How does C60 extend life?

Noone pretends to know why the "Bucky rats" in the C60 chronic toxicity study lived nearly twice as long as the control group. The study has such an astonishing result that it has even be suggested that a lab worker must have killed a few rats by mistake and replaced them with younger rats. But that can't be true, because all C60 rats lived extraordinary long lives, way beyond their maximum natural lifespan. It has also been suggested that someone deliberately sabotaged the study by replacing all rats with younger animals, but again, this seems highly unlikely. If we take the study at face value, then we have to accept that something very extraordinary has been discovered: Something that makes mammals live double their expected lifespan, in excellent health all the way until the theoretical maximum (Hayflick limit) of death due to old age.

Dr. Fathi Moussa, principal author of the C60 rat study, is not sure that the longevity effect is due to the "super-antioxidant" properties of C60, but it is his best guess. He remarks that C60 is unique in that it can go deep into the cells and cell walls:

c60-antioxidant2

c60-antioxidant1

c60-antioxidant3

Vidcaps taken October 26, 2012. Source: C60.net. No restrictions applied at that time (post #13).
Dr. Moussa has no commerical interest in C60 and holds no C60 patents or C60-related shares.

The study remarks how it is normal for Wistar rats to die of tumors or pneumonia, and how the C60-treated rats neither developed cancer nor lung problems - they simply died of general organ failure associated with old age - they reached their genetical maximum lifespan, so to speak. Whereas the rats in the control group - Wistar rats of the same age and genetically on a par with their C60 brethren, died of tumors and pneumonia. The researchers considered four possible explanations and thought it most likely that the C60's unparalleled antioxidant properties had something to do with it. However, there must be more to it than that, because the rats only received 24 doses - how can 24 days of C60 supplementation add years to their lives? C60 is eliminated from the body in 10 to 24 hours, at least that is what studies tell us. However, those studies have only looked at the general tissue distribution of C60, not at the mitochondrial cell membrane, to give but an example. The major theories how lipofullerenes' anti-aging effects are:

(1) C60 remains in the lipid bilayers of the cells and mitochondria, doing its ROS-neutralizing work for weeks or months.

Lipofullerenes could act as super-antioxidants on the cellular level, where they remain for a very long time, since they are not "used up" when they act as antioxidants, and they are constantly recycled in the cell.

(2) The C60 physically rejuvenates organisms on the cellular level, for example by DNA demethylation or by otherwise reversing cellular damage on the molecular level.

Interestingly, the size of the Buckyball C60 molecule is such that it fits exactly inside the "minor groove" DNA winding and it indeed binds to it, protecting it against Methyl groups that degrade and neutralize the DNA:

dna-C60

Here are some postulations made in the Longecity forum on how C60 may extend healthy life:

(3) "Attenuation of age-associated increases in oxidative stress."

(4) "I'm wondering if the fullerene might not be the active longevity ingredient. Maybe it's just the transport. And dissolving it in olive oil also allows some olive oil molecules to penetrate the fullerene sphere and get transported to places by the fullerene that orally ingested olive oil wouldn't make it to. Like deep into many cells throughout the body even those across the bbb. It that's right, all the longevity effects observed are just an amplification of the effects of the olive oil."

(5) "My guess is that it binds with toxins."

(6) "It is a catalytic radical scavenger - i.e. it is able to re-cycle and repeat its activity over and over. It accumulates in mitochondria. It has antiviral action. C60 has anti-cancer properties. Possibly, as with methylene blue, there might be a hormetic affect - with low dosages having a positive effect, and higher doses a deleterious one."

(7) "Maybe enhancing neurite growth sufficiently enhances feedback signaling in the body and that is what results in an enhanced immune response."

(8) "Since the mechanism of action is still unknown we have no idea if the buckyballs are destroyed in the process of performing whatever function they are performing. Maybe they somehow bust up AGEs and are destroyed in the process. Maybe they settle in and become a conduit for some biophotonic reaction."

(9) "We do know fullerene passes the blood brain barrier, and has neuroprotective effects."

(10) "C60 is a catalyst. It is not used up in the process of its action."

(11) "C60 is able to associate with mitochondria and induce a cytoprotective antioxidant effect."

(12) "C60 might be resetting the mitochondria to a younger age."

(13) "We humans have been cooking our food for a long time and the soot from these fires maybe contained fullerenes. Perhaps fullerenes are an important part of the paleolithic diet."

(14) Here's a sketchy hypotheses of how C60 might work:

  • Fullerenes wrapped in oil are transported to mitochondria for burning.
  • Once there, the oil is stripped and the naked fullerenes are attracted to other hydrophobic molecules, such as the methyl groups on the mitochondrial DNA, and reacts with them, stripping them from the DNA.
  • Demethylation of the DNA thus reverses the epigenetic DNA changes that result in dysfunction of the mitochondria.

(15) There's been some mention of mitochondrial biogenesis in this thread... Is this something that fullerenes are known to do? Mitochodrial biogenesis means the creation of new mitochondria.

(16) Fullerenes are known to like methyl groups, and that they could steal them from DNA would certainly provide a tidy explanation of how this works.

(17) Fullerenes might exist in a more longer-lived reservoir, like in the membrane of a long-lived somatic cell.

(18) My hypothesis is that fullerenes wipes out the methylation, the DNA automatically recovers it, and the effective age is set to zero. The DNA will begin to age again, and a later treatment can reset it back to zero. Keep resetting every few years and the ultimate limit then passes to the telomeres and epigenetics of the nuclear DNA.

(19) It's very clear that C60 has mitochondrial activities; for example, animals treated with C60 are more resistant to radiation effects, and are far more resistant to the oxidative damage from carbon tetrachloride ingestion. That isn't just a reset to a youthful state, because youthful animals would be injured by both radiation and CCl4.

(20) Olive Oil is a 5-LO inhibitor. 5-LO inhibition reduces ROS, independent of P53. I cannot escape the conclusion that the choice of the Olive Oil solvent, per se, cannot be dismissed as being unimportant to the Buckyball study conclusion.

(21) I have a hypothesis: Because of its hydrophobic propensity, C60 incorporates itself into cell membranes thereby presenting the adducted olive oil which disrupts the signaling pathways of arachidonic acid in the phospholipids therein while also sopping up supersoxide everywhere the C60 finds it, nice "one-two". How/why does the C60 pass through the cytosol into the mitochondrial membranes? Wouldn't it want to stay in the cell membrane? Is it shunted through the cell membrane by a channel protein or an inner membrane channel protein? Is there a charge graident involved? Is it just possible that because it behaves like a wave also...it makes for the mitochondria and leaves the olive oil in the cell membrane?

(22) Harman, in this 2001 paper posits that fullerene may work in the mitochondria as a blocking agent. Many antioxidants,at therapeutic doses,actually decrease the efficiency of the mitochodria, which is why possibly we do not see increases in the maximum lifespan. If fullerene is indeed a blocking agent, then it acts by stopping oxygen from generating reactive oxygen species and superoxide formation, while having no negative impact on mitochondrial functionality. Other studies posit it is a superoxide dismutase mimetic.

(23) Drugs, diet, or exercise are all capable of changing gene expression; for example, resveratrol alters the expression level of on the order of 1000 genes. It's very likely that fullerenes change the expression level of numerous genes as well. For the vast majority of these genes, the changes in expression are transient, and when the drug is withdrawn, expression returns to normal. In some cases, however, there are apparently long-lasting changes put in place by CpG (de)methylation, histone (de)acetylation, etc. These are epigenetic modifications.

(24) ..the Fullerene Solvent served as the means for "guiding" the Fullerenes to the "cell type" that the solvent has a natural affinity for, to the appropriate "receptor" of that cell type..

(25) C60 is thought to be a "SOD Mimetic", SOD is an enzyme that clears out the destructive superoxide ROS in your cells.

(26) I suspect that the C60 that finds its way into non-mitochondrial membranes isn't hurting anything, and may be helping some, but the fraction that gets into mitochondrial membranes is what's doing the magic, because it's close to the source of damaging superoxide ions.

(27) I think that the conjugation of fullerene with molecules present in olive oil is crucial - and it makes no sense whatsoever to tinker with the basic formula when the knowledge of what is going on is basically non-existent. If you are going down this route, stick to olive oil.

