Nanoceuticals

Nanotechnology is a wild and unregulated frontier.  It could offer great health benefits.  For example,   Japanese researchers have developed a nanoparticle that fuses with cancer but not normal cells and induces apoptosis in those cancer cells(ref).  On another front, there is concern that nanoparticles in cosmetics and personal care products will end up in the environment where they may have serious adverse effects(ref).

Increasing numbers of consumer products are being based on nanoscale ingredients and among them are over 44 dietary supplements, sometimes called nanoceuticals.  Claims are made by the manufacturers of many of these substances that they offer greatly enhanced bioavailability or offer other unique health benefits.  These nanoceuticals like other dietary supplements are not evaluated by the FDA or any other regulatory organization for either efficacy or safety.  However, nanoparticulate forms of familiar substances like silver have different properties than the conventional forms and the long-term consequences of ingesting them are unknown.  For example are nanoscale silver particles eventually excreted from the body or do they lodge in or next to cells and stay there? What do these nanoparticles do to cell membranes and how do they affect cell signaling?  There could be important benefits to using some nanoceuticals and there could also be serious dangers involved with taking others.  An editorial in the Feb 9 online edition of Chemical and Engineering News points out this situation and the weakness of the FDA regulations in not defining whether a nanoparticulate form of a familiar dietary substance should be treated as a new substance.  Much stronger government oversite of nanoceuticals and other nanoscale consumer products is needed soon, for the numbers of companies producing such products is swelling rapidly(ref).  In the interim I personally would not want to consume or suggest consuming a nanoceutical without seeing ample published research that establishes both its efficacy and long-term safety.  And the same is true for breathing one.

About Vince Giuliano

Being a follower, connoisseur, and interpreter of longevity research is my latest career, since 2007. I believe I am unique among the researchers and writers in the aging sciences community in one critical respect. That is, I personally practice the anti-aging interventions that I preach and that has kept me healthy, young, active and highly involved at my age, now 93. I am as productive as I was at age 45. I don’t know of anybody else active in that community in my age bracket. In particular, I have focused on the importance of controlling chronic inflammation for healthy aging, and have written a number of articles on that subject in this blog. In 2014, I created a dietary supplement to further this objective. In 2019, two family colleagues and I started up Synergy Bioherbals, a dietary supplement company that is now selling this product. In earlier reincarnations of my career. I was Founding Dean of a graduate school and a full University Professor at the State University of New York, a senior consultant working in a variety of fields at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Chief Scientist and C00 of Mirror Systems, a software company, and an international Internet consultant. I got off the ground with one of the earliest PhD's from Harvard in a field later to become known as computer science. Because there was no academic field of computer science at the time, to get through I had to qualify myself in hard sciences, so my studies focused heavily on quantum physics. In various ways I contributed to the Computer Revolution starting in the 1950s and the Internet Revolution starting in the late 1980s. I am now engaged in doing the same for The Longevity Revolution. I have published something like 200 books and papers as well as over 430 substantive.entries in this blog, and have enjoyed various periods of notoriety. If you do a Google search on Vincent E. Giuliano, most if not all of the entries on the first few pages that come up will be ones relating to me. I have a general writings site at www.vincegiuliano.com and an extensive site of my art at www.giulianoart.com. Please note that I have recently changed my mailbox to vegiuliano@agingsciences.com.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply