CHAPTER 1 
What’s the worst thing about aging? Wrinkles. The first thing we see in the morning, wrinkles are a daily reminder that we are getting old. And that’s discouraging. Corporate America leverages this discouragement to rake in billions of dollars.
An array of so-called antiwrinkle cures in the form of lotions, sunblock, and cosmetic surgeries exist. Yet very few of them fulfill the promise of helping our skin age beautifully. In fact, many of them accelerate wrinkling or, in the case of medical operations, leave us looking “old with surgery.” This is what motivated me to uncover the simplest, safest, and most inexpensive way to wake up with younger-looking skin. And I found it.
In addition to helping your skin age beautifully, the principles taught in this chapter also help protect you from the ravages of skin cancer, diabetic neuropathy, memory loss, and even an aging heart. You won’t have to make an appointment with your doctor; you won’t have to shell out hundreds of dollars; and you won’t have to hide from the sun.
But don’t take my word for it. Apply what you learn in these pages, and test it yourself. I’m certain that after a few weeks, your friends and family will be commenting on how great you look while secretly wondering, What are you doing to look so good? At the same time, you’ll notice a welcome boost in energy, mood, and mental focus.
THE BIOLOGICAL FIASCO: UNDERSTANDING YOUR SKIN
Skin is the largest organ of your body. It covers about 16 square feet and weighs approximately 8 pounds. With unceasing collaboration, your skin cells perform lifesaving functions that protect you from toxic chemicals, heat, and cold. Most important, they collaborate to keep us healthy by shielding our insides from the invasion of foreign bacteria and viruses. If we don’t protect our skin, this collaboration ceases. First come wrinkles, then cancer. Fortunately, this biological fiasco can be prevented naturally. Let’s look at how skin damage occurs.
FREE RADICALS AND OXYGEN SHOCK
Skin cells, like all healthy cells, are rich in oxygen. When your skin is exposed to the sun, high-energy rays collide with the skin. The collision, akin to a bowling ball hitting pins, causes the oxygen molecules in your skin cells to each lose an energy-stabilizing electron. With the loss of an electron, the oxygen molecule becomes unstable. This instability is known scientifically as a free radical, and it’s highly reactive within the skin and the molecular components responsible for keeping it looking vibrantly young and cancer free.
Free radicals are completely normal. In fact, they are essential to the immune system. They help to eradicate foreign bacteria and viruses that may pass through the skin. Once free radicals do their job within a cell, they are quenched—or rather controlled—by free radical scavengers known as antioxidants.
Unlike other cellular content, antioxidants are electron rich and, therefore, can donate their electrons to electron-deficient free radicals—like a rich banker lends or donates money. This “natural intelligence” of antioxidants keeps our outer layer looking vibrantly healthy, while warding off premature wrinkles and skin cancer.
But if antioxidants are not plentiful, the cell undergoes oxidative stress, which I call “oxygen shock.” Free radicals are no longer halted by antioxidants, so they begin to attack the main structural component of skin known as collagen. This is bad news for anyone who values vibrantly healthy skin. A phenomenon known as cross-linking—a fancy name for wrinkling—occurs. Instead of sliding smoothly across each other, collagen molecules that succumb to oxygen shock get jammed together, making your skin rigid and immobile. What was once smooth and supple can become like a cracked, desert floor—adding age to your features.
To understand oxygen shock, consider its everyday occurrence in other areas. Such examples include the browning of an apple after it is sliced, a nail rusting in the open air, and the formation of rancid food. These processes are all mediated by oxygen-free radicals that go unregulated due to lack of antioxidants. The same type of damage occurs among nutrient-deficient skin cells when the number of free radicals being produced exceeds the number of health-preserving antioxidants.
The message here is that sun exposure and free radicals themselves are not dangerous. They are an everyday part of life—the inescapable by-products of living in an oxygen-rich world. Free radicals only become dangerous when their production exceeds the number of health-preserving antioxidants. The oxygen shock that ensues gives rise to a biological fiasco that leads to the crow’s feet and wrinkly brows we all fear. But that’s not the end of the story.
As oxygen shock continues, free radicals attack more than just collagen. Vital cellular components that guarantee proper cell and skin function are targeted. If this process is left unchecked, cancer can arise.
WHEN WRINKLES BECOME CANCEROUS
In addition to attacking collagen, oxygen shock can initiate a cascade of insults and accidents within skin cells. This can lead to three distinct types of cellular damage.8 Understanding these types of damage is crucial to your quest for younger-looking, cancer-free skin.
First, cumulative damage may occur to a skin cell’s genetic blueprint—deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, as we usually call it. This can prevent the cell from knowing when to stop growing like a steroid-ridden bodybuilder.
Second, damage may occur to the cellular system responsible for repairing damage to our genetic map. Miraculously, every cell stores a “template” used to make a new map when (not if) our DNA becomes damaged. The oxidation process can erase this template from cellular memory, preventing restoration.
And third, oxygen shock can damage molecules responsible for interpreting our genetic blueprint. When a gene from DNA is “expressed,” or activated, its DNA sequence is copied into a “messenger RNA” molecule. (Think of this molecule as an interpreter.) The messenger RNA uses the DNA sequence to interpret and direct proper cellular function. But when this process is compromised, cell function ceases.
The end result of all three types of damage is a rogue skin cell known technically as a malignancy. A single malignant cell among trillions can become the biological superpower we know as skin cancer. Rather than collaborating to ensure proper function, a malignant skin cell is granted a host of superpowers that it uses to overcome the entire body.
To acquire allies in its war against younger, cancer-free skin cells, malignant cells replicate faster than healthy ones. They learn to invade other regions of the body, while at the same time becoming invisible to our immune system. These superpowers enable a malignancy to convert the human body into a playground for infection and disease. Skin deteriorates rapidly.
But don’t freak out—you can beat this diabolic process. And you don’t have to fear the sun and slather on sunblock to do so.
THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT SUNSHINE
If you stopped a hundred health professionals and asked them, “What causes premature wrinkles and skin cancer?” what do you think they would say? Overlooking the phenomenon of oxygen shock, the vast majority of them would instantly tell you, “The sun.” Most would go into a long-winded, nerdy explanation of how sunshine and free radicals lead to unsightly wrinkles and even skin cancer. If you didn’t fall asleep, you would walk away vowing to never again expose yourself to the Death Ray we know as the sun. Logic always trumps this argument.
We have lived under the same sun for millennia. The rate of skin cancer has just begun to grow rapidly—and it has been increasing every year. In the United States, the rate has doubled over the past thirty years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). A grand total of 1.1 million Americans are expected to be diagnosed with some form of skin cancer this year, according to the CDC.9 Worldwide, the skin cancer rate per thousand people is also increasing. While skin cancer has become a growing threat, the sun has remained unchanged in its actions. Logic dictates that the increased incidence of skin cancer cannot solely be explained by exposure to the sun.
Critics of this argument will cite ozone depletion as the cause of the increasing skin cancer rate. But if ozone depletion were the cause of skin cancer, then people living close to the equator would be eaten alive by sunshine. Here’s why: ozone depletion has been purported to increase exposure to ultraviolet sun rays by up to 20 percent. That might seem like a lot, until you consider that as you travel from pole to equator or go on a tropical vacation, UV exposure can increase by 5,000 percent, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration!10 This is due to the changing angle at which the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere. Still though, the so-called UV Death Ray doesn’t harm those who are living under it. In fact, skin cancer rates are lower among people who live in regions with strong UV exposure.
One of the best ways to avoid oxygen shock is to use nutrient logic. Learning to consume the right nutrients will help your body stop oxygen shock before it leads to the biological fiasco of wrinkles and cancer. This is your best bet for having vibrant, glowing skin.
NUTRIENT LOGIC KEEPS SKIN LOOKING VIBRANT AND YOUNG
I didn’t always want to be a chemist. Being a rock star was at the top of my list. But I can’t sing to save my life. I can’t even hold an instrument properly. And large crowds make me anxious. Fortunately, as my college years progressed, I learned that I was good at one thing: rote memorization. This allowed me to get through college successfully, without too much hardcore studying. This talent even helped me earn a scholarship for graduate school in organic chemistry and eventually a well-paying job, with great stock options, for a top pharmaceutical company. Turns out, having a single talent can get you far. The same is true for antioxidants.
Most antioxidants have a single action that benefits the human body. For instance, vitamin E (all-natural) works solely as a fat-solubleantioxidant. This helps it operate with the cell membrane to protect the membrane from oxygen shock. Without vitamin E, squishy cell membranes suffer from oxygen shock and become brittle and unresponsive to nutrient absorption. Vitamin E–deficient cells age prematurely.
Vitamin C (from acerola) is another well-known antioxidant. It acts solely as a water-soluble antioxidant that maintains iron content within the water environment of the body. This action is crucial for the preservation of enzymes (molecules that ensure proper biochemical reactions) and collagen, which is vital for proper cardiovascular function.
ALA is different from both vitamins E and C. ALA is good at more than just one thing. And this makes it the best choice to use for nutrient logic and to have awesome-looking skin.
THE MULTITALENTED ANTIOXIDANT
With ease, the antioxidant alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) protects both the water and fat environments of the body from oxygen shock. While the other antioxidants are good, this is what makes ALA great. The multifaceted talents of ALA allow it to ward off oxygen shock more effectively than any other antioxidant.
What if, in a matter of weeks, you could erase excess wrinkles and help your skin take on a vibrant glow? ALA can help you do just that. It’s your best bet for a natural face-lift. Acting as a molecular cosmetic surgeon, ALA activates a transcription factor known as AP-1.11 If you don’t have ALA in your diet, wrinkles come on like gangbusters. But in the name of nutrient logic, ALA helps your body put AP-1 into overdrive. Working in unison, AP-1 and ALA promote the digestion of damaged, wrinkle-inducing collagen that results from previous oxygen shock.
In sharp contrast, if we deprive our bodies of ALA, AP-1 increases oxygen shock within the skin cells. This, in turn, makes the cells produce collagen-damaging and micro-scarring enzymes! Hence, as a preventive measure, ALA works within the skin cells to keep them from undergoing oxygen shock and collagen damage. The teamwork of these two antiwrinkle agents isn’t the only skin-rejuvenating mechanism at work. ALA also preserves and strengthens our cells’ ability to rid themselves of harmful toxins that can get jammed into collagen.
Our skin is bombarded with toxins. Like oxygen shock, each one of them shatters collagen. The most common toxins include mercury, lead acetate, petroleum distillates, ethylacrylate, polyethylene glycol, and dibutyl phthalate. Whether they are inhaled, sprayed, or slathered on your skin via perfumes and skin-care products, these collagen twisters age your skin prematurely. In an attempt to fight back, the body produces a cellular cleaning lady. Known as glutathione, she attaches to toxins, makes them water soluble, and then escorts them out of the skin and into the toilet. But without nutrient logic, courtesy of ALA, this cleaning lady fails to show up. Skin gets old fast.
Biological cleaning ladies aren’t made out of thin air. Glutathione is derived from a molecular substrate known as cysteine. When we supplement with ALA, we enhance the amount of this building block. The cleaning lady glutathione starts working overtime. Heavy detox follows. She goes right to work and cleanses foreign toxins from the skin. Your collagen is preserved. And when you’re at your thirtieth high-school reunion, old friends will compliment you on how great your skin looks. To further attain the highly revered look of youth, you’ll want to learn how to stop age spots by avoiding foods that scar skin forever.
STOP AGE SPOTS NOW
Sugar isn’t always what you think it is. Most sugar has been replaced with a sweet impostor. Known as high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, this synthetic sweetener masquerades as being natural and healthy. But a chemical reaction discovered in 1914 proves otherwise.
Every time you consume the “corny syrup,” it acts as wrinkle fertilizer, courtesy of an icky process known as glycation. Discovered by the French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, glycation is the process by which sugars like HFCS bind to amino acids in the bloodstream and become advanced glycation end (AGE) products. This class of toxins has been linked to inflammation, insulin resistance, diabetes, vascular and kidney disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Surprising to most people, the corny imposter is more likely to give rise to AGE products than old-fashioned sugar. Hardly natural, HFCS is made in a lab. Corn syrup is altered so that it becomes “high-fructose corn syrup.” This chemical alteration leads to a much higher rate of AGE production than occurs with plain old sugar. As sure as night follows day, AGE products bind to collagen, causing it to get twisted and tangled. This shows up as age spots, wrinkles, and everything else that makes skin look old and crumbly.
Fortunately, ALA can serve as an AGE blocker and reduce age spots.12 ALA is always on guard to interrupt the love making of corny syrup and amino acids. This prevents the wrinkle fertilizer from being made. Like a parent who separates two unruly children, ALA can help prevent sugar and amino acids from coming into contact, stopping glycation and annoying age spots. Personally, I’d just stop consuming corn syrup.
HOW MOTHER NATURE CONQUERS DIABETIC NEUROPATHY
Diabetics will want to make ALA their best friend. People who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, known technically as insulin resistance, often suffer from a painful condition known as neuropathy. Simply put, this painful condition results from damaged neurons—often from AGE products that run rampant within the bloodstream.
As neurons become damaged, they form lesions—like sandpaper creates on wood. These lesions initiate pain signals to the spinal cord that result in the sensation of burning, prickly itching, and even numbing. Fortunately, ALA can work at the molecular level to repair the damage, thereby halting pain signals.
As far back as 1959, German physicians treated diabetic neuropathy with ALA. While the latest research proves its effectiveness and safety, scientists are still trying to discover how ALA melts away the pain of neuropathy. ALA is believed to stop oxygen shock among sensory neurons, replacing oxygen-free radicals with healthy oxygen cells. This, in turn, can help cellular signaling and prevent cells from sending false pain messages to the spinal cord. Regardless of how ALA works, diabetics will want to start using it. It’s among the best ways to live free from debilitating pain, even when compared to commonly used prescription drugs.
No other antioxidant has so many abilities. And ALA is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Readers Digest called it “the pill that can stop aging.” Researchers writing in Pharmacological Reports stated that “lipoic acid will appear in the future as a key component of practically all drug formulations.” Commenting on ALA’s skin-protecting qualities, the famed Cleveland Clinic announced that ALA is “a newer, ultra-potent antioxidant that helps fight future skin damage and helps repair past damage.”13
While you’re taking ALA in supplement form, you’ll also want to make sure that you get plenty of it from your diet. The best natural sources are spinach, broccoli, and beef.
ANTIOXIDANT MARKETING SCAMS
Eating broccoli or spinach may not seem very appetizing, or at least not as appetizing as a pizza and a cold beer. In this case, you’ll have to supplement with ALA to ensure that you’re getting adequate amounts. Supplements containing ALA are rampant. And so are the marketing scams that fuel high prices for it.
Supplement competition is steep. Therefore, companies must leverage marketing to acquire clients. ALA marketers usually play the “mine is more pure than yours” card. Their rhetoric insists that their ALA can be five to fifteen times more potent than the competitor’s formulation. These are big statements that pull in higher prices. However, the statements are not validated by science.
The molecule of ALA has two different spatial orientations, just like your right and left hands. In nature, ALA exists in what chemists refer to as the R-form. In a supplement, ALA exists as a fifty-fifty mixture of the R-form and S-form. Like your hands, these two molecules are simply mirror images of each other—nothing too exciting. But the difference between the two can sometimes mean life and death.