(28) I wouldn't say that we don't have a clue how this works. I'd say there are some hints. We know it's redox active, and that fullerene carboxylic acid compounds can act as SOD mimetics, turning superoxide radical anion into oxygen and H2O2. We know that superoxide is generated in mitochondria, and it's at least reasonable to suspect that a fullerene fatty acid adduct could become part of the mitochondrial membrane.

(29) I don't think it is a stretch to assume that the positive effects of C60, if any, are tied to it's relative inertness.

(30) That it is the Olive Oil combination with C60s that extended life spans in the surprising way it did suggests that our innate Immune System driven CAIP is implicated in some way in the study result.

(31) A resetting of the Mitochondrial DNA in the gut related to our Innate Anti-Inflammatory mechanisms resets our ability to manage the auto-immune diseases (like cancer) which, increasingly, knock us off as we age.



1.  Dr.Richard Stoll    Thursday, January 17, 2013

Why not do a TBARS test for Malondialdehyde to make sure that this therapy is in fact enhancing the volume and/or efficacy of the SOD, glutathion and pyroxidase produced by cellular activity



2.  protn7    Monday, December 23, 2013

C60 is the most electrophillic molecule known. If its getting into the DNA minor groove it might be changing electron transport. there and in the mitochondial membrane where it might be changing proton gradients and flows.



3.  Ole Rasmussen    Sunday, April 13, 2014

I think it all sound extremely interesting...but how about articles like this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

I'm certainly no expert but this makes me wonder if c60 could be toxic anyway? I hope I've misunderstood something :) and that the article/test is not relevant...



4.  Sarah Vaughter    Sunday, April 13, 2014

Yes, you've misunderstood and indeed the article is irrelevant regarding our product.

We don't sell nanoparticles of C60. Nanoparticles of C60 are enormous clusters of C60 molecules (many thousands to millions). C60 nanoparticles can form in water, but as long as there's oil present, the C60 will greatly prefer to dissolve in the oil instead. The c60 molecule has a strong tropism for lipid chains.

C60 dissolves perfectly in olive oil and does not form nanoparticles, not
even after many years. There were no nanoparticles detected after six
years in the lipofullerene C60 solution used in the rat study.

Saying that C60 in olive oil may be toxic because of C60 nanoparticles is saying an iron supplement may hurt you because knives are also made of iron. It's comparing apples with pears.



5.  seescaper    Tuesday, February 24, 2015

I'm wondering if anyone has looked at the telemere length of the treated rats.



6.  Sarah Vaughter    Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Their telomere length at death must have been very short, since they all died of generalized old age. During lifetime they did not check this because it was a toxicity test that yielded unexpected results.



7.  seescaper    Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Yes, at time of death, but did the onset of treatment result in a lengthening of the telemeres and preserve that length much longer than controls? That would seem logical



8.  Sarah Vaughter    Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Well, as I understand it, there is much more to at least mammalian longevity than just telomere length, but all we can do is guess in this case.

It could be that the C60 slowed down the speed of shortening, I remember reading some kind of theory on that. But there are at least 24 different theories (detailed on our site) why C60 could cause such an extremely increased lifespan. One theory that was very credible (because supported by science) is that C60 basically prevents nearly all free radical damage to the cell. That would also explain the many reports by professional athletes that they can push themselves further and recover sooner on it. Merely affecting the telomeres should not have any perceptible effect. And it really is not a placebo effect, with those athletes, because they report winning medals where previously it was not in the cards for them. They do consume much more than our recommended dose though. At the pro level, placebo effects can't do that. Only "real" effects can do that, on that level.



9.  jerrycollie    Friday, February 3, 2017

A simple examination of the C60 molecule, made up of alternating single and double bonds, shows it is a super antioxidant, that can stop a free radical coming from any direction; and that it is not destroyed by free radicals.



10.  Jack    Thursday, September 14, 2017

Hi there, I have just received my C60 and would like to know what should I add the drops to, i.e., any particular food/liquid, or simply straight?


11.  Sarah Vaughter    Thursday, September 14, 2017

The only important thing is that it ends up in your stomach.


12.  Charles Hoyenski    Monday, September 25, 2017

I am currently taking resveratrol pills (for over three
years), and I also drink red wine with tart cherry,
pomegranite etc. Don't smoke, do drugs, fatty foods etc.
I've noticed that along with Biotin has made my hair dark
again, is C60 needed by a guy like me at 59 years of age ?


