Anti-Aging Effects

The elderly in Asia take velvet during the cold winter months, when the body is most vulnerable to infection and disease. It is traditionally said to benefit a wide variety of mental and physical health processes that are involved with aging, including strengthening the mind and increasing the quality and length of life. Its positive influence is so marked that Brekhman distinguishes pantocrin from all other adaptogens because its effects are "manifest with particular distinction in elderly and old people."

The revitalising effects of velvet antler have long been known in Oriental medicine and well documented in Russian clinical trials where both pantocrin and rantarin are used to treat the elderly. "In Russia where eleutherococcus and particularly pantocrine/rantarin are given to the elderly, many trials have been reported," writes Fulder. "In one study using elderly patients with some degree of atherosclerosis, rantarin was found to improve sleep, memory, mood and drive, and to alleviate headaches."

More recent research carried out by Chinese scientist Wang Benxiang and associates suggests that velvet preparations showed anti-aging effects by reducing signs of senility in mice. They found a big increase in plasma testosterone concentrations in the treated mice; they had far less oxidation by-product in their liver and brains, and free radical scavenger activity was greater than in the control mice. (Wang et al., 1988)

It was also discovered that the velvet treatment significantly inhibited MAO enzyme function (monoamine oxidase), an enzyme which breaks down certain neurotransmitters in the brain, like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. As people age, MAO activity increases, breaking down these neurotransmitters too quickly. The mood and energy enhancing effects of velvet antler on the elderly may lie in its MAO-inhibiting action.

In fact, velvet has traditionally been used to treat many of the health problems described today as characteristic of growth hormone deficiency. In Growth Hormone: Reversing Human Aging Naturally pharmacologist James Jamieson observes:

The decline of growth hormone with age, sometimes referred to as somatopause, is directly associated with many of the symptoms of aging, including wrinkles, grey hair, decreased energy and sexual function, increased body fat and cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and more... The good news is that clinical evidence demonstrates that by replacing growth hormone we can dramatically reverse these symptoms.

As a natural source of IGF-1 and growth hormone precursors, velvet antler may well act as a key for the body to naturally stimulate its own production of growth hormone in the pituitary. Unlike other growth hormone products available in the booming anti-aging industry velvet is neither the glandular extract of a dead animal, nor is it the product of recombinant DNA technology (genetic engineering). Velvet is a naturally safe tonic proven effective by countless generations of elderly Asian people.

Reprinted with permission from:
Velvet Antler - Nature's Superior Tonic by Alison Davidson,
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