enous (e.g. radiation or chemical expo- sure).


Stem Cells Become Less Efficient (Im- munosenescence) - Stem cells supply your body with a fresh batch of cells during your life. They are the parent cells for you neu- rons, blood cells, skin cells, etc. As you get older they work less efficiently and tend to produce cells that do not work so well. When stem cells become less efficient they cannot replenish older cells optimally, and one thus becomes more prone to infec- tions, cancer, and other chronic diseases. The Five


Currently, my favorite longevity herbs are the following:


• Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) aka Lingzhi (Spirit Plant)


• Goji Berry (Lycium barbarum) aka Wolf Berry


• He Shou Wu (Polygonum multiflorum) • Ginseng (Panax ginseng) • Cocoa (Theobroma cacao)


As with vitamins, minerals or single herbal constituents, I can make a case for many other whole herbs, and even some foods, for increasing lifespan. However, the herbs above have an ancient history of use in promoting longevity; and, have scientific evidence supporting their use for life extension; and all of them have some very interesting lore in regards to convey- ing immortality. By looking at scientific studies and trying to flesh out truth from hype one can see that the above herbs have promising evidence for promoting quality life extension.


Secrets From the Long-lived To get a better understanding of why these particular herbs were chosen, let’s look at some interesting long-lived people from our not too distant past.


Li Cheng-Yuen First, let me introduce you to Li


Cheng-Yuen. Li supposedly lived well over a century with some records saying up to 256 years. He claimed that he was born in 1736. However, there is evi- dence that shows Li was in fact born in 1677. And, there are records from the Imperial Chinese Government congratu- lating him on his both his 150th and 200th birthday. Yes, I know with what we know now, this seems impossible. After all, the oldest ever documented person


that we know of today is Jeanne Calment. I will touch on her in just a second here. Li is intriguing because he was a


traditionally trained Chinese herbalist. And, if anyone, without the use of mod- ern technology, is capable of living up to 256 years,


it would be a Chinese


herbalist. Why? Because Chinese herbal medicine has a documented history of more than 5000 years, which is more than any other traditional or conven- tional form of medicine. Moreover, many Chinese herbs have solid western evi- dence showing they can slow down or optimize the various mechanisms of aging (see the first page of this article). You can also get some insight into


the validity of Li’s long life by scrutinizing his longevity secrets. One of his secrets was based on his lifestyle, and the other was based on his diet. His lifestyle secret is was the follow-


ing:


Keep a quiet heart Sit like a tortoise Walk sprightly like a pigeon Sleep like a dog


And his dietary secret for longevity


was consuming the following herbs: Reishi, He Shou Wu, Goji Berry, and Ginseng. These herbs are 4 of the five listed above.


Jeanne Calment Now let’s talk about Jeanne Calment.


She was a French supercentenarian who has the longest confirmed human lifes- pan on record, living to the age of 122 years and164 days. She was born Febru- ary 21, 1875 and died on August 4, 1997. Her secret to longevity has some similarities to Li’s. She credited her lon- gevity to laughing a lot and not getting stressed out. Li also stressed this by say- ing “Keep a Quiet Heart.”


She also


stayed active well into her hundreds. Her dietary secret appears to have been eat- ing chocolate…lots of it. There are ac- counts of her eating at least a pound of chocolate per week. This is really intriguing because of the copious amounts of research we have on cocoa. Cocoa polyphenols have copi- ous amounts of health benefits on the cardiovascular system, brain, and skin. And, based on this, the 5th herb for longevity that I have chosen is Theo- broma cacao, which is the main ingredi- ent (cocoa) found in chocolate. By the


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