13.  Sarah Vaughter    Monday, September 25, 2017

Well Charles, Resveratrol has no scientific evidence to back up any beneficial effects to mammals, in spite of the multi-billion dollar hype surrounding it. Whereas C60-EVOO made mammals live twice as long and prevented them from getting ANY illness during their entire lifetime - they died of a generalized "wearing out", reaching their Hayflick limits.

That said, I am the last one to claim that anyone "needs" anything, let alone in relation to our products. And I am the first one to state on the record that I disbelieve nearly all mentions of "positive effects" that people can "feel" when taking this product, since slower aging and not getting cancer can't be "felt", of course.


14.  Aaron    Friday, December 15, 2017

You say you cannot notice the effects of C60. Do you think people who engage in strenuous activity can? Like the athletes you mentioned?


15.  Sarah Vaughter    Friday, December 15, 2017

Athletes were the first people to try this product and many told us they had extreme improvements in recovery period, maximum output, muscle growth etc. and one person on our frontpage even thinks he won a national medal in rowing because of it. Since a lot of these claimed improvements are MEASURABLE, we believe them. That rower for ex. was steadily getting SLIGHTLY WORSE as he aged, until he started large doses of C60. The next year he finished first.


16.  Mark    Monday, January 15, 2018

Sarah, would you ever consider trying to replicate the original wistar rat study? I'm sure we'd all be willing to pay a little more for each bottle of C60 in olive oil if we knew some of the profits woukd go towards further scientific validation of the benefits of using C60 in olive oil.

Unfortunately I think we'll be waiting forever for big pharma to do a study on a molecule they can't patent.


17.  Sarah Vaughter    Monday, January 15, 2018

A few years ago, my company paid thousands of dollars to the Immortality Institute, for their project to replicate that study. I later discovered that Justin Loew uses this non-profit "Institute" to solicit taxfree donations for fake projects such as replicating that study - money that he apparently simply pockets, awards to himself as "salary", paying himself around 600 dollars/hour, making Justin Loew in my opinion guilty of the crimes of tax evasion as well as defrauding donors. I looked at several years of the tax filings for his little setup and it became clear. I had also paid a lot of money for a lifetime membership of his "institute", which gave me nice flair on his forum at longecity.org. When I started to press him for the results of the test I sponsored, since a few years had passed since I had paid all those thousands of dollars, I was banned from the forum, my more recent critical postings were deleted and I was revoked my lifetime membership and the flair was removed from my postings.


18.  Mike Collins    Wednesday, January 31, 2018

All we have in life is hope! I hope C60 works....;-) Thanks for a great product Sarah.


19.  Steve Brandt    Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Sarah, I came across this article and it's got some people worried, including me. Can you interpret this for us. Is it as bad as it sounds?
http://www.weyburnreview.com/news/local-news/comp-grad-leads-research-1.2261882


20.  Sarah Vaughter    Wednesday, April 4, 2018

These people are liars and have been called out as such on Longecity not only by myself but by many others.

They are direct competitors to us and they'e decided to spread FUD, claiming that only THEIR magical product "won't kill ya". They have, for the past YEARS, refused to make their research public so no one can reproduce and thus verify their murky claims. They refuse to disclose the wavelength of light used, the exposure time used, the intensity used, the toxins found, what exactly happened to their lab mice, whether they used the black bottles we ship the oil in, etc.

Unless they come with these facts, finally, we have to either assume they're lying (which we now basically all do), or that they did something extreme in terms of hard-UV exposure to the naked oil that's completely impossible to happen, not even when a bottle sits for a year in the sunshine.

As always: When someone makes a claim, it is up to THEM to prove it and elucidate, not on US to "disprove" it :-) That's how the scientific method works, esp. when Competitor A makes unproven claims about Competitor B. Then the stupidest thing would be to ask Competitor B to "disprove".

Imagine your ambitious neighbor, who hates you bec. you're more successful than him tells everyone: "Steve Brandt is a really, really bad man but I won't tell you why, just that he's really, REALLY bad". How would you feel if someone would simply assume you're guilty, and started to demand from YOU to prove your innocence - something that it completely impossible, one can't prove a negative, instead of your neighbor to elucidate his libelous accusations?


