Peep!

April 17, 2004

    For the past 3+ weeks, I've had an abscessed tooth. For the past 2+ weeks, I've had intermittent fevers that would disappear for a day or two (four days over last weekend), and then reappear. My endodontist has wisely refused to repair the tooth until the infection has been curbed, and for some reason, my doctor hasn't chosen to change antibiotics after it became apparent to me that the first antibiotic wasn't working. This week, I visited a different doctor, and got an antibiotic that works. 
    My root canal is scheduled for next Wednesday.
    The point of all this is that I've quit taking my nutritional supplements, including resveratrol, acetul-l-carnitine, and alpha-lipoic acid, and I believe I can tell the difference. (I've been superstitious about the possibility that they might have been causing the intermittent fever, and I don't want to rock the boat until I've gotten the root canal.) I'm not as sharp as I was two weeks ago.
    I've fought to hold my weight in the face of the tendency to lose weight when one is running a fever, and I've succeeded, but at the cost of eating more than usual. I haven't put on any weight... I still weigh 128 pounds... but I'm looking forward to eating less so that I can return to a low-calorie lifestyle. Caloric restriction immediately partially protects you from various kinds of diseases, including cancer.
    In the meantime, I've been on the e-mail lists for the Calorie Restriction Society. It's quite an active group, with a continuing flow of abstracts of papers bearing upon longevity, and related health issues. (It can be hard to see the forest for the trees, with a lot of abstracts flowing in.)
    I'm working up a summary of some of the ideas, but it requires a bit of reviewing of literature. A number of possible agents for slowing and, perhaps, somewhat reversing aging are under investigation, of which the most prominent are resveratrol and metformin. This field is moving rapidly, with some brilliant and creative minds on the job.