ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — According to research from Duke, your strength, balance, and endurance starts to decline in your 50’s. Cognitive decline can start as early as 45. Even though these are normal signs of aging, is there a way you can prevent these side effects from happening? One researcher believes a missing supplement may be the key to healthy aging. Ivanhoe has the details on glynac.
Exercise … eating healthy … even lotions and potions. There are several things people do to stay young. But as much as we try, the clock keeps ticking away.
“The way you could walk and run when you were 20 years old is not what you’re doing when you’re 75 years old,” said Rajagopal Sekhar, MD, Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine.
That’s because as we get older, our bodies start to experience mitochondrial dysfunction.
“Mitochondria are tiny engines that supply the cell with energy. Mitochondrial dysfunction is linked to heart disease, to Alzheimer’s disease, to cognitive impairments, to almost every condition possible,” continued Dr. Sekhar.
Dr. Sekhar studies normal aging and says supplying the mitochondria with fuel may be the key to reversing some of the negative side effects of aging. That fuel is glynac, or a combination of glycine and n-acetylcysteine, components of a natural antioxidant glutathione. When older adults took the supplement for 12 weeks, muscle strength, gait speed, exercise capacity, and cognitive function all improved.
“And at 24 weeks, they were even better,” stated Dr. Sekhar.
After the participants in the trial stopped taking glynac, their improvements diminished. Dr. Sekhar is conducting two additional studies to test whether glynac could improve defects linked to cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease and in MCI.
Contributors to this news report include: Milvionne Chery, Producer; and Roque Correa, Editor.
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REPORT #2921 GLYNAC: A PILL TO CURE THE EFFECTS OF AGING?
BACKGROUND: Mitochondrial dysfunction happens when the mitochondria don’t work as they should due to another disease or condition. Mitochondria are the “energy factory” of the body. There are several thousand mitochondria in nearly every cell in the body whose job is to process oxygen and convert substances from the foods we eat into energy. They produce 90 percent of the energy our body needs to function. There are several conditions that can lead to secondary mitochondrial dysfunction and affect other diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, muscular dystrophy, Lou Gehrig’s disease, diabetes, and cancer. Individuals with secondary mitochondrial dysfunction don’t have primary genetic mitochondrial disease and don’t need to be concerned about the ongoing development or worsening of symptoms.
(Source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15612-mitochondrial-diseases)
COGNITIVE FUNCTION AND GLYNAC: Published in the journal Clinical and Translational Medicine, the results of a study by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine revealed that supplementation with GlyNAC, a combination of glycine and N-acetylcysteine as precursors of the natural antioxidant glutathione, could improve several cognitive declines in older adults. Results showed that older adults taking GlyNAC for 24 weeks saw improvements in many areas including glutathione deficiency, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, insulin resistance, endothelial dysfunction, body fat, genomic toxicity, muscle strength, gait speed, exercise capacity, and cognitive function. The benefits declined after stopping supplementation for 12 weeks. “The overall findings of the current study are highly encouraging,” said endocrinologist Dr. Rajagopal Sekhar, associate professor of medicine in the Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at Baylor. “They suggest that GlyNAC supplementation could be a simple and viable method to promote and improve healthy aging in older adults.”
(Source: https://www.bcm.edu/news/glynac-improves-strength-and-cognition-in-older-humans)
NEW DISCOVERY FOR MITOCHONDRIAL DISORDER: Research conducted by scientists at the University of Exeter and published in the Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease, reviews a new developed treatment that can “rescue” genetically mutated cells. The scientists used novel drugs that can metabolically reprogram mitochondria by giving them an alternative fuel source to generate metabolic energy in the form of small quantities of hydrogen sulfide. They found that by administering the new compounds to microscopic worms, the energy production required to keep them healthy and active normalized or improved. In the study, the defective mitochondria were the direct cause of the disease just like the human mitochondrial disease. As these compounds were able to reverse some of the inherited defects in energy metabolism, the team believes that their effect will translate to humans.
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