.

Someone may do something about this, given the right incentive.

What is Elysium?

the place at the ends of the earth to which certain favored heroes were conveyed by the gods after death.

noun

·     1.a place or state of perfect happiness.

It hearkens back to the Greek Elysion.

For out purposes, it is a biotech out of Massachusetts.

They want you to think that their products are supernatural. They don’t qualify for that, but they are pretty good.

Everyone exaggerates to sell their product.

Basis

This is Elysium’s foremost nutritional offering. It all centers on the niacin.

Nicotinic acid and nicotinamide, collectively referred to as niacin, are nutritional precursors of the bioactive molecules nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP). NAD and NADP are important cofactors for most cellular redox reactions, and as such are essential to maintain cellular metabolism and respiration. NAD also serves as a cosubstrate for a large number of ADP-ribosylation enzymes with varied functions. Among the NAD-consuming enzymes identified to date are important genetic and epigenetic regulators, e.g., poly(ADP-ribose)polymerases and sirtuins.[vi]

The biological functions of NAD+ and NAD+ precursors encompass pathways in cellular energetics, inflammation, metabolism, and cell survival. Several metabolic and neurological diseases exhibit reduced tissue NAD+ levels.[vii] Cardiovascular diseases, obesity and neurodegenerative diseases, chronological aging, and progeroid phenotypes, are associated with a dysregulation of cellular NAD+ levels.[viii]

Niacin has its own special cellular receptor called GPR109a. Not b, but a. C is completely out of the picture.

GPR109a also goes by HCA2, HM74a, NIACR1, or PUMA-G, if you wanted to know.

Niacin has been in clinical use since the 1950s when Rudolf Altschul observed a decreased plasma cholesterol in rabbits treated with niacin.[ix] He also found that high doses of niacin reduced plasma cholesterol levels in normal and hypercholesterolaemic human subjects, making niacin the oldest lipid-lowering drug. Niacin at high doses increased circulating HDL (the “good” cholesterol).[x]

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover clinical trial showed that chronic nicotinamide riboside supplementation was well-tolerated in healthy middle-aged and older adults, and acute supplementation with nicotinamide riboside is effective for stimulating NAD+ metabolism in humans.[xi]

In a study on aged participants, oral supplementation of 1 g nicotinamide riboside per day for 21 days in a placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind trial, an elevated muscle NAD+ metabolome and a reduced systemic inflammation were observed suggesting potential health benefits.[xii]

Orally administered NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide) remarkably suppressed age-associated body weight gain, reversed age-associated organ dysfunction and oxidative stress, prevented age-associated gene expression, enhanced energy metabolism, promoted physical activity, improved insulin sensitivity and plasma lipid profile, and ameliorated other pathophysiological changes.[xiii]

Scientists

Science doesn’t advance without scientists, and the Elysium crew is exceptional. Their credentials are impeccable.

Format

While I am at it, I might as well cover Format. This is yet another way to fight aging. It does so in its own peculiar way.

That’ll do. Sometimes I battle my own Gerascophobia and desire to be pulchritudinous with the articles I write. Dylan Thomas captures the sentiment best:

References

[i]https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymake/Lamborghini2021.shtml

[ii]Schulze MB , Martinez-Gonzalez MA , FungTT , et al.  Food based dietary patterns and chronic disease prevention. BMJ Case Rep. 2018;361:k2396.

[iii]Da BoitM , SibsonR, Sivasubramaniam S , et al.  Sex differences in the effect of fish-oil supplementation on the adaptive response to resistance exercise training in older people: a randomized controlled trial. 

Am J Clin Nutr. 2017;105:151–158.

[iv] https://www.healthyeatingandliving.ca/post/what-happens-to-your-digestion-when-you-turn-30

[v] Donaldson DS, Shih BB, Mabbott NA. Aging-Related Impairments to M Cells in Peyer's Patches Coincide With Disturbances to Paneth Cells. Front Immunol. 2021 Dec 6;12:761949.

[vi] Kirkland JB, Meyer-Ficca ML. Niacin. Adv Food Nutr Res. 2018;83:83-149.

[vii] Chu X, Raju RP. Regulation of NAD+ metabolism in aging and disease. Metabolism. 2022 Jan;126:154923.

[viii] Radenkovic D, Reason Verdin E. Clinical Evidence for Targeting NAD Therapeutically. Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2020;13.

[ix] Altschul R, Hoffer A, Stephen J. Influence of nicotinic acid on serum cholesterol in man. Archives of Biochemistry. 1955;54:558–9.

[x] Birjmohun RS, Hutten BA, Kastelein JJ, Stroes ES. Efficacy and safety of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol-increasing compounds: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2005;45:185–97. 

[xi] Martens CR, Denman BA, Mazzo MR, Armstrong ML, Reisdorph N, McQueen MB, et al. Chronic nicotinamide riboside supplementation is well-tolerated and elevates NAD+ in healthy middle-aged and older adults. Nature communications. 2018;9:1–11. 

[xii] Elhassan YS, Kluckova K, Fletcher RS, Schmidt MS, Garten A, Doig CL, et al. Nicotinamide Riboside Augments the Aged Human Skeletal Muscle NAD(+) Metabolome and Induces Transcriptomic and Anti-inflammatory Signatures. Cell Rep. 2019;28:1717–28 e6.

[xiii] de Picciotto NE, Gano LB, Johnson LC, Martens CR, Sindler AL, Mills KF, et al. Nicotinamide mononucleotide supplementation reverses vascular dysfunction and oxidative stress with aging in mice. Aging cell. 2016;15:522–30.