Aging By Autodigestion: Geert Schmid-Schönbein, PhD

[Mike Lustgarten]

 

[Ron Put]

Thanks, Mike. This was a fascinating interview.

It piqued my interest because I seem to have weird Amylase values:

My pancreatic amylase is OK at around 55 U/L, but my salivary amylase is high, between 90 and 120 U/L. Lipase is normal at around 35 U/L.

There is an upward trend over the years, though, although slow.

I have never been able to figure out what is the reason for such high salivary amylase values, maybe one of my ancestors really liked starch 😄

[IgorF]

Thanks for sharing, an additional angle to look on the complex topic is always a great thing.

For the sake of curiosity checked the only thing I can assess in my data - serum alpha-amilase, it fluctuates aroung the lower norm in 23-29 U/l (my labs give references 22-80 and 28-100) on a mild CR plants-only regimen. The only time I had it at 14 was when I tried to live at 1700kkal/d and loosing the weight fast. Based on this I thought that this marker is rather bound to food energy/composition intake and not to age but after some googling it seems there is some slight age drift to upper values and the research shared seems supports this. On the other hand - the body size/composition is also a major factor, every enzyme has its purpose and this is usually of a "quantitavie nature".

Br,

Igor

 

UPDATE:

some curious from a book that is not directly related but..

Psychoneuroendocrinology Research Trends 1st Edition
by Martina T. Czerbska

https://www.amazon.com/Psychoneuroendocrinology-Research-Trends-Martina-Czerbska/dp/160021665X

 

Quote

A number of studies have been performed in patients with eating disorders. In an initial study, serum alpha-amylase levels were measured in 56 underweight anorectics, 24 weightrecovered anorectics, 23 normal-weight bulimics, and 31 volunteer women. Normal-weight bulimic patients had significantly higher admission serum amylase values than controls. The authors observed that modest increases of serum amylase values appear to be a consequence of binge-vomit behavior and suggested that serial serum amylase determination may be useful in monitoring the degree of patient abstinence in therapeutic programs (Gwirtsman et al., 1989). In a further study (Scheutzel & Gerlach, 1991), alpha-amylase activity was measured in the serum and saliva of 45 patients with eating disorders and in 30 normal controls. Of the 45 patients evaluated, 12 had restrictive anorexia nervosa, 13 were bulimic anorectics and 20 had bulimia nervosa. In all these groups, the mean alpha-amylase values in serum and saliva were higher than those of the control group. Increased salivary alphaamylase concentrations might be attributed to hypertrophy of the parotid glands, which is a condition often found in patients with eating disorders. Consequently, the parotid salivary secretory patterns in 28 bulimics were determined in order to investigate the functional abnormality in the glands. The salivary amylase activity was increased in both the resting and stimulated states in bulimics (Riad, Barton, Wilson, Freeman, & Maran, 1991). Another study investigated the clinical relevance of alpha-amylase level monitoring as an objective measure in diagnosis and assessment of treatment response in bulimia nervosa (Kronvall, Fahy, Isaksson, & Theander, 1992). Thirty-three subjects with bulimia nervosa had serum levels of total and salivary amylase monitored during an 8-week treatment trial. At the beginning of treatment, the average total amylase level was within the upper limits of normal, whereas average salivary amylase levels were abnormally high. During the course of treatment, there was a significant reduction in the average salivary isoenzyme to within the normal range. Significant reductions in amylase levels were recorded in patients with good treatment outcome, but not in those with poor outcome. Amylase levels were not significantly correlated with severity of bulimic symptoms. These results do not seem to justify the use of alpha-amylase assays as a routine diagnostic or monitoring test in eating disorders, but the authors conclude that salivary alpha-amylase monitoring may provide useful clinical information at least in selected cases. Eating disorders are not the only conditions related to changes in alpha-amylase levels. Both pancreatic and salivary isoenzymes were examined in a study with 12 Alzheimer patients looking for the possibility of amylase as a marker of M3 activity. Overall alphaamylase results were not significant; however, a trend for salivary amylase was found

(unfortunately there seems no googlebooks for it, quoting via https://epdf.tips/psychoneuroendocrinology-research-trends.html the link is "unofficial" and could disappear)

Later there is also some stress-related info. A bit surprising for me that in the extreme CR cases like eating disorders mentioned the levels of alpha-amylase are at the high side, maybe stress or some disordered functioning of metabolic networks are having their place. Seems unexpected highs of this easy to obtain marker could be a red lamp for overdoers but this is just a guess.

If somebody practicing fasting could monitor own values and share it could be interesting.

 

UPDATE2:

also curious that https://www.amazon.com/Wallachs-Interpretation-Diagnostic-Tests-Diagnostric/dp/1975105583

doe not mention eating disorders and psycholodical influence on alpha-amylase levels, but maybe it is about well-established things rather than investigations

this book (https://books.google.pl/books/about/Accurate_Results_in_the_Clinical_Laborat.html?id=HEBloh3nxiAC&redir_esc=y) mentions them as well as anothor curious thing - lipemia (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3936974/) could cause underreporting for amylase assays, perhaps could be aconcern for keto regimen

Edited November 5 by IgorF