Akin to a right hand fitting into a right glove, the natural form of a molecule fits perfectly into our body’s corresponding receptor. This neatly fitting match effectively inhibits, activates, and controls crucial biological actions. In sharp contrast, the wrong molecular form would be inactive and inert or, in some cases, lethal. Like putting your right hand into a left-handed glove, it just won’t fit.
This is the argument for using the R-form of ALA by itself. R-ALA is thought to be better because the supplement form becomes simply inactive due to carrying the mixture of S- and R-forms. Historically and biochemically, this argument holds. But scientific research doesn’t make it stick.
Both forms of ALA serve as effective antioxidants to ward off oxygen shock. This was proven in the early studies of ALA. The ALA mixture, rather than the isolated R-form, was the first to be studied. Thus, the positive results that followed came from mixed ALA, not R-ALA. The R-form wasn’t even available.14
Furthermore, the spatial arrangement of ALA has little relevance to ALA’s antioxidant and cellular-regenerating capacity. None of the health benefits derived from ALA are dependent on the molecule matching and subsequently activating a receptor site. There is no “ALA glove” for ALA to fit into—at least not one that’s been identified to date.
These facts make the mixed form of ALA preferable to the isolated R-form. It’s readily available and inexpensive.
THE OVER-THE-COUNTER NATURAL CURE TO VIBRANT, CANCER-FREE SKIN
I skipped most of high school. Not because I was a whiz kid and advanced to higher levels, but rather because I ditched for more exciting endeavors. Therefore, I didn’t forge many worthy relationships. That’s probably why I don’t get excited over high-school reunions. But most people do—probably because they attended class and made some decent friends. And most want to look younger than their peers who will be attending the reunion. By now, you know that the best way to achieve this is to use ALA. So, the next time you are at Wal-Mart, find Spring Valley brand ALA.
Spring Valley provides “mixed ALA” at Wal-Mart for about $12.00, which equates to $6.00 per month based on proper dosage. Spring Valley ALA is manufactured under FDA-approved good manufacturing practices (GMP), and my independent lab analysis showed it had no adulterants or excess fillers. This can be verified with the certificate of analysis (COA) found at my site, www.overthecounternaturalcures.com.
You want ALA to work fast. And the best way to ensure this is to get most of your dose into the bloodstream. Otherwise, it can pass through your body and into the toilet without being absorbed. The best way to achieve this is to take ALA on an empty stomach. A common dose is anywhere from 200 milligrams to 600 milligrams once per day, or about 4 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.
I weigh 175 pounds, so the optimal dose for me is about 300 milligrams daily. Taking ALA on an empty stomach guarantees that I get the best absorption of that 300 milligrams. The best time to administer ALA would be between lunch and dinner. Diabetics may want to take ALA twice per day between meals. If you become nauseous, you could be taking too much.
Don’t worry about toxicity. Several million dosages of ALA have been administered worldwide, and toxicity appears to be nonexistent. ALA has never damaged a single organ, nor has it accidentally killed anyone. You will, however, want to watch out for the overt toxicity that comes from all those “reunion cocktails.” But at least you’ll be enjoying them over compliments of how great you’ve aged over the years.
OVER-THE-COUNTER NATURAL CURE TO THE AGING HEART
It’s hard to imagine that you could squeeze more benefits out of ALA. But if you want to spend a few more bucks, combine it with the nutrient acetyl-L-carnitine (ALCAR). The nutrient combo can become an asset to your heart and mental health.
One simple molecule helps your heart beat more forcefully, keeping you from feeling fatigued while increasing your lifespan. This energizing molecule is known as ATP (adenosine triphosphate). Your heart needs vast amounts of this energy to function properly… and, fortunately, it’s easy to get your body to produce more ATP.
ATP is to your body what gasoline is to an engine. To repeatedly distribute oxygen and nutrients throughout your 100,000 miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries, your heart needs to pump 74 gallons of blood each hour. And what an engine your heart is. Consider that a small Cessna plane burns a mere 10 gallons of gasoline per hour. Without ATP, your heart doesn’t have the energy required to maintain proper blood flow. And if energy demand exceeds supply, heart failure occurs.
The number of premature deaths from heart failure has been rising since 1980, probably due to a lack of nutrients like ALA and ALCAR in our diet that are required for the production of ATP.15 Drugs like Coreg (carvedilol) are often used to curb the trend, but not a single one of the symptom-masking drugs increases ATP production or even lifespan. Instead, users are put at great risk for adverse drug reactions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Fortunately, Mother Nature provides an inexpensive solution in ALA and ALCAR.
Working in unison, ALA and ALCAR help your heart process healthy fats and ultimately convert them into our biological fuel, ATP.16 This energizing process occurs within the powerhouse of the cell known as the mitochondria. Without adequate amounts of these nutrients, both our cellular powerhouse and healthy fats fail to energize the heart—as well as the rest of the body. Without optimal energy, we grow old fast.
Admittedly, a deficiency in ALCAR is rare. Our body can make more when needed via the amino acids lysine and methionine. However, anyone with a stressed heart—those over fifty, athletes, angina victims, and survivors of heart attack and heart failure—should seriously consider supplementing with the energizing duo as an insurance policy against diminished ATP and subsequent heart damage. These energizing actions also help ensure a healthy mind as we age.
PRESERVING LIFE’S MOST PRECIOUS MOMENTS
It’s no secret that mental decline occurs as we age. Whether that means common forgetfulness or the all-out scourge of Alzheimer’s disease, poor mental health ruins quality of life. To the surprise of most people, age-associated “memory fog” can be slowed or even prevented with two to five grams daily of an ALCAR supplement.
In addition to boosting ATP within the brain, studies show that ALCAR increases neurotransmitters like acetylcholine while protecting neurons from oxidative stress.17 This is of paramount importance to Alzheimer’s victims, making the combo a potent weapon against Alzheimer’s-induced memory loss. In fact, I’d choose this combo over the commonly used Alzheimer’s medications, known technically as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChE).
Little is known about what causes Alzheimer’s disease. But what sufferers appear to have in common are low levels of the brain chemical acetylcholine. The obvious treatment approach is to increase that essential brain chemical. Using AChE inhibitors, the drug industry attempts to prevent acetylcholine from breaking down within the brain. Theoretically, this should enhance or preserve memory. But if there is no acetylcholine to preserve, the drug is useless. It has nothing to work on. Perhaps this is why these drugs have only marginal benefit. The slight benefits that may come with AChE inhibitors do not outweigh their immense risk.
Believe it or not, AChE are synthetic copycats of naturally occurring poisons and venoms. Their use is rationalized with the mentality of “A lot kills, a little cures.” But evidence doesn’t support this. Research consistently shows that users of AChE inhibitors suffer short-term side effects such as diarrhea, anorexia, vomiting, and tremors.18 Where these drugs fail, the energizing combo of ALA and ALCAR succeeds.
Using nutrient logic to help the brain produce more acetylcholine in Alzheimer’s victims is proving to be safer and more effective than trying to prevent the breakdown of the brain chemical. And the energizing combo does just that, without a single side effect. Once ingested, ALA and ALCAR sail past the blood-brain barrier to protect and nourish the brain, helping it to manufacture more of the memory-preserving brain chemical.
Supplement companies have become aware of the benefits of ALA and ALCAR. Nature’s Bounty brand sells the combo at Walgreens for about $15.00 per month. Manufactured under FDA-approved good manufacturing practices, the combo has no adulterants or excess fillers, based on my independent lab analysis. This can be verified with the certificate of analysis found at my site, www.overthecounternaturalcures.com.
PRESERVING QUALITY OF LIFE
Nobody wants to look old and crumbly. Nor do we want to suffer from rogue, malignant cells that destroy skin health along with everything else. Using ALA and ALCAR is an inexpensive defense against both of these health problems. At the same time, the nutrient logic of this duo is a critical component for preserving life’s most precious memories as we age. Try it for yourself, and you can have increased mood, energy, and focus within a matter of weeks.