21.  Lennart Mogren    Sunday, April 29, 2018

Do you have a comment on https://elixine.com/collections/all in Germany who sell C60 60 ml for 69 EUR and your price is 15 USD for 50 ml?

I've been a customer for quite some time and have read your comments which I appreciate. elixine don't seem to have any advantage to your products but just be heavily overpriced.

I am grateful for your price policy which makes C60 available for most of us.


22.  Sarah Vaughter    Sunday, April 29, 2018

Since C60-EVOO got promoted by Clif High, dozens of bandwagon-jumping "make money online" folks approached the very few C60-EVOO producers with the request to become resellers. It always works like that when lazy people smell money. They usually make much more than the actual manufacturers, percentage-wise, also because otherwise it would not be worth their while, since they don't sell much, regardless of their prices.

They often rely on a combination of hyping up the product with false claims, the fact that a lot of their target audience does not speak English and the psychological manipulation of the customer thinking: "Wow, if they are five times more expensive but their website looks very professional, that must mean that all those cheaper sellers must be selling a fake or inferior product!".

In fact, it's the opposite. The reason why we sell a cheaper product because we've invested $ 50,000 in machinery and are based in the Czech Republic, where wages are low. And because we sell 3500 bottles/month, we're able to run a tight ship, able to compete on price. We're one or two orders of magnitude larger than the second-largest producer or reseller. We know that, because the most prominent ones used to list their avaiable stock and they sold just a few bottles/day and were continually sold out during the several months where demand peaked.

Since they use magnetic stirrers that need weeks to produce small batches, they "solved" things more or less by boiling the oil during stirring on heated magnetic stirrers, making the C60 dissolve faster but causing harmful chemical changes to the oil. We've sold this product for many many years so we had the money to invest in a high-tech industrial infrasound mixer but they never made the money for such an investment so they're forced to charge much more money, if they want to "make money online".

But over-charging is the norm, with people who are only interested in making a quick buck and then moving on to their next scheme. Before we started selling dermaneedling instruments for example, those Internet marketing guys charged up to $80 for a dermaroller (that they bought for $3 in China). We became the world's largest dermaneedling retailer (1 million dollar/year turnover) by slashing prices to a fraction of what was charged by the scammers. I say "scammers" not because of their prices but because of their false claims, which we now again see with the C60-oil product.


23.  Sarah Vaughter    Sunday, April 29, 2018

Actually they ARE scammers. Their site is full of lies and fraudulent claims. They claim a "tripling of lifespan of small mammals" and "C60 occurs naturally in certain types of wood", they falsely claim to produce the product themselves in Berlin and I can virtually guarantee you they falsely claim it has coconut, avocado and olive oil.

The guy behind this operation is Marius Vossbeck (as per the WHOIS of elixine.com) and we recently declined to do business with him, because in my opinion, after having researched his activities, he is a "make money online" scammer.


24.  Christopher    Thursday, September 20, 2018

According to School of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan, C-60 does pass the Blood Brain Barrier - Fullerene C(60) was demonstratively able to cross the BBB by hybridizing a biologically active moiety dyad, which provides a promising clue as a pharmacological therapy of neural disorders.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22455733 - Peer reviewed science.


25.  Sarah Vaughter    Thursday, September 20, 2018

Yes but how many times do I have to explain that C60 is not what we sell! We sell LIPOFULLERENE C60 - That's a C60 molecule with several lipic chains very strongly bonded to it. That does NOT pass the blood-brain barrier because it's larger than 500 Daltons.

All those articles about C60 doing this and C60 being that are about plain C60, the slightly water-soluble molecule. Stop comparing apples with light sabers. Lipofullerenes are too large to pass the blood-brain barrier. Lipofullerene C60 has extremely different chemical and physical properties than plain C60 and to turn C60 into lipofullerene C60 takes weeks of stirring. The molecular weight of the new molecules is a multitude of C60's molecular weight and it's not water-soluble anymore either.


26.  Sarah Vaughter    Thursday, September 20, 2018

(That should be "lipid chains" - can't edit these comments...)

Again: There exist to my knowledge (nearly) NO peer-reviewed research on the famous anti-aging product Lipofullerene C60. It's all about plain old C60 buckyballs without lipid chains attached. Just like table salt is neither Sodium metal not Chlorine gas, Lipofullerene C60 is not C60.