Taken from Chapter 6 of the book “Live Young, TWO times longer” (2018), by Eric Simard, Dr. in Biology and Jacques Lambert, MD.

The announcement of our discoveries with Concordia University on March 5, 2019 aroused a lot of interest (Interview with Pierre Bruneau here – French Only). This research on aging, supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, gave rise to the development of Vitoli® products and more particularly, to Vitoli® Healthy Aging. Here are some explanations on the importance of the olive polyphenols that you find in Vitoli® products in the form of an exclusive extract from patented technology. This is called the Provitol® Complex. In this first article we will describe what primary aging is. The next articles will explain the effects of the Provitol® Complex on aging and the addition of a highly concentrated resveratrol extract in Vitoli® Healthy Aging in order to improve cellular repair.

Understanding aging

Science from the past 15 years has done phenomenally well in this area by challenging one of the most important paradigms in biology: the very cause of aging. We have presented in two previous articles, the discoveries that have made it possible to better understand aging (Healthy Aging (Article 2): Caloric Restriction and Healthy Aging (Article 3): Caloric Restriction Mimetics). Aging is not just caused by cellular wear, but also by the body’s urge to age. Here are some explanations.

We can now group organisms that age particularly well under two main approaches:

  1. those whose aging process is slowing down,
  2. those who do more maintenance and repair.

The work of Mikhail V Blagosklonny, an imminent American researcher at the Buffalo Department of Cell Stress Biology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, has particularly highlighted since 2010, the reasons why rapidly growing living organisms also age quickly and live short periods of time. The opposite is also true: organisms that develop slowly have a longer life expectancy.

Thus, the mice, which have only 20 days of gestation, do not live more than approximately 3 years and the elephants which have 18 months of gestation live at least 60 years.

The reason for this virtually flawless rule of nature is that certain cellular mechanisms responsible for growth and development are also responsible for aging later in life. The body’s urge to develop is partly maintained after adulthood and thus causes aging. Professor Blagosklonny offers a really interesting analogy of a car whose accelerator is continuously pressed to the floor and whose speed is modulated by the brake. Thus, this car would experience accelerated aging, accelerated wear, by unnecessary engine thrust. The mechanisms of growth and development would have the effect of this accelerator, which is continuously engaged once it reaches adulthood, when growth stops. The unnecessary urge for growth and development would thus be responsible for most of aging. This is what is called in biology the theory of hyperfunction.

The urge of an organism to age

To use Blagosklonny’s analogy, there will therefore be two ways of acting on this car in accelerated wear:

  1. remove your foot from the accelerator,
  2. or do more maintenance.

The analogy proposed by Blagosklonny is perfectly relevant since these two approaches have been used by different living species in order to increase their longevity in health. Thus certain living species have a very slow development which results in a very slow aging and an extended longevity. One of the best examples of slow development with extended longevity is Somniosus microcephalus, the Greenland shark.

This shark is the largest carnivore on the planet, along with the white shark. It can reach up to 7.3 meters for an average length of about 5 meters and a weight of more than 900 kilos. Its development is so slow, that it reaches sexual maturity between 130 and 150 years. A specimen captured at 560 kilos was not yet sexually mature (what one would consider a fat adolescent).

A shark tagged in 1932 and recovered in 1952 had only grown by 6 centimeters, just over 1% of its average size in 20 years. Its very slow development would therefore be linked to its great longevity which could reach 400 years.

This link between the slow development and the extended longevity of certain organisms has long been interpreted as the result of slower wear due to a slower metabolism of these organisms: the machine runs at idle speed and wears less quickly (slower metabolism, less oxidation, slower aging). It is now known that this is not the case; there is no link between the antioxidant capacities, the oxidation levels and the longevity of the species. These are the growth mechanisms that, when rendered useless in adulthood, would interfere with cellular function and prevent the body from continuing to repair itself well. So when we are young we fix practically everything. After adulthood, we repair ourselves less and less well and let cellular damage appear. This damage, which accumulates over time, will cause the diseases associated with aging. Certain organisms have thus developed greater capacity for maintenance and repair in order to resist aging longer.

Therefore, organisms that develop slowly have a weak growth spurt and thus live longer. Other organisms also have higher maintenance and repair capacities which allow them to resist aging longer. The aging caused by the urge to age is called primary aging, while aging related to lifestyle is called secondary aging.

Recently a Spanish research group has demonstrated that the multiple health benefits of olive polyphenols come from a significant impact on the primary aging of the organism. It is for this reason that Vitoli® products contain the exclusive Provitol® Complex. We will come back to this in more detail in a second article.

 

To learn more about the subject, we suggest the following articles :
– Olive polyphenols and Vitoli products – article 2 : the benefit
– Olive polyphenols protect against aging (article 1 of 2)
– Olive polyphenols can increase life expectancy? (article 2 of 2)

 

References:

  • Barzilai, et al, 2012. The rationale for delaying aging and the prevention of age-related diseases. Rambam Maimonides Med J. 2012 Oct 31;3(4)
  • Costantini et al, 2017. The Greenland shark: A new challenge for the oxidative stress theory of ageing? Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 2017 Jan;203:227-232.
  • Mikhail V. Blagosklonny, 2013. Big mice die young but large animals live longer. AGING, Avril 2013, Vol. 5 No 4.